妙法蓮華經玄義 義疏通講 · 冊3

A sutra contains myriad meanings; which one is its substance? Explaining the name has already unfolded a sutra’s meanings broadly, whereas discerning the substance performs the opposite task: amid the vastness of many meanings, it directly points out where the whole sutra returns. This does not mean finding another thing hidden behind the text. It asks upon what name, purport, function, and every cause and fruit are established, and toward what they all jointly tend.

The treatise first gives two statements: substance is the destination of the whole work and the convergence of its many meanings. The first views it from the whole sutra, the second from its myriad meanings. Myriad meanings can unfold in every direction, but their destination keeps them from dispersing. One work can contain innumerable statements, yet its substance is the reality that all those statements jointly seek to reveal.

Why Can the One Vehicle Not Simply Be Called the Substance?

The first old interpretation says that the One Vehicle is the sutra’s substance. The problem is that the name One Vehicle can be used for both the provisional and the real. Even when it refers specifically to the real One Vehicle, it contains the three tracks of true nature, contemplative illumination, and supporting accomplishment. It encompasses a great deal, but it has not yet answered the question posed by discerning the substance: which track is meant here?

Another old interpretation says that true truth is the substance. This too is overly broad. Great and Lesser Vehicles both use the name true truth, and there are multiple accounts even within the Great Vehicle. Merely giving a name that applies in many places does not complete the act of specifying the substance.

Others take the cause and fruit of the One Vehicle as the substance. Cause may consist of myriad wholesome deeds and fruit of myriad qualities. Both are important, yet they remain affairs cultivated and accomplished. If affairs have no seal of true principle, they have no basis upon which to stand. Cause and fruit therefore reveal the course of cultivation and realization, while the sutra’s substance lies in the true principle that enables them to be established.

The key to discerning the substance gradually becomes clear: the grandest name is not necessarily the most precise, and the richest content is not necessarily the basis upon which it rests. This chapter preserves the respective meanings of the One Vehicle, true truth, and cause and fruit while placing each in its proper position.

Does Cause Change into Fruit, or Do Cause and Fruit Remain Side by Side?

Someone takes the substance of the vehicle to pervade cause and fruit, saying that the causal and fruitional vehicles together form the substance. Zhang’an privately raises a question here: when cause becomes fruit, does it change or not change?

If cause changes into fruit, the original cause is no longer present, and the relation between what passes through and that through which it passes disappears with it. If cause does not change, then after reaching the stage of fruit it still remains cause, leaving cause and fruit side by side, which is likewise untenable. If another Dharma is established to pass through cause and fruit, that proves precisely that what truly passes through them lies elsewhere and that cause and fruit themselves are not the sutra’s substance.

This question also changes how several scriptural passages are read. The Buddha’s abiding in the Great Vehicle is not merely his remaining in a particular quality of the fruit; he rides principle in order to guide sentient beings. The children’s riding the jeweled vehicle reveals practitioners at the causal stage proceeding by means of the cart. The cause and fruit of the Great Vehicle pointing to the true mark shows that neither departs from the true mark. Each scene directs cause and fruit back to the true mark and places true principle in the position of their basis.

The true mark and cause and fruit are therefore mutually dependent in a definite direction. Cause and fruit cannot be established apart from the true mark; the true mark runs through cause and fruit as the common basis of cultivation and realization. Discerning the substance identifies the one true mark within this interdependence.

Where Do the White Ox, Adornments, Attendants, and Carriage Belong?

Another group of old explanations divides prajñā and the six perfections into root and branches, broad and narrow, one-body and different-body, near vehicle and distant vehicle. It then establishes multiple combinations according to attainment and nonattainment and to worldly and world-transcending practice. All these distinctions concern which practices are present in the vehicle and which mental practices are nearer or more distant; they still do not point directly to the vehicle’s underlying substance.

Zhang’an uses the ox cart to put these positions back in order. Prajñā is the white ox, the five perfections are the adornments, skillful means are the attendants, and compassion is the carriage. The white ox can draw, adornments complete the cart, attendants accompany it, and the carriage bears its passengers. Each has a function, yet none automatically becomes the sutra’s substance merely because its function is important.

The force of this image is that it belittles none of its elements. Without the white ox, the cart cannot move; without the perfections, skillful means, and compassion, practice and the liberation of beings cannot be completed. Discerning the substance simply distinguishes what transports, assists, and carries from the basis upon which they rely. If debate remains fixed on the arrangement of the cart’s fur, twigs, and leaves, the vehicle-basis actually being sought is obscured.

Why Do the Five Treatises Point to the Same Vehicle-Basis?

Zhang’an continues by citing five treatises. The first lists the vehicle-basis, vehicle-practice, vehicle-gathering, vehicle-obstruction, and vehicle-fruit. The second proceeds from true suchness and buddha-nature to practices of merit and wisdom, from practice to fruit, and then from fruit to carrying sentient beings forth. The third lists vehicle-cause, vehicle-condition, and vehicle-fruit. The fourth speaks of the equal Dharma-body and great nirvāṇa. The fifth lists the vehicle-basis, vehicle-master, and vehicle-assistant.

Their names and sequences are not wholly identical, but they share the same initial basis: true suchness, buddha-nature, and the true mark of all dharmas. Merit and wisdom are practice, compassion is gathering, afflictions and cognitive obstructions are obstructions, buddhahood is fruit, prajñā can serve as master, and all practices can assist. Each occupies its own place within the vehicle. When the question of discerning the substance is posed, what is selected is the vehicle-basis, while every part of the full account of the vehicle retains its original position.

Thus, saying that the five treatises clarify the same substance of the vehicle does not mean that all their terms are identical. Their sameness lies in the true mark as their destination, while their small differences preserve how each arranges practice, gathering, obstructions, qualities of the fruit, and assistance.

Why Is the Sutra’s Substance Also Called the One Seal of the True Mark?

The sutra’s substance is not merely the shared topic of the entire scripture. It also distinguishes true from false, and the treatise therefore turns to the Dharma seals.

The Lesser Vehicle establishes three seals because it treats birth-and-death and nirvāṇa as distinct. The dharmas of birth-and-death are sealed by impermanence and no-self, while nirvāṇa is sealed by quiescent cessation. The three seals allow practitioners to recognize the Buddha’s teaching and to attain the path by practicing in accordance with it.

The Great Vehicle establishes one seal because it treats birth-and-death and nirvāṇa as nondual. Birth-and-death is immediately nirvāṇa, and nirvāṇa immediately birth-and-death; originally unborn, they are now therefore unextinguished. What is indicated is no longer the sealing of two separate domains, but the true mark of all dharmas running through them. This one seal of the true mark prevents non-Buddhist teachings from being mixed in and Māra from destroying the Dharma, like an official document that becomes trustworthy when it bears a seal.

The three seals speak separately according to birth-and-death and nirvāṇa, while the one seal encompasses them according to their nonduality. Both protect the true Dharma from being mistaken. In the present discerning of the sutra’s substance, the one seal of the true mark is not a stamp added outside the true mark; the seal is the true mark’s own power to distinguish what is genuine.

How Is One True Substance Selected from Many Dharma Gates?

The treatise answers directly: the sutra’s substance is the one seal of the true mark; among the three tracks, the track of true nature is selected.

A continuous series of selections then specifies the same direction within different doctrinal frameworks. Among the ten Dharma realms, the Buddha Dharma realm is selected, and among its ten suchnesses, such-a-substance. Among the four kinds of twelve links, the inconceivable, unborn, and unextinguished is selected; among the twelve links, the path of suffering itself as the Dharma-body. Among the four kinds of Four Truths, the unconstructed Four Truths are selected and, within them, the truth of cessation. Among the seven kinds of Two Truths, five are selected and, within those five, true truth. Among the five kinds of Three Truths, the five kinds of the Middle Way’s ultimate truth are selected. Among the one truths, the Middle Way’s one-real truth is selected, and among the no-truths, the Middle Way’s no-truth.

Each selection follows the purpose of discerning the substance and points out the aspect that most directly reveals the true mark of the Middle Way. The remaining items in each framework retain their own positions. Once this direction is grasped, the true substance can likewise be selected from the subtlety of wisdom and each of the remaining subtleties.

A House Needs Both Beams and Interior Space

Beams and columns together frame a house and represent cause and fruit. The space within the house that is neither beam nor column and can receive people and things represents the true mark. Beams and columns give the house form; space makes it habitable. They depend upon one another while retaining distinct meanings.

If a house had no interior space, it could receive nothing. If cause and fruit lacked the true mark, they too would have nothing upon which to stand. The true mark is not another thing constructed outside cause and fruit, just as interior space is not outside the house. It is not identical to the beams and columns, yet it has never departed from the house they form.

The sun and moon spanning the sky and ministers assisting their sovereign express the same relation through plurality and unity. Sun and moon can be two, but the vast open sky cannot be divided into two skies. Ministers and generals can be many, but the sovereign they assist cannot thereby become many sovereigns. Causes and fruits, practices, and qualities can be many, while their common destination does not split into many substances.

Thus, the three tracks form the vehicle without being vertical or horizontal, identical or separate. True nature, contemplative illumination, and supporting accomplishment are not three segments arranged in sequence or three unrelated things set beside one another. They are not entirely the same, yet neither are they separate. Discerning the substance singles out true nature only to give a definite answer to the present question.

Why Must the Account Finally Return to the Sutra?

After rejecting old interpretations, explaining the Dharma seals, and selecting the substance through different frameworks, the demonstration must still return to the Lotus Sutra itself.

The Buddha emits light to help reveal the meaning of the true mark; the meaning of the true mark of all dharmas has already been taught to the assembly; only a buddha together with a buddha can ultimately exhaust the true mark of all dharmas. These passages first point directly to the true substance. The buddhas’ necessarily teaching the real after a long time, adorning the body with marks and teaching the seal of the true mark, and Śāriputra’s hearing the real path and abiding in real wisdom further connect true principle with understanding and becoming a buddha.

Opening the gateway of skillful means to show the true mark, contemplating all dharmas as the true mark, and the Tathāgata’s knowing and seeing as it really is return skillful means, contemplative practice, and the Buddha’s knowing-and-seeing to the real. The Sutra on the Practice of Contemplating Bodhisattva Samantabhadra further illuminates them through the path of the one reality and the sphere of the one reality, so that what is seen does not fall on cause or fruit separately but on the one reality upon which both rely.

The buddhas appear in the world because of the conditions of one great matter in order to enable sentient beings to open the Buddha’s knowing-and-seeing. At this point, discerning the substance is no longer merely a matter of rejecting names that are too broad. It gathers into one destination why a sutra appears in the world and what sentient beings are to see.

Through the Eye of the Shiqian

Zhanran first places this unit back within the sequence of the Fivefold Profound Meaning. Explaining the name is a general account, and the name already contains the three distinctions of substance, purport, and function. Revealing the substance then points out true nature as the aspect of the three tracks belonging to substance. Singling out true nature does not sever the three tracks; as the account moves from the general name to a specific meaning, it makes the referent of substance precise.

The Mirror further divides the intent of explaining the substance into four layers: the destination of the whole work, the difficulty of meeting it through practice and understanding, the substance’s inexpressibility, and its continued expressibility in response to capacities. Thus, the “convergence of many meanings” is not merely a collection of concepts; every gate of the sutra accords with the true mark.

The layers of speakers are also illuminated. The passage beginning “I privately ask” is Zhang’an’s private refutation of earlier masters; the passage beginning “I privately say” is Zhang’an’s judgment of the preceding teachers; and the continuous citation of five treatises is Zhang’an’s use of treatises to disclose the substance of the vehicle. Distinguishing these layers preserves Zhiyi’s direct teaching while giving Guanding’s questions, judgments, and citations their proper places within the record.

Regarding the claim that the substance pervades cause and fruit, Zhanran distinguishes the direction with particular precision. That cause and fruit do not depart from the true mark can establish cause and fruit as purport. To establish the substance, one must instead see that the true mark does not depart from cause and fruit; this is the substance belonging to the purport. Substance and purport do not depart from one another, but their interdependence does not erase the direction between what takes and what is taken.

Among the five treatises, the Mirror selects only the first vehicle-basis in each case. True suchness comes first and is therefore the basis. The equal Dharma-body and great nirvāṇa are illuminated as hidden and manifest, the two faces of one sutra-substance while bound in affliction and when fully accomplished. The vehicle-master, like the white ox, enables the cart to reach its destination; precisely because it exercises the function of transport, the master’s function and the vehicle-basis must retain their respective positions.

The three seals and one seal have two levels in the Mirror. From the standpoint of arising and ceasing and non-arising and non-ceasing, reality is one while its explanation is broad or brief. From the standpoint of the present sutra, it must also be specially stated that this scripture alone clarifies the true mark as the one Dharma seal. Integrating the broad and brief accounts and determining the substance of the present sutra proceed together; they cannot be reduced to the numbers three and one.

Zhanran directly divides the empty-house simile: space represents substance, and the house represents purport. The house formed by cause and fruit is what takes; space is the substance taken. What takes can be many, while what is taken cannot be many. This perspective returns the interdependence of house and space precisely to substance and purport, without turning space into something existing independently outside the house.

The final evidence is likewise divided into direct citation and concluding intent. The scriptural passages first reveal the true mark together; only from “therefore one knows” onward does Zhiyi gather them into the conditions of the one great matter and the principle of the one reality that is neither cause nor fruit. When scriptural evidence and the treatise master’s conclusion each retain their layer, the whole direct revelation of the sutra’s substance proceeds from explaining the name and returns securely to the Buddha’s knowing-and-seeing.

Why does what most resembles the real most require discernment? Zhiyi taught the profound meaning, and Guanding received and recorded it. When the discussion reaches discerning the substance, the first difficulty is not a doctrine entirely opposed to the true, but the fact that many teachings use similar names such as “real,” “Middle Way,” and “true mark.” A fish eye can be mixed among bright pearls precisely because it too is round and lustrous. If one relies only on names and appearances, there is no clear boundary between false and true.

Broadly distinguishing the false therefore unfolds through six gates. The first four—ordinary, non-Buddhist, lesser, and partial—distinguish layer by layer how far one reaches beneath the same names. Distinguishing through simile places abstract differences into visible images. Distinguishing through awakening finally brings the question back to practitioners themselves: even when the principle has been stated correctly, if wisdom has not personally seen it, one is still only hearing a description of the color of milk.

Where Is the Boundary between Good in the World and the Substance of the Real?

Distinguishing ordinary worldly dharmas begins with three uses of the same name. Worldly classics call protecting the country and governing the household real. Non-Buddhists call their distorted understanding real. The Lesser Vehicle calls the partial truth obtained by growing weary of suffering and finding rest real. All three possess the name “real,” but each establishes that name through a limited function. The reality intended as the sutra’s substance cannot be established merely because the name is shared.

Worldly dharmas also have deviant and upright aspects. Strange and delusive arts make people intoxicated and deranged and stir crowds through extraordinary appearances. Their result is not merely a moment of deception: attachment enters deeply into body and mind, inwardly injuring the person, outwardly bringing disaster upon kin, and obstructing the path through the long night. Such methods pass off intense experience as reality; the more extraordinary they appear, the more clearly they reveal how attachment can obscure discernment.

The classics of the Zhou and Confucius have a different function. Filial conduct can govern the household and loyalty the country. Ritual, military methods, medicine, astronomy, and geography can each bring order to the human world. Without such standards, the strong oppress the weak and the people lose their place; when they are followed, the realm may become peaceful. Their good results are not erased, yet their boundary remains care for the people, government of the country, and the pursuit of wholesome human and heavenly recompense. Great Brahmā’s discourse on leaving desire can use concentration to escape desire, but it remains encompassed by theories of attachment. Even if esoteric drugs change the body’s appearance, a sense of reality is still being established through attachment to what is obtained.

Distinguishing ordinary worldly dharmas therefore does not declare everything worldly useless. It asks: is the dharma at hand effective only in regulating the body, ordering the household, governing the country, or obtaining recompense, or can it truly disclose the sutra’s true substance? A function can be genuine without what it points to being ultimate.

Why Do Increasingly Intricate Views Still Remain within the Net?

Distinguishing non-Buddhist dharmas first addresses intelligence gained through drugs. A drug may temporarily make someone sharp, but the knowledge disappears when the drug is disturbed or its effect subsides. Knowledge that appears and vanishes through an external power cannot illuminate what is remote. The nonaction, freedom from desire, empty stillness, and rejection of wisdom taught by Zhuangzi and Laozi may quiet boastful striving; yet if a determinate view of existence or nonexistence remains, one has only moved from agitation into an embrace of nothingness.

Lunli’s story forces the problem into one exchange: is the ultimate path one or many? If the paths taught by all schools were each ultimate, Deer-Head would have had no reason to abandon his own path and become the Buddha’s disciple. Lunli looks back from the living evidence before him to his own question and understands that the ultimate path does not become many merely because many teachings coexist.

Dīrghanakha can refute every thesis and overturn every statement and, after a long search, finds no dharma he can admit into his mind. Yet “everything can be refuted” can itself become what is grasped. Existence, nonexistence, both existence and nonexistence, and the inexpressible are then folded and stacked: existence and nonexistence are gathered under existence; the nonexistence of existence and the nonexistence of nonexistence are gathered under nonexistence; then not-existence and not-nonexistence are each folded into both the house of existence and the house of nonexistence. The combinations can multiply by hundreds and thousands, while the view that combines and the object combined continue together to weave the net of views.

This gate shows that acuity of opinion and liberation are not the same. Deviant wisdom can be exceedingly sharp and conceptual proliferation exceedingly intricate. If attachment arises whenever an object is encountered, one still wears the cangue of ignorance and circles the pillar of birth-and-death without escape.

Why Distinguish Further after Existence and Nonexistence Have Already Been Left?

Distinguishing the Lesser Vehicle confronts an account much closer to reality. Śrāvakas too speak of leaving existence and nonexistence as the middle way of the noble ones. They possess the vision of genuine uncontaminated wisdom and the knowledge that personally realizes nirvāṇa. This is no worldly strange art or non-Buddhist net of views; views and thoughts are truly severed and segmented birth-and-death extinguished.

The boundary lies in what is left and where one abides. The existence and nonexistence left behind are the views of annihilation and permanence, while the middle attained is true truth in contrast to birth-and-death. When birth-and-death is made the extreme of existence, the nirvāṇa in which one abides becomes the extreme of nonexistence. These opposed extremes can still be broken. Resting in the grass hut without seeking further also lacks the great compassion that rescues sentient beings and the aspiration to buddhahood. Thus the names “Middle Way” and “knowledge and vision” are correct, but what they reach has not yet exhausted the true mark.

The sequence of the six gates now becomes clear. The further it proceeds, the less its object is an obvious error. What is distinguished later has already realized something and left one layer of partiality, yet comes to rest in what was obtained. The fish eye that is truly difficult to distinguish is not entirely without luster; it already looks very much like a bright pearl.

If All Enter the Inexpressible Path, Whence Comes the Difference in Depth?

Distinguishing partial Great Vehicle dharmas enters the Great Vehicle itself. Severing afflictions through the same inexpressible path and attaining the true mark of all dharmas in common do not guarantee that the wisdom of the three kinds of person is the same. People of the two vehicles seek their own release from suffering and stop upon attaining emptiness. Bodhisattvas of dull faculties likewise stop where they have arrived. Bodhisattvas of sharp faculties arouse great compassion for sentient beings and continue to seek deeply. Wisdom attained in common is like firefly light; wisdom not attained in common is like sunlight. The difference lies in whether quiescence can at the same time constantly illuminate.

Emptiness in the ultimate meaning is called wisdom. To attain only empty quiescence is to see only what has been removed. To attain emptiness that is not merely empty is to illuminate all dharmas within quiescence. The true mark does not add illumination to quiescence as a separate function: quiescence and illumination stand together. The two vehicles attain quiescence without fully possessing quiescent illumination, while the bodhisattva’s search lets illumination issue from quiescence without losing quiescence.

Even after seeing nonemptiness there are two paths. One severs bonds in sequence, proceeding from shallow to deep, and attains a semblance of the real. The other understands every meaning upon first entering the gate: immediately the Middle, immediately provisional, immediately empty; neither one nor different, neither three nor one. Here “immediate” does not simply place three terms side by side. It means that no one aspect is separated from the other two.

One mark and immeasurable marks unfold the same point. Entering only one mark without knowing immeasurable marks leaves empty quiescence without responsive function. Passing from one mark into immeasurable marks but being unable to enter one mark again leaves differentiated functions without return to unity. A bodhisattva of sharp faculties enters one mark through immediate emptiness, knows immeasurable marks through immediate provisional existence, and reenters one mark through the immediate Middle. The one does not obstruct the immeasurable, and the immeasurable does not lose the one. Only when all three are immediate in a single mind is there the deeply sought substance of the true mark.

The Avataṃsaka, vaipulya, and Large Prajñā teachings use sequential or nonsequential attainment of the three wisdoms, many persons receiving them separately, or one person seeking them deeply to disclose different depths beneath the same names. In the present sutra, the “real son” is no longer separated from the father. Careful search throughout the ten directions finds no other vehicle; the śrāvaka Dharma is decisively understood and only the unsurpassed path taught. What is revealed is no longer fragments apportioned among several people, but the pure and single wisdom of the true mark.

If the One Real Truth Is without Duality, How Does It Still Contain All Dharmas?

The first half of Fascicle Eight ends here, and the second half continues Zhiyi’s teaching of the one real truth. Freedom from duality, falsity, and inversion, not being spoken by Māra, and permanence, bliss, self, and purity all speak from five sides about one matter. If emptiness, provisional existence, and the Middle differed, there would be two and three. Only when the three dharmas do not differ are they perfectly complete and called the One Vehicle.

Nonduality does not pare the three down into one empty name. Immediate emptiness breaks ordinary beings’ theories of attachment and non-Buddhists’ theories of views. Immediate provisional existence breaks a lesser reality that merely holds to emptiness and the reality seen in common by three kinds of person, while allowing the cause and fruit, Four Truths, and Three Jewels of both the true mark and skillful means to remain distinctly complete. The immediate Middle breaks a partial reality attained in sequence. The true mark is like the ocean of the Dharma realm: it can break every inversion and also contain every gate of cause and fruit. Emptiness, provisional existence, and the Middle are therefore together the true mark.

The four virtues likewise appear through this principle of nondifference. Noninversion means no afflictions, and no afflictions is called purity. With no afflictions there is no karma, and no karma is called self. With no karma there is no recompense, and no recompense is called bliss. With no recompense there is no birth-and-death, and no birth-and-death is called permanence. Permanence, bliss, self, and purity are not four qualities added outside the three truths, but the purity, sovereignty, ease, and permanence disclosed when the three do not differ.

Opening and revealing thereby gains its basis. The sequential real can be opened as the perfect real; the real attained in common by three kinds of person can reach the bottom through deep seeking; the śrāvaka’s real can be decisively understood; one can cultivate the factors of the path within theories of views without being moved by views; and within theories of attachment one can penetrate the Buddha-path because the realm of Māra is precisely the realm of the Buddha. Opening does not attach a new substance from outside. It discloses the nature of ease and joy already present in all dharmas until the real is clarified in absolute terms.

If All Cross the Same River, Why Do They See Different Bottoms?

The three animals crossing the river first reveal what is shared and then depth. Rabbit, horse, and elephant enter the same water and all head toward the far bank. Rabbit and horse are weak and float at a shallow level without reaching the bottom. The great elephant is strong and reaches both bottom and bank. The water’s softness represents immediate emptiness; the bottom that does not move with the surface represents nonemptiness. Three kinds of person may see emptiness in common, but only those of profound wisdom also see nonemptiness.

Reaching the bottom itself requires further distinction. A small elephant reaches only mud at the riverbed, while a great elephant penetrates to solid ground. The first has left the surface but has not reached the deepest point. The simile therefore distinguishes twice: first rabbit and horse from elephant according to whether the bottom is reached; then small and great elephants according to whether what is reached is mud or solid earth. Finally, the nonemptiness reached by the great elephant reveals the substance of the present sutra.

Every element of the simile has its own place. Rabbit and horse float shallowly, while the great elephant is strong. Water is what all enter; the bottom is nonemptiness; the bank is what they cross to. The small elephant reaches mud, and the great elephant solid earth. The simile’s force lies in these relations themselves: differences of depth are disclosed through practice and wisdom.

The Jewels Look Alike; Why Does the Difference Lie in Raining Treasures?

The crystal jewel and the wish-fulfilling jewel are nearly identical in shape. One is merely empty and cannot rain down treasures; the other is empty and yet can rain them down. Partial emptiness resembles the crystal: it has the clarity of emptiness but lacks the precious function of benefiting sentient beings. The Middle Way resembles the wish-fulfilling jewel: emptiness does not obstruct all dharmas, and so treasures can rain universally. From the perspective that combines existence and nonexistence as conventional truth, the two jewels distinguish false and true.

The text next takes only one wish-fulfilling jewel. The jewel does not become two, but those who obtain it differ. One who does not know its power treats it merely as a jewel; a wise person gains much from it; the two vehicles realize emptiness and rest; a bodhisattva attains emptiness and raises skillful means to benefit and liberate all. Through these four uses the treatise distinguishes attainment and failure.

The first level uses two jewels to distinguish what their natures disclose; the second uses one jewel to distinguish the use made by those who attain it. The crystal’s inability and the wish-fulfilling jewel’s ability to rain treasures clarify two senses of emptiness. The same wish-fulfilling jewel, used either for resting in realized emptiness or for universal benefit through skillful means, shows the difference in its recipient’s use.

How Does the Same Gold within Yellow Stone Become Four Kinds of Life?

The third simile moves completely through four people. A fool mistakes yellow stone for mere stone and discards it in filth. A merchant smelts out the gold and only preserves it. A goldsmith fashions the gold into hairpins, bracelets, rings, and bells. An immortal adept refines it into a golden elixir, flies through heaven, enters the earth, touches the sun and moon, and transforms freely.

Ordinary beings resemble the fool: they possess the true mark but do not know to cultivate it. The two vehicles resemble the merchant: they remove the ore of affliction and guard the gold of immediate emptiness. A bodhisattva of the Distinct Teaching resembles the goldsmith: knowing emptiness as nonempty, the bodhisattva emerges into provisional existence to transform beings, adorn buddha-lands, and bring sentient beings to accomplishment. A bodhisattva of the Perfect Teaching resembles the immortal adept: phenomena are immediately true; at the initial arousal of the mind the bodhisattva immediately accomplishes correct awakening, and one body can manifest immeasurable bodies to respond universally to all.

Viewed through sameness, the gold within stone, smelted gold, ornamental gold, and the gold of the elixir are gold from beginning to end. Viewed through difference, stone is not gold, gold not ornament, and ornament not elixir; the elixir also possesses a pure, translucent, soft, and wondrous form and color. Sameness and difference stand together within one chain of simile. The treatise therefore gathers its attainment and failure through the four terms granting, depriving, breaking, and converging.

The three similes also have separate emphases. The three animals disclose shallow and deep faculties: shallow faculties attain emptiness, while deep faculties attain the provisional and the Middle. The two jewels disclose three aspirations: one seeks only release from suffering and rests upon seeing truth; one proceeds through differentiated sequence and cannot cultivate perfectly; one seeks vastly throughout the Dharma realm. The gold discloses three kinds of skillful means: one guards the gold and abides; one can only fashion ornaments for a livelihood; one is so profound and extensive that it can transform freely.

Returning to the sutra’s true substance, the great elephant reaching the indestructible bottom reveals the wondrousness of substance; the perfect jewel raining treasures universally reveals the wondrousness of function; and skillful wisdom making an immortal reveals the wondrousness of purport. The three similes together disclose the three virtues as neither vertical nor horizontal, while true nature is singled out within the Great Vehicle as the sutra’s substance.

Why Does Understanding the Color of Milk Not Equal Seeing It?

Distinguishing through awakening brings every distinction back to the practitioner. One can state the characteristics of Dharma correctly without yet according with principle. Pursuing four descriptions is like a blind person hearing of rice flour and imagining softness, hearing of snow and imagining coldness, hearing of a shell and imagining hardness, or hearing of a crane and imagining movement. Each characteristic points to something, yet none is the real color of milk.

Grasping one’s own claim as real and judging others false makes “present here” and “absent there,” right and wrong, increase against one another. Dispositions wander as though in a dark night; shouting loudly for food brings no fullness. Seeing the truth begins with shame, remorse, and piercing confession. One’s capacities then stimulate the buddhas and concentration and wisdom begin to unfold. Yet even when contemplation of mind is bright and pure and faith and understanding open and interfuse, one is still like someone who sees a stump in darkness and can only dimly distinguish a person, tree, insect, or dust.

When one abides patiently without being moved, attachment to Dharma does not arise and ignorance breaks open. Only then does the sphere become like a motionless bright mirror and clear water without waves. Fish, stones, and forms appear without being forcibly arranged. The mind that sees is pure and constantly one, like an eye opened by a golden scalpel so that one, two, and three fingers are clearly seen.

At this time, saying that color exists is correct because actual color corresponds to the eye and the true principle corresponds to wisdom. Saying that it does not exist is also correct because the mistaken projections of softness, coldness, hardness, and movement have disappeared. Existence does not reify the forms heard about, and nonexistence does not mean that nothing is seen. The true mark disclosed through all four alternatives can be truly seen only when principle and wisdom correspond.

Śāriputra abides in real wisdom and knows with certainty that he will become a buddha. Eight thousand śrāvakas see Tathāgata-nature in the Lotus, like an autumn harvest stored for winter, with nothing more to be done. In relation to principle, this is ultimate principle; in relation to teaching, after hearing this teaching one need hear no other; in relation to practice, after cultivating this practice one does not change tracks. When one subsequently passes through the spheres of the various truths, one must still distinguish at every point what follows dispositions, what follows wisdom, and what joins dispositions with wisdom. Only what is seen through wondrous awakening following wisdom is taken as the sutra’s substance.

Through the Eye of the Shiqian

Zhanran first places the six gates on a single advancing line. Distinguishing ordinary worldly dharmas does not merely reject strange arts: the falsity of deviant worldly methods is seen through derangement and harm, while upright teachings of Zhou and Confucius are limited because they still end within human and heavenly destinies. Though the hundreds and thousands of conceptual proliferations considered under non-Buddhist teachings are intricate, neither the view that produces them nor the object on which it focuses has left the net of views. Distinguishing the Lesser Vehicle then sharply separates sameness of name from difference of substance: it acknowledges that the two vehicles possess wisdom of their own and distinguishes them only because they have not attained quiescent illumination.

The three passages concerning partial Great Vehicle dharmas are read as successively producing one another: first emptiness is contrasted with nonemptiness, then sequential and nonsequential attainment are distinguished within nonemptiness, and finally one enters from one mark into immeasurable marks and returns to one mark. The root text’s “two immediate identities” only borrows the name immediate; the three are mutually immediate only when perfectly complete. This perspective keeps the distinctions moving in one direction and prevents what is attained at an earlier level from passing itself off as what follows.

The one real truth further has three layers: direct explanation, relational contrast, and opening and revelation. Direct explanation first removes the faults of duality, falsity, and inversion and then reveals the substance through the three truths and four virtues. Relational contrast removes the names belonging to lesser and partial teachings while still saying that the true mark encompasses the causes and fruits of skillful means. Opening and revelation proceed from shallow to deep and from noble ones to ordinary beings. Zhanran points out that opening can be discussed precisely because every dharma already possesses wondrous principle.

The three animals and two jewels primarily reveal opening and combining, while the gold within yellow stone primarily reveals breaking and converging; the principal intent of all three similes is to reveal the substance. The three animals have two degrees of depth: rabbit and horse do not reach the bottom, while the elephant does; among elephants, the small elephant reaches mud and the great elephant solid ground. The two jewels first distinguish ability from inability to rain treasures and then use the single wish-fulfilling jewel to show that success and failure lie in the person. The principle relied upon does not become two; conditions and use produce resting or universal benefit.

Within the gold simile, granting, depriving, breaking, and converging each retain one perspective. Granting considers the undifferentiated substance of gold. Depriving considers ordinary beings’ lack of accomplished function. Breaking considers the differences among stone, gold, ornaments, and elixir. Converging sees that all four have gold as their nature. This also resolves how all three similes first reveal substance and are afterward assigned separately to substance, function, and purport: the principal intent has already revealed substance, while the subsidiary meaning is then aligned with the three dharmas. Both levels remain and do not cancel each other.

The three virtues may be represented separately by elephant, jewel, and immortal as Dharma-body, liberation, and prajñā, while each individual simile also contains all three virtues. Finally, to determine the sutra’s substance, Dharma-body is still selected. This does not exclude liberation and prajñā from the Great Vehicle; it distinguishes the true substance asked about in the present topic while the three virtues remain inseparable.

The Mirror’s reading of awakening places greatest weight on stages. Shame and confession come first. Bright contemplation of mind and open, interfused faith and understanding still belong to the ordinary stage before awakening. Only after patient acceptance, the nonarising of attachment to Dharma, and the breaking of ignorance does one move from resemblance into true seeing. The clarity of mirror and water discloses the extinction of ignorance; the spontaneous appearance of fish, stones, and forms discloses Dharma-body manifest; and the wisdom that accords with it thereby corresponds to the substance disclosed.

The six gates thus conclude twice. Distinguishing through simile gives visible form to the abstract depths of the first four gates through river bottom, jewel-function, and the use of gold. Distinguishing through awakening then asks whether the person capable of explaining the characteristics of Dharma has personally seen. Zhanran distinguishes the ordinary stage before awakening from the noble stage in which awakening begins, so revealing the substance requires both discernment of name and meaning and confirmation where object and wisdom correspond. After layers of the same name with differing substances have been distinguished, the wisdom capable of seeing finally determines whether what is seen is real.

At the end, the three senses of nothing more to be done—in principle, teaching, and practice—refer only to one portion of what has been attained and do not mean that all cultivation and realization have ceased completely. Zhanran thereby safeguards both the reality of awakening and further deepening after awakening. Seeing the substance by following wisdom is not a sentence of termination, but the point from which one proceeds through all dharmas and continues, within every sphere, to distinguish what follows dispositions and take only what follows wisdom.

If the Dharma-substance is only one, why speak of twelve names? Do more names make confusion more likely? The discussion of one Dharma having different names begins precisely from this doubt. It does not first remove all the names and retain only one supposedly safest designation. Instead, it separates three layers—the name, the meaning revealed by the name, and the substance to which it returns—and then explains step by step how many names can point to one substance and how people can seize those many names in contention with one another.

Names Are Entrances; Only Attachment Turns Them into Borders

The true mark may be called wondrous existence, ultimate emptiness, the tathāgata-garbha, or the Middle Way. Different names do not originally mean that the Dharmas being discussed necessarily exclude one another. The Buddha establishes many names in response to sentient beings. Their function is to enable responsive faculties to hear, accept in faith, cure their illnesses, and enter awakening.

The problem begins with “clinging to different names and forming different interpretations.” Those who study wondrous existence hear ultimate emptiness and assume that the other side is negating them. Those who study ultimate emptiness draw all right principle toward themselves and push the remaining teachings into falsehood. A name thereby changes from an entrance into a camp, and cultivation changes from understanding Dharma-meaning into defending a label.

The simile of the heavenly lord’s thousand names brings this displacement into sharp focus. The same heavenly lord is called Śakra Devānām Indra, Śacī’s husband, Śakra, and Kauśika. If one rejoices on hearing the first name, becomes angry on hearing the second, reveres the third, and insults the fourth, both reverence and insult in fact fall upon the same person. Trusting one name of the true mark while maligning another contains the same contradiction.

What Do Name, Meaning, and Substance Each Ask?

“Name” is the designation established. “Meaning” is the principle and function revealed by that name. “Substance” is the Dharma-substance to which they finally return. Only after distinguishing the three can one see that what appears the same is not necessarily truly the same, and that what appears different is not necessarily severed from everything else.

The first statement is that name, meaning, and substance are the same. Within each gateway, designation, principle, and Dharma-substance correspond: wondrous existence, true, wholesome, wondrous form, and the limit of reality form one group; ultimate emptiness, suchness-suchness, and nirvāṇa form another. This correspondence remains limited to its own gateway and has not yet explained how it communicates with the others.

The second statement is that name, meaning, and substance differ. Wondrous existence can be the name, ultimate emptiness the meaning, and the tathāgata-garbha the substance; emptiness, the tathāgata-garbha, and the Middle Way can form another group. Name, meaning, and substance are displaced across the gateways; all three differ, and interpenetration is most difficult.

The third statement is that name and meaning are the same but substance differs. A hundred people may share the same surname and personal name and understand the same skill, yet each has a different body. The name and capability can be the same while the substance that bears them remains different.

The fourth statement is that name and meaning differ but substance is the same. Different designations continue to reveal different principles, yet they all return to one substance. Each name displays a particular function, so the differences among names and meanings become adaptive uses that together disclose one substance.

Why Can the Same Name Produce Contention While Different Names Do Not?

The common difficulty shown by the first three statements is that interpenetration stops within a single gateway, or that even within one gateway name, meaning, and substance remain separate. When people look only at names, they easily claim identical wording as their own and thrust different wording outside the gate.

Lesser Vehicle practitioners emphasize cutting off birth-and-death. Even when they hear that ultimate emptiness is not merely emptiness, they follow their own desire and interpret it as merely empty. When they hear “neither existent nor nonexistent,” they again assume it is only the “neither existent nor nonexistent” of their own texts. When they encounter the mind of the middle-real principle, however, it contradicts their understanding and cannot readily be appropriated. Contention begins when some names are seized while their profound intent is concealed.

Great Vehicle students can act in the opposite direction. Seeing that the names emptiness of persons and neither empty nor existent are shared with the Two Vehicles, they push both gateways entirely into schools of unreal principle. They retain only wondrous existence and both empty and existent and claim these as their own exclusive Dharmas of perfect permanence. If they then see that emptiness is not merely emptiness and that neither existent nor nonexistent is meant to block the two extremes, they seize back both gateways they had previously yielded.

The same name thus becomes a reason to seize, while a different name becomes a reason to exclude; even the four gateways can devour one another. This is the actual contention produced by the first three statements. The fourth looks instead to the Dharma-substance to which different names and meanings return: those with the same name can have different substances, while those with different names can share one substance.

How Does the Fourth Statement Reveal the Sutra’s Proper Substance?

Because the true mark is indestructible, a name can be established from this. Because all buddhas realize this Dharma, it is called wondrous existence. Because all buddhas can see wondrous existence although it cannot be seen, it is called true, wholesome, wondrous form. Because the true mark does not fall into the existence of either extreme, it is called ultimate emptiness. Because the principle of emptiness is limpid, neither one nor different, it is called suchness-suchness. Because the true mark is quiescent and extinct, it is called nirvāṇa.

Because it is awakened to and understood without changing, it is called empty-space buddha-nature. Because it contains and receives much, it is called the tathāgata-garbha. Because it is quiescent, illuminating, and numinously aware, it is called the mind of the middle-real principle. Because it neither relies on existence nor attaches to nonexistence, it is called the Middle Way. Because it is highest and unsurpassed, it is called ultimate truth. These names are all established from different functions of the same true mark, while the Dharma-substance to which they return remains one.

The fourth statement therefore preserves different names and different meanings. Ultimate emptiness reveals not falling into the existence of either extreme; the tathāgata-garbha reveals containing and receiving much; the Middle Way reveals relying neither on existence nor on nonexistence. Each reveals something distinct, yet all return to one ultimate Dharma-substance. The many names enable the many functions of the same Dharma-substance to be heard by different faculties.

Mutually Serving as Name and Substance Is a Bidirectional Relation

The first direction says that all dharmas are different names of the true mark and take the true mark as their substance. The second reverses the relation: the true mark can also be a different name for all dharmas, while all dharmas themselves serve as the substance. Only when both directions are viewed together is the full meaning of “mutually serving as name and substance” present.

This bidirectional relation between the true mark and all dharmas enables the true mark to appear in all dharmas as their very substance. Because wondrous existence is indestructible, it is named the true mark; because all buddhas can see it, it is named true, wholesome, wondrous form; because it is unmixed with anything else, it is named ultimate emptiness; because it fully contains all dharmas, it is named the tathāgata-garbha. One may take any single Dharma itself as the substance and establish a designation according to the function it reveals; the Dharma receives its name according to function in its very substance.

Although liberation has many names, there is still only one liberation. Although Buddha, prajñā, and nirvāṇa are three names, what they reveal is one mark. True mark, prajñā, and liberation can also become names for all dharmas, while all dharmas can become the substance of the three Dharmas. This bidirectional relation keeps one substance from leaving the many names and the many names from leaving the Dharma-substance immediately present.

How Do the Four Groups of Similes Make an Abstract Relation Visible?

The first simile is a person named Goldsmith. He can forge gold and his body is also yellow. The person’s name, skill, and bodily color point in the same direction, revealing the first statement.

The second simile first gives a person named Blue who can make lacquer yet has a pure white body, then another named Black who can grind cinnabar yet has a purple body. Name, skill, and body all differ, revealing the second statement.

The third simile gives a hundred people who share the same surname and personal name and all understand the same skill, yet whose bodies are each different. The same name and skill cannot turn a hundred people into one body, revealing the third statement.

The fourth simile uses only one person. Encountering warfare and family calamity, he changes surnames and names wherever he goes, passes through many official posts, and masters many skills. Changing names according to place reveals different names; being designated according to his abilities reveals different meanings; the one who undergoes them all remains the same person throughout, revealing the same substance.

Zhang Yi and Fan Li illustrate changing names from place to place; masters of calligraphy, painting, goldwork, and ironwork illustrate designations according to skill; Rulin, Zhongsan, Xiongqu, and Cifei illustrate names derived from civil and military offices. The royal strongman who is one man equal to a thousand is so called because he masters many skills and can surpass a thousand. The same person may receive many designations from skill, office, clan, wealth, capability, and knowledge, while the substance remains one throughout.

The first three similes each reveal one kind of noninterpenetration. The fourth uses one person with many names, skills, and offices to reveal sameness within difference. The treatise therefore explicitly judges the first three statements to express the Distinct intent and the last to express the Perfect intent. The Perfect lies in not losing one substance amid the many names.

The Four Accommodations Bring One Substance’s Many Names into the Lives of Sentient Beings

If the true mark is one Dharma, why are its names and meanings so profuse? The answer lies in the differences among sentient beings’ faculties. Because the Buddha accommodates their desires, what is fitting for them, what counteracts their afflictions, and what brings them to awakening, the four gateways have different teachings.

Partial habituation can cause people to lose benefit. Some will listen only to texts already familiar to them and refuse to hear another gateway. Even when they hear it, they take no joy, cannot accept it in faith, cannot extinguish afflictions, and do not give rise to the mind of the path. These partial habituations in turn become roots and conditions for hearing Dharma in the future. The Buddha therefore observes their faculties of faith and the rest and, at the appropriate time, teaches them in responsive words.

Those with an existence disposition hear wondrous existence and true, wholesome, wondrous form and, without opposition or resistance, can give rise to faith, discipline, patience, and vigor, sweep away views of emptiness, and enter awakening. Those with an emptiness disposition hear ultimate emptiness, suchness-suchness, and nirvāṇa, counter evil with good, and take signlessness as supreme. Those with a disposition both empty and existent hear empty-space buddha-nature, the tathāgata-garbha, and the mind of the middle-real principle and gladly give rise to wholesomeness. Those with a disposition neither empty nor existent hear the Middle Way blocking the two extremes and, amid neither coming nor going, neither annihilation nor permanence, neither one nor different, remove attached views so that the principle of ultimate truth shines forth.

Because the four faculties differ, the teachings differ; because the teachings differ, the names differ; because the functions differ, the meanings also differ. The principle entered through awakening is not different, and the Dharma-substance is ultimately one. At this point, one Dharma having different names advances beyond a classification of names and marks to reveal how the Buddha enables different sentient beings to enter the same true mark, each through the appropriate gateway.

Through the Eye of the Shiqian

Zhanran first judges the passage to contain four great intents, then divides listing the different names into the intent of the passage, the list of names, and the refutation of attachments. The twelve names are not scattered: the first three belong to the gateway of existence, the next three to the gateway of emptiness, the next three to the gateway both empty and existent, and the final three to the gateway neither empty nor existent. Each gateway takes its three items respectively as name, meaning, and substance.

The Mirror summarizes the four statements with the judgment “the first three belong to the Distinct, the last to the Perfect.” In the first three, either correspondence remains within the single gateway, all three items differ, or name and meaning are the same while substance differs. The point of the fourth is that the substances of the four gateways are the same and interpenetrating, so differences of name and meaning do not produce contention. The Mirror then unfolds the fourth statement twice: first, the many names and meanings are all names of the true mark; second, the true mark and all dharmas mutually serve as name and substance.

When the explanation reaches the final group of names, Zhanran notes that the extant text explains only the Middle Way and ultimate truth and lacks an independent sentence for subtle and wondrous quiescent extinction. The omission does not compromise the sameness of substance among the many names. The Mirror preserves a judgment that a sentence is missing, while the treatise master’s extant explanation still ends with ultimate truth. The fourth simile is further divided into presenting historical affairs, citing the strongman, and revealing the Perfect through one person’s many skills and offices.

The received text joins one group of names as “middle-common faithful-upright person.” Because the entire passage requires twelve names but the extant text appears to have only eleven, Zhanran proposes dividing this into “middle-common person” and “faithful-upright person.” This is the Mirror’s textual reading; the extant wording of the treatise master remains “middle-common faithful-upright person,” while the ancient master separately observes the problem in the count.

The answer concerning the four accommodations is also divided into five layers. Unwillingness to hear, lack of intent to accept in faith, failure to extinguish afflictions, and failure to give rise to the mind of the path correspond in sequence to losing the four benefits of desire, the individually adapted, counteraction, and ultimate meaning. In the existence gateway, not opposing or resisting, faith, discipline, patience, and vigor, sweeping away views of emptiness, and awakening into the true mark reveal the four corresponding benefits in sequence. For the remaining three gateways, Zhanran concludes, “Since it is so for the existence gateway, the remaining three may be known,” leaving their four benefits together to be inferred by analogy.

Looking back through this Mirror, the twelve names, four statements, four similes, and four accommodations are not four parallel sets of information. The twelve names supply the material through which the four statements discern interpenetration and separation; the four similes make that interpenetration and separation visible; and the four accommodations explain why the many names are established in response to faculties. The entire passage continually answers one matter: how different names and meanings do not depart from the one reality, and how they respond to faculties so that people receive benefit.

This is a long unit taught by Zhiyi and recorded by Guanding. It does not leave “gateway” as a classification of terms, but continually asks: What does a gateway lead to? How does a person enter through it? What turns a gateway into an obstruction? What allows a coarse gateway to be opened and revealed? Gateways of teaching and practice thereby join in a single path from hearing the Dharma to realizing the sutra’s substance.

〔Section §01〕 Teaching and Practice: The Flying Ladder for Reaching the True Mark

The true mark is subtle, hidden, profound, and far-reaching, like an impassable ravine difficult to climb. Teaching and practice are the flying ladder that crosses it. Teaching lets one know the route; practice enables one actually to climb. The gateway of the Buddha’s teaching lets one leave the suffering of the three realms, while children of the Buddha who practice the path can become buddhas in a future life. These two sentences show the function of a gateway respectively through teaching and practice: the gateway is not the destination, yet it truly can bring someone to the destination.

The treatise master first unfolds the whole unit in four movements: viewing the characteristics of the gateways, cultivating the contemplation for entering them, distinguishing coarse and wondrous, and carrying out opening and revelation. The four form an internal sequence. Without knowing gateway characteristics, contemplation has no entrance. If one knows an entrance but does not distinguish coarse and wondrous, the gateway may instead become attachment. Only after success and failure have been clarified can people, Dharmas, gateways, and principles not yet wondrous all be opened and revealed.

〔Section §02〕 The Four Propositions Are Only Gateways; They Do Not Possess the True Mark

The Buddha-Dharma cannot be directly displayed through words, yet the Buddha must respond to conditions and express principle through the four propositions of existence, nonexistence, both existence and nonexistence, and neither existence nor nonexistence. Their value lies in giving access, not in dividing the true mark into four pieces. The true mark cannot even be fixed as one, much less can there truly be four true marks. The four are only four kinds of entrance.

The cooling-pool simile says that those of sharp faculties can enter and those of dull faculties can enter; not only the concentrated, but also those with scattered minds, those intent on a single purpose, and those diligent in effort can enter through a gateway. The great-fire simile deepens the distinction between gain and loss: when fire is not grasped, it can warm the body and cook food; reaching out to grasp it instead results in being burned. The four gateways originally give access to prajñā, remove afflictions, and accomplish the great matter. Once grasped, they turn into the fire of wrong views. Skillful use of a gateway does not mean abandoning it, but refusing to seize its characteristics as a real entity while using it.

Teaching and practice likewise open and combine according to faculties. Some hear teaching and, like a swift horse seeing a whip’s shadow, immediately enter the road. Some cultivate contemplation and, like seeing lightning in the night, immediately see the path. Others must contemplate after hearing or hear again after contemplating. Practitioners through faith and practitioners through Dharma can therefore turn into one another: teaching can become an entrance into contemplation, and contemplation can in turn illuminate what has been heard. The four kinds of teaching each have four gateways, first making sixteen. When teaching and contemplation are discussed together, the round number is thirty-two. Looking more closely at the causes of embodiment, spiritual advisers, and immeasurable contemplative practices, the gateways are actually beyond count. The city Joyful to Behold has twelve hundred gateways; the Dharma-city of the true mark would hardly admit only one track.

〔Section §03〕 Four Tripiṭaka Gateways: One Set of Four Truths, Four Entries into Truth

The Tripiṭaka gateway of existence establishes existence through right causes and conditions. Birth-and-death is not produced by a primordial world-nature, atoms, or parents, but ignorance gives rise to formations, afflictions, karma, and suffering. Suffering, accumulation, path, and cessation can all be discussed through existence. Conditioned dharmas are impermanent, suffering, empty, and without self; cultivating the path produces the uncontaminated; severing the two bonds of seeds and recompense brings nirvāṇa with remainder and without remainder. Seeing the path through existence is the gateway of existence.

The gateway of emptiness analyzes the provisional and the real within right causes and conditions into the equality of emptiness, giving rise to the uncontaminated and seeing the Dharma-body through emptiness. Subhūti’s contemplation of impermanent arising and ceasing in the stone chamber shows that emptiness can serve as a gateway. As for the treatise said to uphold this gateway, the root text itself retains the word “perhaps” and does not make a definitive attribution.

The gateway both existent and empty sees causes and conditions as both existent and empty, using this to break one-sided attachment to either existence or nonexistence. The gateway neither existent nor nonexistent leaves both extremes. The stories of Kātyāyana and Channa entering the path display the functions of the latter two gateways. At the end of the fourth gateway, a form of Abhidharma is also recorded that places the person in a fifth, inexpressible category: the person is not existent in the three times and is not nonexistent as an unconditioned dharma. The treatise master again leaves this undetermined. Each gateway has a transmitted exposition; all four access partial truth.

〔Section §04〕 Four Shared Gateways: Six Parts of a Mirror Image, Empty Just as They Are

The Tripiṭaka Teaching analyzes form to enter emptiness, like dividing a supposedly real person’s head into six parts and learning that no person can be found in any part. The Shared Teaching instead resembles looking at a mirror image: the head and its six parts are empty just as they appear and need not first be analyzed away. The short statement identifying cloth and emptiness marks how embodying a dharma differs from analyzing it.

Here the emptiness of sentient beings and emptiness of dharmas are no longer divided into earlier and later. Emptiness of beings is emptiness of dharmas, and emptiness of dharmas is emptiness of beings, just as the nature of form and the nature of self are alike in being illusory. “Constantly empty in nature” further means that dharmas do not become empty only after examination; there is never a moment when their nature is not empty. A moon in water and an image in a mirror appear while remaining unattainable and can therefore bear this meaning.

The four gateways are established within illusion. Illusory karma and fruit, through nirvāṇa, appear clearly and form the gateway of existence. Illusion originally has no reality and cannot be found, forming the gateway of emptiness. A mirror image can be seen and yet cannot be attained as something seen, forming the gateway both empty and existent. Neither illusory existence nor illusory emptiness can be held, and relinquishing both forms the gateway neither empty nor existent. The faculties of the three vehicles differ, and each enters ultimate meaning through a corresponding proposition. Their common entry into immediate emptiness does not erase the practices and fruits of the three vehicles.

〔Section §05〕 The Sequential Distinctions of the Distinct Gateways and the First Marking of the Perfect

The Distinct Teaching differs downward from the Tripiṭaka and Shared Teachings and upward from the Perfect Teaching; it enters the Middle through sequential distinctions. The treatise master gathers dispersed scriptural similes of milk, gold, a forehead-jewel, and empty space into four gateways. Curds present in milk, gold in stone, and a jewel in the forehead reveal the gateway of existence. Stone lacking a nature of gold, milk lacking a nature of curds, and buddha-nature resembling empty space reveal the gateway of emptiness. Milk both having and lacking the nature of curds reveals the gateway both existent and nonexistent. Buddha-nature as the Middle Way, with milk neither having nor lacking the nature of curds, reveals the gateway of double negation.

These similes allow a bodhisattva of the Distinct Teaching to see buddha-nature through a gateway and abide in great nirvāṇa. The same wording can elsewhere bear a Perfect meaning, so the gateway name alone does not determine its affiliation. The four Perfect gateways are only first marked here. Though they initially resemble the Distinct gateways in name and meaning, their interpenetration and noninterpenetration and the other distinctions become fully visible only through the later tenfold analysis.

〔Section §06〕 What Is Accessed Is One; What Gives Access May Be Skillful or Clumsy, Oblique or Direct

The point of entering concerns what is accessed; contemplation for entering concerns what enables entry. The sixteen gateways of teaching first collapse into two principles, partial truth and perfect truth. The eight Tripiṭaka and Shared gateways all enter partial truth. The Tripiṭaka analyzes dharmas and follows a winding, narrow path, like four oblique gateways into a provincial city. The Shared embodies dharmas and follows a broad, direct, skillful route, like four direct gateways. Oblique and direct produce eight gateways, yet there is only one governor and the partial truth accessed is nondual.

The eight Distinct and Perfect gateways all enter perfect truth. The Distinct gateways are partial and not yet interpenetrating, like oblique gateways into an imperial capital. The Perfect gateways are perfect and interpenetrating, like direct gateways. There are eight routes, yet the emperor is not two, and the perfect truth accessed is only one. Provincial and imperial cities, governor and emperor, each remain within their own simile and show the difference in what gives access together with the unity of what is accessed.

The Lesser Vehicle establishes only one set of four gateways while the Great Vehicle has three sets, because small and great households differ in depth and breadth. The route through a great household is long; even a thousand gateways and ten thousand doors would not be excessive. A Great Vehicle public gateway is also like the public gateway of a kingdom, which primarily admits officials to court while additionally admitting people to the market. Commoners passing through do not turn it into their exclusive gateway. A Great Vehicle gateway primarily accesses the true mark and secondarily accesses partial truth; people of the three vehicles partly use it to reduce the body to ashes and extinguish cognition, but this does not lower it into a Lesser Vehicle gateway.

〔Section §07〕 Ten Contemplations of the Tripiṭaka Gateway of Existence: From Right Causes and Conditions to Freedom from Dharma Attachment

For a practitioner through faith who awakens as soon as teaching is heard, the mind’s faculties are swift and sharp, and the method of attaining the path is difficult to display. The treatise master therefore takes the practitioner through Dharma and gathers the framework dispersed through the Abhidharma into ten items: recognizing the object, arousing resolve, settling the mind, pervasive breaking, passage and obstruction, factors of the path, counteractives, stages, endurance, and freedom from Dharma attachment. The ten form a road running from beginning to end so practitioners no longer become lost at forks.

The first requirement is to maintain the object of right causes and conditions. Attributing suffering and happiness to Viṣṇu, a primordial world-nature, or atoms posits wrong causes. Saying everything is naturally so posits no cause. Disputes over the existence and nonexistence of the smallest particle can still fall into two views. Right contemplation instead sees coarse and subtle, cause and condition, suffering and accumulation, and dependent and primary recompense as impermanent and without master, all produced through ignorance and inversion. The second requirement is then to turn away from the fire-wheel revolved by ignorance, purely arouse the two vehicles’ resolve for release, remain unmixed with reputation and gain, and cease increasing suffering and accumulation.

Third, concentration in the five meditations for settling the mind and wisdom in the four establishments of mindfulness are harmonized to settle the mind. Counting breaths from one through ten means also knowing each thought of breath and count to arise and cease. When contemplation of impurity gives rise to anger, kindness restores balance. Contemplation of causes and conditions sees the four kinds of birth horizontally and the three realms vertically as all dependently arisen. When obstructions arise, one recollects the Buddha. Concentration and wisdom are like the paired wisdom and virtue of a worthy person. Concentration alone resembles much virtue with little wisdom, and wisdom alone much wisdom with little virtue; neither can be called worthy. A non-Buddhist who does not know how to churn and agitate milk cannot even obtain milk serum, much less make curds and ghee.

Fourth, impermanence is used to break all views pervasively. Permanent, impermanent, both, and neither are Dharma-objects producing views through contact with the mind faculty. Because they arise from conditions, impermanence can break them. Fifth, passage and obstruction are distinguished within the views: the eighty-eight compulsions are obstruction and path and cessation are passage. Grasping one’s own view as real, craving moistening it into karma and fruit, is obstruction. Knowing a view as impermanent without attachment, and therefore producing neither karma nor fruit while opening path and cessation, is passage. A worm gnawing wood may accidentally form a written shape without knowing whether it is a graph; this reflects the loss of failing to discern passage and obstruction.

Sixth, the establishments of mindfulness of body, feeling, mind, and dharmas unfold as the four right efforts, four bases of supernormal power, five faculties, five powers, seven factors of awakening, and noble eightfold path, making the thirty-seven factors. Two aspects under suffering lead to emptiness; four under accumulation, four under path, and the other two under suffering lead to non-activity; and four under cessation lead to signlessness. These three gateways of liberation lead into the city of nirvāṇa. Seventh, when right wisdom is weak, the twelve meditations and related practices provide support: desire is met with impurity and the liberations, lack of mastery with the spheres of mastery, lack of breadth with the totalities, slight merit with the immeasurable minds, and the wish to transcend form with the four formless attainments.

Eighth, one distinguishes worthy and noble, true and resembling stages, so overweening pride cannot counterfeit nobility. Ninth, one turns from separate to general establishments of mindfulness and endures inner and outer obstructions, allowing warmth, summit, and receptivity to continue. Warmth resembles smoke near the path; if endurance fails at the summit, one falls back to this side. Tenth, after the four wholesome roots have arisen, one does not become attached to what accords with the path. Although Dharma attachment does not immediately cause regression into grave wrongdoing, it blocks seeing the truths. Only by extinguishing attachment and arousing the true illumination of receptivity to suffering can one become a stream-enterer, directly attain a higher fruit, or reach the stage beyond learning.

The treatise compiled by five hundred arhats precisely upholds attainment of the path through the gateway of existence. The four gateways are therefore not merely devices for regulating the mind. When properly harmonized they all enable the path; when grasped they all obstruct it. The skillful means of prajñā prevent falling into existence or nonexistence. The ten contemplations are the complete skillful means that pass directly from the gateway of existence into partial truth. The other three gateways each have ten contemplations broadly the same with minor differences and likewise sever delusions of the three realms.

〔Section §08〕 Ten Contemplations of the Shared Teaching: Cultivating within Illusion, Entering through Nonattainment

The Shared gateway of existence likewise contains ten contemplations, all unfolded within illusion. The object consists of dharmas like illusions. The resolve of the three vehicles is broadly the same with minor differences. Śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas likewise attain the path of liberation and nirvāṇa through prajñā, showing that the Great Vehicle gateway primarily accesses the true mark while secondarily admitting the three vehicles, without any need to invent another fixed identity to explain them.

Although concentration and wisdom cannot be attained, the mind is still settled through concentration and wisdom. The four views, the sixty-two views, and all dharmas are illusory and are pervasively broken through wisdom like an illusion. Suffering and accumulation within illusion are obstruction; path and cessation within illusion are passage. With a mind of nonattainment, one cultivates the thirty-seven factors; with nothing to be treated, one trains in the counteractives; stages from dry wisdom to buddhahood remain clear. Wisdom like an illusion is not shaken by outer Māras or driven back by inner obstructions. Dharmas do not arise and prajñā arises, yet prajñā is not grasped; one thereby enters truth and attains receptivity to the nonarising of dharmas. The skillfulness relative to analysis lies precisely in embodiment as illusion.

The other three gateways also each possess ten contemplations. The gateway of existence is expanded as the example; the abbreviations still leave the same ten items running through cultivation from beginning to end.

〔Section §09〕 Ten Contemplations of the Distinct Teaching: Breaking the Weeds to Reveal the Treasury of Gold

The Distinct gateway of existence establishes the wondrous existence of the tathāgata-garbha as its object. It transcends the gateways of ordinary beings, the two vehicles, and the Shared Teaching, supports all dharmas, and gives rise to all dharmas. Sentient beings possess this wondrous existence yet resemble a treasury of gold covered by weeds, a forehead-jewel lost amid fighting, or a poor orphan exposed outside. Seeing this, bodhisattvas give rise to great kindness and compassion and arouse the four universal vows, not for one person, country, or a dust-mote number in a realm alone, but for all sentient beings of the Dharma realm, with the force of a lion’s roar.

Settling the mind still depends on the mutual support of concentration and wisdom: cultivate concentration when concentration is appropriate and wisdom when wisdom is appropriate, caring for the mind through concentration and spurring it through wisdom. The wisdom of wondrous existence pervasively breaks views within birth-and-death and also breaks immersion in emptiness as realization. A great tree does not host a hostile bird, showing that the grasping of nirvāṇa likewise is not allowed to remain. The Snow Mountains contain both poisonous plants and a king of medicines, showing that passage and obstruction must be recognized at each level: the suffering and accumulation of the six paths relative to the path and cessation of the two vehicles; the suffering and accumulation of the two vehicles relative to the bodhisattva’s path and cessation; and bodhisattva suffering and accumulation relative to the Buddha’s path and cessation. Even while knowing the Buddha-path, one understands that attachment to it can become obstruction again.

The thirty-seven factors are a bodhisattva’s jeweled torch. Leaving the ten characteristics enters the samādhi of emptiness; not seeing even a characteristic of emptiness enters the samādhi of signlessness; making no constructed aspiration enters the samādhi of non-activity. Permanence and impermanence, constancy and inconstancy, peace and absence of peace, conditioned and unconditioned, severance and nonseverance, nirvāṇa and non-nirvāṇa, supreme and nonsupreme become gateways of counteraction helping to open the true mark.

The depth of the ten faiths, ten abodes, ten practices, ten dedications, ten grounds, equal awakening, and wondrous awakening is not confused. Inwardly, one endures wholesome and unwholesome impulses and the two thieves of accordance and opposition; outwardly, the eight winds. When a resembling Dharma appears without Dharma attachment, one does not fall at the summit of the bodhisattva stages. Only without this attachment can one break the weeds of ignorance, reveal the treasury of wondrous existence, see buddha-nature, and enter the true mark. The gateways of emptiness, both, and neither each accomplish the same ten contemplations through their own skillful means.

〔Section §10〕 Ten Distinctions of the Perfect Gateway: The Full Span from Interpenetration to Simile

A Perfect gateway takes the form of birth-and-death as immediately the form of Dharma-nature and accesses the Middle in that very form, revealing the Dharma free of contention. A Distinct gateway instead sequentially extinguishes the form of birth-and-death and the form of Dharma-nature before accessing the Middle. Both access the Middle, and the treatise master unfolds their difference through ten aspects: interpenetration, immediacy to dharmas, buddha-wisdom, sequence, severance, stages, fruit, expression, questions and answers, and similes.

First is interpenetration. The Distinct gateways of existence, emptiness, both, and neither each remain within their own portion. A Perfect gateway teaches existence without blocking nonexistence and nonexistence without blocking existence. Existence and nonexistence are nondual; one gateway is the other three, one gateway is immeasurable gateways, and immeasurable gateways are one. Though true, good, and wondrous existence and the real existence of non-Buddhists may share a name, they differ in substance like the raw jades of Zhou and Zheng, with value separated as far as heaven from earth. Mixing gold and stone causes people to lose the division between wrong and right; precise knowledge of the four gateways restores it.

Interpenetration also appears in breaking and integration. Breaking only non-Buddhists while preserving the two vehicles and Great Vehicle skillful means, or integrating unwholesome Dharmas while not integrating people of the two vehicles, remains sequentially distinct. Perfect breaking breaks both people and Dharmas from the Distinct Teaching downward, leaving not even those of the thatched hut fixed. Perfect integration extends from Never Disparaging’s assembly, Devadatta, the dragon girl, and animals to worldly occupations, practices of the two vehicles, and the father-and-child simile; no kind of person or Dharma remains outside the wondrous. The sequence of a scriptural passage and its stages can alter the affiliation of language about interpenetration, so such language must be read together with the position of realization.

Second is immediacy to dharmas. A Distinct gateway separately teaches true, good, and wondrous existence outside birth-and-death and ultimate emptiness outside the two vehicles’ truth. A Perfect gateway instead teaches the existence of birth-and-death as immediately the existence of the true mark: all dharmas converge upon existence, existence is the Dharma realm, and birth-and-death is nirvāṇa. One gateway is only the opening of discourse and in reality perfectly contains all dharmas.

Third is wisdom. Distinguishing all-wisdom and knowledge of path varieties as illuminating Dharmas as numerous as the sands of the Ganges is bodhisattva-wisdom. The knowledge of all modes together with the five eyes perfectly illuminating the Dharma realm is buddha-wisdom. Fourth is practice. Proceeding through stages from subtle to manifest, unable to contain immeasurable practices in one practice, is sequential. All practices converging upon one practice, and one practice immediately containing immeasurable practices, is pervasive practice.

Fifth is severance. The Distinct gateways gradually cut apart the five abodes of delusion and reveal conceivable wisdom and severance. Perfect gateways teach that the nature of ignorance originally does not exist and that understanding and delusion are nondual; they speak of severing within nonseverance and reveal inconceivable severance. The two sets of scriptural statements concerning wisdom and affliction, light and darkness, give both severance and nothing to be severed their place.

Sixth is stage. Assigning views and thoughts within the realms to the thirty minds, and views, thoughts, and ignorance beyond the realms to the ten grounds, with ignorance exhausted after equal awakening, gives skillful stages. Cultivating the three contemplations in one mind from the initial resolve, perfectly subduing at the ten faiths and perfectly severing throughout the forty minds up to equal and wondrous awakening, gives real stages. Seventh is fruit. Saying the Dharma-body is originally present, prajñā cultivated, and liberation completed at the end, while each causal ground is limited, arranges the three virtues vertically. Having all three virtues complete and neither vertical nor horizontal, one Dharma-gateway containing all gateways, the first ground containing the virtues of all grounds, and the graph 阿 containing the virtues of all other graphs gives Perfect fruit.

Eighth is what expresses. How the text leads in before the gateway, expresses wisdom, practice, severance, stages, fruit, and similes within the gateway, and concludes afterward must all be threaded by interpenetration and immediacy for its expression to be perfect. One gateway being the other three must be borne by the full beginning and ending of the passage. Ninth, questions and answers are repeatedly examined to verify its intent. Tenth, how gold, silver, jewels, wish-fulfilling jewels, the sun, and the moon are correlated with Dharma is examined. Only when the ten work together do Perfect and Distinct become luminously clear.

〔Section §11〕 Ten Meanings in the Present Sutra: Gateway Characteristics Revealed throughout the Whole Sutra

The treatise master first counts gateways according to the five flavors, then gathers ten meanings dispersed throughout the present sutra. Contemplating all dharmas as empty, definitive resolution of the śrāvaka Dharma, and opening the gateway of skillful means reveal the interpenetration of people and Dharmas. Worldly productive activity not opposing the true mark and the hired laborer being the elder’s son reveal immediacy to dharmas. Opening, revealing, awakening to, and entering the Buddha’s knowing-and-seeing reveals buddha-wisdom. Robe, seat, and room, together with purifying the faculties without severing the five desires, reveal nonsequential practice. Passing five hundred yojanas reveals severing without severance.

The five grades, purification of the six faculties, and the jeweled vehicle traveling in the four directions reveal real stages. The Buddha abiding in the Great Vehicle, adorned with concentration and wisdom, and liberating sentient beings reveals nonvertical fruit. The present Buddha’s passage before the text—palms joined to hear the complete path—and the ancient Buddha’s passage after the text—the meaning of the true mark already taught—reveal perfect expression before and after. Wisdom Accumulation and the dragon girl reveal questions and answers. The crown-jewel of the wheel-turning king and the high, broad cart reveal Perfect similes. These pieces of evidence do not occur in one passage; figures, stages, events, and similes from across the sutra jointly reveal the Perfect gateway.

The sutra’s meaning also establishes four perfectly interpenetrating gateways. The Buddha’s subtle and wondrous wisdom and the Tathāgata’s wisdom contemplating the distant past as today form the gateway of existence. The emptiness of all dharmas and their constantly quiescent characteristic form the gateway of emptiness. Dharmas without self-nature and the buddha-seed arising from conditions form the gateway both empty and existent. Neither such nor different, neither false nor real forms the double-negating gateway. All four are established within one Perfect intent while providing entries for different faculties.

〔Section §12〕 Ten Contemplations of the Perfect Gateway: The Four Truths of One Reality in the Present Practicing Mind

The first Perfect contemplation takes the Four Truths of the one reality as its inconceivable object. The suffering of birth-and-death is empty, provisional, and middle; the three purities are one mind and become great nirvāṇa. The accumulation of afflictions is likewise empty, provisional, and middle; the three wisdoms are one mind and become great prajñā. Suffering is unconstructed cessation, and accumulation unconstructed path. The Four Truths interpenetrate while remaining distinguishable. Birth-and-death is true because empty, good because provisional, and wondrous because middle; the object of the gateway of existence is therefore called true, good, and wondrous form.

The second contemplation arouses resolve from this object. Sentient beings originally are great nirvāṇa yet invert happiness into suffering, and so bodhisattvas give rise to compassion and vow to liberate the unliberated and sever the unsevered. Afflictions originally are bodhi yet beings invert the path into what is not the path, and so bodhisattvas give rise to kindness and vow to enable the unknowing to know and the unattaining to attain. Kindness and compassion are objectless, vows are pure, and beings are naturally drawn in.

The third contemplation settles the mind through two pairs of journey similes. Watching fish beside a pool without making a net means seeing the object without beginning practice. Packing provisions and binding one’s legs while sitting still means arousing vows without advancing. Concentration and wisdom also resemble harmonized yin and yang, balanced wheels, and complete wings. Embodying birth-and-death as nirvāṇa is concentration; penetrating affliction as bodhi is wisdom. Skillful cultivation in one mind completes all practices.

The fourth contemplation pervasively breaks like a vajra axe and an unobscured sun. Segmented and transformational suffering is broken within birth-and-death as nirvāṇa; the accumulation of the four and five abodes is broken within affliction as bodhi. There is ability to break without a fixed object broken. The fifth distinguishes passage and obstruction like a commander’s treasure choosing appropriately, restraining the strong and calming the weak. The faults of birth-and-death and disturbance of affliction are obstruction; their immediacy as nirvāṇa and bodhi is passage. From four non-Buddhist views through Perfect gateways, attachment at every step obstructs and the disappearance of attachment reveals the wondrous. Failure to examine them loses both practice and the precious treasure of understanding.

The sixth contemplation unfolds the four establishments of mindfulness of Dharma-nature from the five aggregates of the ten realms as neither pure nor impure, neither permanent nor impermanent, breaking eight inversions. The establishments contain the factors of the path, the three liberations, and all dharmas. Nirvāṇa as birth-and-death reveals the four withered trees; birth-and-death as nirvāṇa reveals the four flourishing trees; their nonduality reveals neither withered nor flourishing and abiding in great nirvāṇa. The seventh uses immediacy as nirvāṇa to treat the obstruction of recompense and immediacy as bodhi to treat karmic and afflictive obstructions.

The eighth unfolds stages from principle, name, contemplative practice, resemblance, and partial realization through ultimate realization. Birth-and-death as nirvāṇa and affliction as bodhi each proceed through the six. The ninth endures hard and soft inner and outer obstructions. Aggregates, entrances, objects, illness, karma, Māras, dhyāna, the two vehicles, and bodhisattvas do not break the contemplation of immediacy as nirvāṇa; views and overweening pride do not break the contemplation of immediacy as bodhi.

In the tenth, virtues arise after obstructions have been passed: dhyāna and samādhi, dhāraṇī and fearlessness, prajñā and Dharma-body all appear according to contemplation. Resembling virtues most easily produce attachment to what accords with the path, preventing both advance and retreat and leaving one fallen at the summit. Only by swiftly extinguishing this attachment can one break ignorance, open the Buddha’s knowing-and-seeing, and realize the substance of the true mark. Liberation, prajñā, and Dharma-body are thereby complete. One body becomes immeasurable, like a treasury and perfect jewel. The other three gateways also enter the real through ten contemplations.

〔Section §13〕 Dispersed Evidence, Milk, and People Who Refuse the Jewel

Evidence for the ten contemplations in the present sutra is dispersed throughout the work. The Dharma that cannot be shown, the extinction of verbal characteristics, and the wondrous Dharma difficult to conceive reveal the inconceivable object. Supernormal power and wisdom drawing beings to abide in the Dharma reveal true resolve. The Buddha abiding in the Great Vehicle, adorned with concentration and wisdom, reveals settling the mind and accomplishing self and others. The Dharma-king breaking existence and the sun and moon dispelling darkness reveal pervasive breaking. The guide saving people on the dangerous road reveals passage and obstruction. Pure Store and Pure Eye cultivating the factors of the path and the perfections reveal both factors and counteractives. Increasing the path, diminishing birth, and traveling in four directions reveal stages. Mount Sumeru unmoved and the Tathāgata’s robe reveal endurance. Hearing sounds without attachment, purification of the six faculties, and the truly pure great Dharma reveal freedom from Dharma attachment.

The intent of the ten contemplations also appears dispersed throughout Lesser and Great Vehicle scriptures and treatises, like Mount Malaya producing only sandalwood; it differs from the four non-Buddhist Vedas and the works of Zhuangzi and Laozi. If people can lecture and read but do not recognize skillful means for practice when facing the words, they resemble those who know how to milk but not how to churn and agitate milk into curds and ghee. Knowing the ten contemplations within the four gateways lets the Lesser Vehicle enter truth and the Great Vehicle enter the real, like eating milk gruel and becoming replete.

Half or all of a wish-fulfilling jewel can be given to everyone. Yet if recipients refuse to value the path over bodily life and diligently cultivate, refusing both to receive and to use it, the gift has no immediate benefit. The treatise master’s lament does not end in disappointment: even when no benefit is presently visible, the Dharma-sound can still plant the cause of the poisoned drum and leave a seed for breaking delusion later.

〔Section §14〕 The Gateway That Gives Access and the Principle Accessed

To judge coarse and wondrous, one must first distinguish access from what is accessed: the gateway is what gives access and principle is what is accessed. This yields four propositions: access and what is accessed both coarse; access wondrous while what is accessed coarse; access coarse while what is accessed wondrous; and both wondrous. Tripiṭaka gateways support concrete matters and are shallow, expressing only partial truth, so both are coarse. Shared gateways embody dharmas skillfully but the three vehicles realize partial truth, so access is wondrous and what is accessed coarse. Distinct gateways use skillful means of the teaching-path to express perfect truth, so access is coarse and what is accessed wondrous. Perfect gateways teach truly from the realization-path and are perfect immediately in present matters, so both are wondrous.

Placed within the four flavors, the raw-ghee teaching carries coarse in both access and what is accessed. The milk teaching carries coarse in neither. The refined-ghee teaching carries coarse in what is accessed but not in access. The Perfect receiving the Shared and Distinct, together with the gateways of the Nirvāṇa Sūtra, carry coarse in access but not in what is accessed. This first separates the route from its destination so the name of a gateway does not silently replace the principle realized.

〔Section §15〕 The One Narrow Gateway: Teaching, Practice, and Principle in the Four Teachings

The sutra speaks of one gateway that is narrow, and the treatise master opens the statement through questions and answers. Tripiṭaka gateways are four because they respond to faculties, employ different skillful means, and give access differently. They are one because all are the Buddha’s teaching, all face nirvāṇa, and all converge upon what is accessed. The absence of bodhi from their words is narrowness in teaching. A constricted road unable to admit two people side by side is narrowness in practice. Difficulty attaining true truth through teaching and practice is narrowness in principle.

The Shared Teaching is likewise four and one according to faculties, contemplations, and access. Present matters are immediately true, and bodhi is already present in the words. Wholesome and unwholesome are both contemplated as unattainable and can travel side by side, so teaching and practice are not narrow in this sense. Difficulty in reaching the principle of nonarising is narrowness in principle.

The Distinct Teaching is four because taught for four faculties and one because all is the Buddha’s teaching. Contemplations for entering the real differ while all face the one reality. Birth-and-death is not yet immediately nirvāṇa, so teaching is narrow. Afflictions are not yet immediately bodhi, so practice is narrow. Difficulty attaining principle through teaching and practice makes principle narrow.

The Perfect Teaching is likewise four according to four faculties and four contemplations, and one according to the Buddha’s teaching and the true principle. Birth-and-death is nirvāṇa, so teaching is not narrow. Affliction is bodhi, so practice is not narrow. Yet teaching and contemplation may still fail to accord with principle, so principle can still be called narrow. “One gateway” and “narrow” are therefore not fixed labels attached to one teaching. They must be read through teaching, practice, and principle and through how the gateway responds to faculties, faces reality, and grasps principle.

〔Section §16〕 A Gateway Is Wondrous When It Fits the Faculty and Coarse When Grasped

All four Tripiṭaka gateways give access. Attachment to any obstructs; proper adjustment in any enables the path. Looking only at Dharma characteristics, the gateway of existence adheres to conventional truth and is clumsy, the gateway of emptiness lies close to truth and is skillful, the gateway both existent and nonexistent is skillful relative to the earlier gateways but clumsy relative to the double negation. Looking at faculties, however, the gateway suited to existence succeeds and the other three fail, and the same applies to whichever gateway is suitable.

The four siddhāntas make success and failure more precise: according with desire or opposing disposition, meeting what is suitable or failing to do so, treating illness or failing to treat it, seeing ultimate meaning or failing to see it. The ten contemplations likewise examine each item: right object, true resolve, harmonious settlement, pervasive breaking, discernment of passage and obstruction, through freedom from Dharma attachment. The gateway whose ten items succeed is wondrous; one whose ten items miss their place is coarse.

The one principle accessed by the Shared Teaching cannot be compared through form, and coarse and wondrous lie in response to faculties and cultivation. A gateway that meets the four kinds of faculties through the siddhāntas and whose ten contemplations each find their place is wondrous. One that opposes faculties and loses contemplation is burned by the fire on the four sides and cannot enter the cooling pool.

If the Distinct gateways are ranked only by Dharma characteristics, existence adheres to matters and emptiness lies close to principle; single emptiness is surpassed by both, and preserving both is surpassed by relinquishing both. According to faculties and conditions, however, any gateway can be wondrous by corresponding to desire, being suitable, treating an evil, and revealing principle; it can be coarse through the opposites. The two fruits Zhentoujia and Jialuojia illuminate the success and failure of the ten contemplations item by item. Recognizing true, good, and wondrous form, genuinely arousing resolve, settling concentration and wisdom, breaking pervasively, discerning passage and obstruction, cultivating the factors of the path, understanding counteractives, knowing stages, enduring, and lacking Dharma attachment are the sweet fruit. Their ten opposites are the poisonous fruit.

The root treatise uses nine parts poisonous and one part sweet to show many failures and little attainment. If all ten contemplations succeed, there are ten parts sweet fruit and all ten are wondrous. Nine parts poisonous are still coarse; one part sweet is still wondrous, as a thousand pounds of layered blossoms do not equal one ounce of real gold. Every gateway is judged by success or failure in its own ten contemplations; number and image both serve the distinction between right and wrong practice.

All four Perfect gateways are equal in Dharma characteristics and all wondrous. The gateways of existence, emptiness, both, and neither are each the Dharma realm and each encompasses all dharmas. Their differences arise only from faculties, like four fingers pointing at one moon: the moon is one, while the fingers are four. Past investigation of principle and cultivation of goodness within the four gateways formed dispositions of wisdom and merit. In this life, people give rise to craving and grasping according to prior cultivation, and desires, suitability, and counteraction differ. The Buddha clearly illuminates their faculties, responds to four desires through the worldly siddhānta, produces four kinds of goodness through the individually adapted siddhānta, treats four attachments through the counteractive siddhānta, and lets four people see principle through the siddhānta of ultimate meaning. With these four conditions, all four gateways become the direct unsurpassed path.

Success and failure in teaching follow the same principle. Without understanding the four siddhāntas, different traditions resemble the southern and northern paths and later theories, each calling itself true and rejecting the others; all four gateways fail. A Perfect gateway is open and interpenetrating and should be able to dissolve disputes among scriptures and treatises. In awakening, four attachments are not retained; in cultivation, every gateway can give access. Attachment in a Distinct gateway is heavy, like a dull horse requiring a painful blow; attachment in a Perfect gateway is light, like a swift horse moving on seeing the whip’s shadow. Before ultimate meaning is gained, the benefits of the first three siddhāntas may still remain.

Each of the four siddhāntas can be real in a corresponding condition and false where it does not correspond. The worldly, individually adapted, and counteractive siddhāntas are real in worldly establishment and false from ultimate meaning. The siddhānta of ultimate meaning is real in the principle it reveals and false as a worldly establishment. The real side is wondrous and the false side coarse. Coarse and wondrous therefore remain living judgments of correspondence to faculties, attainment of benefit, and successful contemplation, not a static sequence of gateway names.

〔Section §17〕 Retaining and Retiring Gateways through the Five Flavors Each Has Its Conditions

Placed within the five flavors, the counts are exact. The milk teaching has eight gateways, four coarse and four wondrous, with all that is accessed wondrous. The curds teaching has four gateways, with gateway and principle both coarse. The raw-ghee teaching has sixteen, twelve coarse and four wondrous, with two coarse and two wondrous principles accessed. The refined-ghee teaching has twelve, eight coarse and four wondrous, with one coarse and one wondrous principle. The Lotus Sutra has four gateways, all wondrous, and one principle that is likewise wondrous.

Before the Lotus, the gateways and principles of śrāvakas were coarse; at the Lotus, gateway and principle interpenetrate as wondrous. Bodhisattvas vary: some already interpenetrated as wondrous during the vaipulya or prajñā teachings, while those of dullest faculties still awaited the Lotus. The Nirvāṇa Sūtra has sixteen gateways, twelve coarse and four wondrous, while all that is accessed is wondrous. Because every Dharma has the nature of peace and happiness and every sentient being has buddha-nature, only one wondrous principle is accessed, yet coarse gateways remain as skillful means for drawing people in.

The Lotus Sutra subdues, breaking attachment to provisional gateways and principles like the Golden-Sand River traveling straight with no bend. The Nirvāṇa Sūtra embraces, permitting provisional gateways again like a hundred differently flowing rivers entering the same sea. Golden sands emphasize a straight course without turning; the hundred rivers emphasize different currents sharing one destination. The establishments of retaining and retiring differ, but the sea of the real is not two.

〔Section §18〕 What Is Opened Is the Person, Dharma, Teaching, Practice, and Principle Not Yet Wondrous

The final section first asks why the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā teaches Great Vehicle gateways before those of the two vehicles while this unit begins with lesser gateways and only then greater ones. The answer lies in timing. The Mūlamadhyamakakārikā addressed an already formed disease of views, first sweeping it away through Great Vehicle emptiness and then showing a gateway into truth. The present sutra addresses people remaining in the thatched hut; it must first list lesser gateways, then open skillful means and reveal perfect reality. The different orders each address the illness of their occasion.

Teachings after the Lotus need no further opening. Among teachings before the Lotus, a gateway or principle already wondrous has nothing more to be opened. If gateway and principle are wondrous but the person is not, opening applies to that person. Wherever gateway, principle, or person remains unwondrous, each is opened.

Craving, views, and affliction are opened as bodhi; birth-and-death as nirvāṇa; ordinary beings as wondrous persons; discourse born of craving and views as the Buddha-Dharma; all sentient beings as wondrous principle. Lesser Vehicle Dharma is opened as wondrous Dharma, śrāvaka teaching as Great Vehicle transformation, śrāvaka practice as the bodhisattva-path, and śrāvaka principle as the true mark. The still-unresolved bodhisattvas of the Tripiṭaka, Shared, and Distinct Teachings are likewise opened and attain the Perfect.

Opening and revelation therefore do not merely change a name, but give people together with Dharma, teaching, practice, and principle their full place. Everything not yet wondrous enters the wondrous, and neither gateway nor principle remains inaccessible. This is opening the provisional to reveal the real and deciding the coarse so that it becomes wondrous.

Through the Eye of the Shiqian

In the Fahua Xuanyi Shiqian (T1717), Zhanran first divides this unit into the reason for its introduction and the proper unfolding and explanation of the section, then expressly judges all sixteen gateways to be gateways into the real〔0937a21–a26〕. This first view stabilizes the unit’s direction: though the four propositions, four teachings, and sixteen gateways differ as skillful and clumsy, partial and perfect, interpenetrating and separated, all function as gateways by giving access. Their gain or loss depends on whether they correspond to faculties, complete contemplation, and avoid attachment.

The second view distinguishes teaching from practice. Zhanran says that practice is precisely contemplation〔0937b10〕, allowing the gateway of teaching and gateway of practice to support one another without being confused. Awakening upon hearing, entering through contemplation, turning from hearing to contemplation, and turning from contemplation back to hearing are paths for different faculties. Teaching and contemplation together making thirty-two is only a large count and cannot close immeasurable spiritual advisers and practices within a fixed category.

The third view distinguishes the point of entering from contemplation. “The point concerns what is accessed; contemplation concerns what enables entry”〔0938a14〕 gives the provincial-city and imperial-city similes their clear places. Oblique and direct gateways describe routes of access; governor and emperor describe the principle accessed. The first eight gateways all access partial truth and the latter eight all access perfect truth. Routes divide into eight while the destination is nondual.

The fourth view addresses abbreviation. Because the unit emphasizes the characteristics of the teaching, the Tripiṭaka, Shared, Distinct, and Perfect Teachings each commonly expand one gateway and leave the other three to be understood from it. Zhanran explicitly says that contemplative methods are abbreviated here and fully expanded elsewhere in the Mohe Zhiguan (T1911)〔0938a22–a26〕. The abbreviation is a choice of genre, not an absence of contemplative items. Every gateway must still be threaded by object, arousing resolve, settling the mind, pervasive breaking, passage and obstruction, factors of the path, counteractives, stages, endurance, and freedom from attachment.

The fifth view rests on the ten distinctions of the Distinct and Perfect. Zhanran points out that each of the first seven meanings has three sections〔0939b05〕: first properly distinguishing the meaning, next judging Perfect and Distinct, and then determining affiliation from the sequence of scripture and stages of practice. Interpenetration, immediacy, buddha-wisdom, sequence, severance, stages, and fruit cannot be classified by seizing one sentence. The eighth, perfect expression, further joins the lead-in, body, and conclusion of a gateway; the ninth, questions and answers, and the tenth, similes, then provide confirmation.

The sixth view illuminates the Four Truths of the one reality. Zhanran uses the present thought-moment containing the suffering and accumulation of the ten Dharma realms〔0940c03〕 to show that suffering and accumulation are not abstract categories in a distant place. Suffering, accumulation, path, and cessation are immediately one another while still remaining distinguishable in aspect. Precisely because they are immediate, resolve, concentration and wisdom, pervasive breaking, passage and obstruction, factors of the path, counteractives, stages, endurance, and freedom from attachment can all be cultivated in the present mind.

The seventh view notices how scriptural evidence is dispersed. The Mohe Zhiguan concentrates on the great cart to reveal contemplation, while this unit cites passages dispersed throughout the entire Lotus Sutra〔0941a23–a26〕. The Dharma that cannot be shown, the Buddha abiding in the Great Vehicle, the guide saving people from danger, purification of the six faculties, and other passages occur in different chapters. The treatise master gathers them as ten contemplations according to function. They form a common mirror without being rearranged into one continuous scriptural passage.

The eighth view judges coarse and wondrous again. Zhanran summarizes the latter half through “the four gateways are teaching, the ten contemplations are practice”〔0942a21〕. Skillfulness or clumsiness of a gateway-Dharma is only the first level. One must also consider whether the four siddhāntas fit faculties and whether each proposition in the ten contemplations is properly placed. The same gateway may obstruct when grasped and give access when properly used. The Zhentoujia and Jialuojia simile places success and failure item by item within cultivation.

The ninth view distinguishes retaining from retiring. The Lotus Sutra subdues like the Golden-Sand River traveling straight without a bend; the Nirvāṇa Sūtra embraces like a hundred rivers with different currents entering one sea. Zhanran does not show two mutually exclusive destinations, but two ways of drawing people toward the same real principle: one breaks fixed attachment to provisional gateways and principles, while the other preserves gateways by which those of dull faculties can enter. The sea to which they return is nondual.

The final view concerns the recipients of opening and revelation. Zhanran divides proper opening into ordinary beings, the two vehicles, and bodhisattvas〔0943b07〕. The two vehicles are further opened in the Dharma signified, teaching that signifies, practice undertaken, and principle realized. Opening and revelation therefore do not rename one abstract term, but bring people, Dharma, teaching, practice, and principle not yet wondrous into the wondrous, level by level. This also returns the unit to its opening: the flying ladder has value because it actually brings people across the ravine.

This mirror also preserves the layers of authorship. The unit crosses fascicles eight and nine; the fascicle titles and “taught by Great Master Zhiyi of Tiantai” join the portions into one discourse. The body has no separate marker for a private explanation by Guanding. The primary voice of all eighteen sections is therefore Zhiyi teaching, with Guanding’s record preserving the layered questions, citations, and similes. The fascicle boundary is a joint in the transmission, not a sudden change of doctrinal speaker.

The eye of the four teachings is also finer than gateway names. Tripiṭaka gateways first establish four propositions through the arising-and-ceasing Four Truths; Shared gateways reestablish them through illusion as immediately empty. Distinct gateways commonly take milk, gold, a jewel, empty space, and related similes to reveal sequential distinctions. Only later are Perfect gateways proven through the ten distinctions as one gateway not obstructing the others. Though all four sets have similar names, their objects, delusions broken, principles accessed, and stages differ. “All are real gateways” concerns their function of giving access, not a leveling of their meanings.

The ten contemplations of a Tripiṭaka gateway are each classified in the Mirror. The right object excludes wrong cause and no cause. Settling the mind harmonizes the five calming meditations and four establishments of mindfulness. Pervasive breaking uses impermanence to sweep away views. Passage and obstruction distinguish the eighty-eight compulsions from path and cessation. The factors of the path lead through the three liberations. Auxiliary practices correspond to obstructing illnesses. Knowledge of stages prevents overweening pride. Endurance allows warmth and summit to continue. Only freedom from attachment enters seeing the truths. The ten are not scattered virtues but a journey in which each earlier item supports the next.

The commander’s-treasure simile for passage and obstruction in the Perfect gateway becomes especially operational in Zhanran’s hands: strong obstruction must be restrained and made to retreat, weak passage must be soothed and made to advance〔0940c28–0941a05〕. “Choosing appropriately” is thus not merely a tone of pacification, but governs advance and retreat at every step of contemplative mind. From the four non-Buddhist views through Perfect gateways, attachment is obstruction; to penetrate yet still lose the wondrous is likewise to lose the precious treasure.

The Mirror also layers the withered-and-flourishing simile under the factors of the path. Nirvāṇa as birth-and-death reveals withering; birth-and-death as nirvāṇa reveals flourishing; their nonduality reveals neither withered nor flourishing. The three levels together establish the truth of the one reality without breaking the trees into another numerical table. Auxiliary practices, stages, endurance, and freedom from attachment then each remain in place; perfect interpenetration does not swallow the sequence of cultivation.

When judging coarse and wondrous, Zhanran strings together gateway, four siddhāntas, faculties, and ten contemplations in four layers. A gateway-Dharma may be skillful or clumsy, the response to faculties may correspond or oppose, the four siddhāntas may be gained or lost, and the ten contemplations may succeed or fail. A loss at any layer can turn even a wondrous name into obstruction. Conversely, a gateway bearing a coarse name can truly give access when it corresponds to desire, meets what is suitable, treats illness, reveals principle, and completes the ten contemplations.

In the Zhentoujia and Jialuojia passage, the Mirror first uses a grove to represent the monastery and its fruits the monastics, then transfers the fruit simile to correct and mistaken forms of the ten contemplations〔0942b14–c06〕. The root treatise’s nine parts poisonous and one part sweet emphasize that many failures do not equal a little attainment. One part sweet fruit still surpasses nine parts poisonous, just as one ounce of real gold surpasses a thousand pounds of layered blossoms. Number and simile both point toward accomplishment of contemplation, not a separate hierarchy of gateway names.

The eye of the five flavors considers both whether gateways are retained and retired and the principle accessed. The Lotus Sutra subdues, preventing crooked provisional attachment from turning back. The Nirvāṇa Sūtra embraces, reopening practicable gateways for people of dull faculties. Golden sands and the hundred rivers each reveal one side: one straight, one gathering, both returning to the sea of the real. Seen from the whole unit, opening and revelation do not destroy all former skillful means, but prevent skillful means from being grasped as the destination.

The Mohe Zhiguan broadly expands the ten contemplations as a method of practice. The Fahua Wenju (T1718) returns the figures, chapter passages, and similes dispersed through this unit to their respective scriptural contexts〔T34 0077c15／0117a04〕. This unit takes the characteristics of the teaching as its axis and links gateway, contemplation, coarse and wondrous, and opening and revelation into one discourse. Read together, the Three Great Works have distinct tasks: practice is expanded, scripture is located, and the Xuanyi shows how every gateway gives access to the sutra’s substance.

Why, amid so many names, is there only one underlying substance? These three topics continue the body of Great Master Zhiyi’s teaching on discerning the substance. Guanding separately records at the beginning of the fascicle how he received the teaching and how the work was formed; here, the record carries the master’s explanation from the sutra’s substance through the substance of practice to the substance of all dharmas.

The question begins with the great number of different names within a single scripture. If the true mark is the sutra’s substance, why does the same Lotus Sutra also speak of the Buddha’s knowing-and-seeing, the conditions of the great matter, the unsurpassed path, the seal of the true mark, the great cart, the family estate, the ground of wisdom, the real place, the jewel tied in the robe, the secret treasury, the great wisdom of equality, and even the samādhi of universally manifesting physical bodies, the universal gateway, and the root of virtue? If names and images all differ, does saying that they take the same true mark as substance merely erase their differences?

Many Names, One Substance, Does Not Mean Many Synonyms

The treatise does not merely list a series of different names and immediately declare them all the same. It identifies the meaning represented by each name.

The true mark speaks of the reality of principle; the Buddha’s knowing-and-seeing speaks of knowing through quiescent illumination; the conditions of the great matter speak of what the buddhas of the three times use in their own practice and in transforming others; the path speaks of vacuous passage; the seal speaks of correctly determining all dharmas; the vehicle speaks of carrying; the family estate speaks of accomplishing buddha-work; and the ground of wisdom speaks of the basis upon which everything relies. When the list reaches the real place, the explanation that follows shifts to the place of treasure as the source of all dharmas; the jewel tied in the robe is explained through the precious jewel’s perfect wondrousness and inconceivability. The secret treasury accumulates nothing yet contains the many dharmas; the great wisdom of equality is essential and passes freely without obstruction; neither such nor different excludes the two extremes; the samādhi of universal manifestation reveals wondrous form’s sovereign freedom; the universal gateway is the route by which reality is entered; and the root of virtue is the root from which dharmas arise.

Each of these names has its own movement. A path lets people pass through, a vehicle enables them to travel, a family estate enables matters to be accomplished, ground gives the myriad things a basis upon which to rely, the place of treasure is a destination, the precious jewel is something originally possessed but not immediately seen, a gateway enables entry, and a root enables dharmas to arise. If all are compressed into one synonym, every scriptural scene loses its function.

Yet the different names do not cut the sutra’s substance into many unrelated entities. What is passed through, carried, entrusted, relied upon, reached, stored, entered, and born from reveals the same reality from its respective angle. Names differ and meanings also differ. Precisely for this reason, their “same substance” is not verbal repetition, but the common destination of the many meanings.

Do Other Scriptures Lose the Correct Seal If They Do Not Use the Same Name?

The next challenge is sharp: if whatever lacks the seal of the true mark is spoken by Māra, and the present sutra discusses the true mark, do other scriptures that use different names become untenable?

The answer first rejects this inference and then explains it in three steps. First, various scriptures may speak of true, wholesome, wondrous form, ultimate emptiness, the tathāgata-garbha, or the Middle Way; their names cannot all be listed. Second, these names are all different names for the true mark, each is a correct seal, and each is called foremost. Third, what truly makes a teaching lose the meaning of buddhadharma is not its failure to use the two graphs “true mark,” but its loss of the intent by which the many names return to reality.

Sameness of substance therefore does not require all the world’s scriptures to use one vocabulary. If one recognizes only wording, a change in name will be mistaken for a change in substance; if one merely asserts sameness of substance without asking how each name reveals meaning, the distinctive entrance of each scriptural teaching will be lost. The treatise safeguards both sides at once: different names must be understood according to their meanings, while sameness of substance prevents them from becoming mutually cut off.

Collateral and Principal: Even under the Name True Mark, What Is Revealed Still Differs in Depth

The many scriptures differ as half and full and Lesser and Great, and the substance they reveal can therefore be divided into collateral and principal. What is indicated principally is the true mark, while what is indicated collaterally is partial truth; partial truth sometimes contains the true mark, and the true mark sometimes carries partial truth. Different positions can therefore still be generally called the true mark.

The treatise immediately makes this concrete with three groups of scriptural passages. Of the true mark jointly attained by three kinds of people, it takes the aspect of partial truth. Śrāvakas see only emptiness: emptiness is collateral; the wise see both emptiness and nonemptiness: nonemptiness is principal. The present sutra says that in the past we entered Dharma-nature together: Dharma-nature in that sentence is taken collaterally. It also says that today we abide in real wisdom: real wisdom in that sentence is taken principally. The names are close, but the relations in which they occur differ.

The treatise then gives its own judgment. The three Dharma seals of the Lesser Vehicle are collateral; the Shared Teaching carries the collateral while revealing the principal; the Distinct and Perfect Teachings reveal only the principal and no longer discuss the collateral. Proceeding through the five flavors yields the further differences of only principal, only collateral, collateral and principal carried together, and a return to only principal. Even among the many names within the principal true mark, individual scriptures can select one as principal and treat the others as collateral: some take intrinsic purity as principal, some Dharma-body, some the knowledge of all modes, some buddha-nature, while the present sutra takes the true mark and One Vehicle as principal.

Collateral and principal discern how one body of teaching reveals the substance; they do not cut the sutra’s substance into two things. The conclusion therefore says that collateral and principal are discussed within what was originally neither collateral nor principal, while everything spoken of as collateral or principal is the sutra’s substance. Judgment prevents depths from being confused, while sameness of substance prevents judgment from becoming permanent separation.

Other Scriptures and This Sutra: Three Things Must Be Viewed Separately

When comparing other scriptures with the present sutra, the treatise asks not only whether their names are the same. It separates name, meaning, and substance and combines them into four statements: all three the same, all three different, name and meaning the same but substance different, and name and meaning different but substance the same.

This division shows that an identical name does not guarantee an identical referent, while a different name does not prevent an identical referent. Only two cases apply to the Tripiṭaka Teaching: if it also uses the name true mark, its name and meaning are the same but its substance differs; if it does not use the name, its name, meaning, and substance all differ. In addition to these two statements, the other two can apply to the Shared Teaching when its gateway reaches distantly to the Middle Way. When the Distinct Teaching is compared with the Perfect, all four statements can be distinguished according to the different names for one Dharma.

Proceeding further through the five flavors, the sameness and difference of names and meanings remain manifold, while substance can return uniformly to buddha-nature. Separating the layers in this way prevents two kinds of haste: one cannot see the same name and declare everything identical, nor see a different name and conclude that the substances differ.

Why Open the Coarse after First Judging Coarse and Wondrous?

From the perspective of substance’s original sameness, different collateral and principal names within the principal true mark are neither coarse nor wondrous. From the perspective of how a gateway of teaching reveals the substance, however, the collateral is coarse, while the collateral containing the principal and the principal carrying the collateral are also provisionally judged coarse; only the principal is wondrous. Even when their names and meanings are the same, the Tripiṭaka and Shared Teachings are consistently coarse because their substance differs. Although the Distinct Teaching is coarse through the distinction of its gateway of teaching, it is still wondrous from the perspective of the sameness of substance. Judging coarse and wondrous keeps name, meaning, substance, and the relative depth of gateways of teaching each distinct.

Opening the coarse changes direction. It no longer asks only how differences are established, but how what was judged collateral reveals its principal aspect. The collateral teaching is opened to reveal that the Buddha was in reality teaching through the Great Vehicle; collateral practice is opened to reveal that what was practiced was originally the bodhisattva-path; the collateral person is opened to reveal that the hired laborer, although taking only one day’s wages, is in reality the elder’s son; the collateral substance is opened so that once the gateway of skillful means is opened the true mark becomes manifest, and the poor man later sees the jewel tied within his robe.

The four levels of teaching, practice, person, and substance are not exchanged for something new. The elder’s son once regarded himself as a hired laborer, and the precious jewel was already tied in the robe; opening and revealing allows an identity and a possession previously obscured to become manifest. When the collateral principle is contemplated deeply, it is precisely the principal principle. The coarse that was formerly established in relative opposition can then no longer be found, and everything is wondrous.

From the Sutra’s Substance to the Substance of Practice: The Path Cannot Leave Its Basis

The sixth topic presses the question into practice: even if the true mark is the sutra’s substance, how do people’s many practices take it as their substance?

Practices established through receiving a teaching first do not go beyond practice through faith and practice through Dharma. Those of duller faculties gain understanding through hearing and establish practice from that understanding; those of sharper faculties investigate for themselves, gain understanding, and likewise establish practice from that understanding. Both extend through the four gateways of teaching, but the substance upon which each teaching relies differs, producing the distinctions of taking the collateral as substance, taking the collateral containing the principal as substance, and taking the principal as substance.

What is discussed horizontally consists of the perfections and such practices as kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity, each of which is understood through the substance of its own teaching. Viewed vertically, the stages extend from the five grades and purification of the six faculties through the first abode and equal awakening, and each level also has the substance it employs. When practice possesses substance, the root has been established and the path arises; when substance possesses practice, it must likewise rely upon practice to become manifest. The underlying basis gives practice its root, while actual practice enables substance to become manifest; the two mutually rely upon and accomplish each other.

The treatise makes this relation concrete through a cart. When vertical practice has substance, the cart has height; when horizontal practice has substance, it has breadth. Only a cart both high and broad can carry greatly; it moves levelly and uprightly, swift as the wind. Height, breadth, great carrying, level uprightness, and speed each unfold through one and the same cart. Only when the many practices possess an underlying basis do they together become a path capable of reaching its destination.

The scriptural passages cited likewise all concern the link between practice and substance. All dharmas are the Great Vehicle and are gathered through nonattainment; no dharmas can be attained, whether existent or nonexistent, while each child nevertheless receives a great cart; the youth sees Dīpaṃkara Buddha and attains endurance of the nonarising of dharmas; giving without abiding in characteristics is like a person with eyes seeing various forms. The practices differ, but their common key is that practice never departs from the substance of reality.

A Long Siege and a Bitter Assault: Although Time Differs, Practice Must Still Correspond with Principle

Practice through faith and practice through Dharma can extend over a long time, like a long siege; particular methods of practice established in individual scriptures set dates and fix periods, like a bitter assault. The two similes distinguish the duration and method of practice. They do not judge lengthy practice uniformly superior or fixed-term practice uniformly better.

The true division concerns whether practice possesses substance. If one performs actions only according to phenomenal forms, the practice has no substance. If one practices in reliance upon principle, allowing empty wisdom to correspond with practice so that it can break immeasurable transgressions obstructing the path and attain endurance of the nonarising of dharmas, then the practice possesses substance.

Although individual scriptures contain many methods of practice, the treatise briefly lists constant walking, constant sitting, half walking and half sitting, and neither walking nor sitting. Each has its own phenomenal forms and method, and all require bodily exertion and painful diligence; yet they share correct contemplation of the true mark as their substance, without interruption from thought to thought and pure like empty space. Phenomenal forms do not disappear because of correct contemplation, and correct contemplation is not a sentence of principle appended from outside those phenomenal forms.

The Lesser Vehicle Vinaya basket does not permit repentance by one who has committed a grave precept, while its sūtra basket has such a person recollect the Buddha’s body and explains recollecting the Buddha’s body as recollecting emptiness. It also possesses methods such as constant walking, but takes partial emptiness as their substance. Other gateways of teaching likewise have corresponding methods: some take immediate emptiness as substance, some have sequentially distinct practices, and some have open and interpenetrating practices; each differs according to its substance. Similar external forms of method do not mean that the substances of the practices are the same.

Practice and Substance Each Have Coarse and Wondrous Aspects, While Opening and Revealing Also Illumine Minute Goodness

When judging coarse and wondrous among the various practices, the treatise views practice and substance together. Practice through faith, practice through Dharma, and true, resembling, horizontal, and vertical practices in the Tripiṭaka and Shared Teachings take the collateral as their substance, so practice and substance are both coarse. The Distinct Teaching practices through a distinct gateway but takes the principal as substance; because its cause is impermanent and its fruit permanent, its practice is coarse and its substance wondrous. The Perfect Teaching relies upon the perfect gateway and principal substance, so practice and substance are both wondrous. Methods such as constant walking cultivated according to individual scriptures can likewise be divided into cases in which practice and substance are both coarse, practice is coarse and substance wondrous, or practice and substance are both wondrous.

When the coarse is opened, hearing and careful reflection are revealed as practice through faith and practice through Dharma, both capable of drawing near the unsurpassed path. Within horizontal practices, bowing the head, raising a hand, singing praise, and acting with a distracted mind have all already accomplished the Buddha-path. If even the shallowest practices can be opened and become wondrous, the rest can be understood accordingly; among minute wholesome Dharmas practiced through Lesser Vehicle methods, not one fails to accomplish buddhahood.

The opening and revealing here corresponds to the preceding opening of teaching, practice, person, and substance. Practitioners thereby see that hearing and reflection, actions, and minute goodness previously understood within limited bounds were originally never outside reality; opening and revealing enables these practices to disclose their capacity to accomplish the Buddha-path.

If the True Mark Pervades Everything, How Can Differences of Coarse and Wondrous Be Established?

The seventh topic takes a further step. Vairocana pervades all places, and all dharmas do not go beyond the Four Truths; the sutra’s substance and the substance of practice therefore cease to be merely local questions and become the question of that in reliance upon which all dharmas are established.

The treatise uses the soil of the ten directions and the soil upon a fingernail to describe the vast difference between what the Buddha has not taught and what he has taught. Kāśyapa then asks whether, because what has been taught is the Four Truths, the vast remainder not taught should constitute a fifth truth. The Buddha answers that it does not: each of the Four Truths simply possesses immeasurable characteristics. The number does not increase, yet the characteristics encompassed can unfold without measure.

Suffering and accumulation encompass worldly causes and fruits, wholesome and unwholesome, while the path and cessation encompass all world-transcending causes and fruits. Worldly and world-transcending, wholesome and unwholesome, cause and fruit—all rely upon the true mark as their substance. “From the basis of nonabiding, all dharmas are established” describes the basis as abiding nowhere; precisely because it does not abide, the many dharmas can be established.

Here, the underlying and the dependent must be distinguished. The underlying substance of the true mark is wondrous and without difference, while the dharmas established in reliance upon it are coarse or wondrous. The one underlying substance pervades everything, yet the characteristics of the dharmas dependent upon it remain different; although the dependent dharmas are coarse or wondrous, the underlying substance never differs. Coarse and wondrous can be distinguished through the five flavors, and the coarse can be opened to reveal the wondrous.

The three topics thus form a complete progression: the many scriptural names return to one substance, the many practices are accomplished in reliance upon that substance, and all worldly and world-transcending causes and fruits again take it as their underlying basis. Discerning the substance does not stop with an abstract definition. It permits names, gateways of teaching, methods of practice, and causes and fruits each to retain their differences, while revealing how none of those differences depart from reality.

Through the Eye of the Shiqian

Zhanran first explicitly divides the fifth topic into five gateways, then divides the passage on the present sutra’s different names into first listing the names and then integrating them. The Mirror identifies in turn what the great matter is done for, what the Buddha’s knowing-and-seeing sees, what the seal represents, what the family estate entrusts, what the ground of wisdom supports, what the place of treasure and precious jewel represent, what the samādhi relies upon, where the universal gateway passes, and what is the root of the many virtues. “Different names, one substance” can therefore be established only after each name’s intended meaning has been read, not by passing over the names.

In the gateway of collateral and principal, the Mirror assigns the true mark to the Perfect, collateral partial truth to the Tripiṭaka, the partial containing the real to the Shared, and the real carrying the partial to the Distinct. It further judges the Madhyamaka Treatise to attest the Shared, the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra to attest the Tripiṭaka and the Distinct and Perfect, and the two sentences from the present sutra to attest the Tripiṭaka and Perfect in relation to one another. This gives “containing” and “carrying” their respective directions and prevents the three groups of citations from becoming a heap of synonyms.

Coarse and wondrous and opening the coarse are divided into first judging and then opening. The first judgment preserves the depth revealed by each teaching; only with the subsequent opening do the collateral teaching, collateral practice, collateral person, and collateral substance converge into the principal. If the fact that all are wondrous after opening were used directly to cover over the preceding judgment, both sequences in the root text would lose their function.

The Mirror also defines the horizontal and vertical in the sixth topic. Vertical proceeds from shallow to deep; horizontal consists in the beginner’s comprehensive cultivation of the many practices, and both take the meaning taught by their respective teaching as substance. The four groups of scriptural evidence are further divided into horizontal forms of practice and their underlying substance: existent and nonexistent correspond to the great cart, original habituation to one for each, the various practices to nonarising, and giving to nonabiding. This Mirror adds no new gateway of practice; it merely separates the two aspects of each group in the treatise.

When discussing practice according to scripture, Zhanran says on the one hand that painful practice alone cannot represent principle and must be guided by the contemplative principle; on the other, if practice is absent, principle cannot become manifest. Teaching, practice, and principle mutually support, guide, and accomplish one another. This directly illumines the bidirectional relation in the root text between “when the root is established, the path arises” and “substance relies upon practice to become manifest.”

The root text says only that the complete meaning of contemplation is explained elsewhere in the Calming and Contemplation, referring to the Mohe Zhiguan. The horizontal and vertical definitions and the arrangement of citations made in the Mirror are what emerge from the cross-reading by name; they cannot be projected backward as an explicit list originally present in this passage. Great Master Zhiyi’s teaching and Guanding’s record remain one layer, while Zhanran’s later explanation is another.

The seventh topic is further divided into contemplating the underlying substance of scripture and the dharmas that depend upon it. Zhanran judges Dharma-body to be the underlying and the four kinds of Four Truths to be the dependent, and explicitly places coarse and wondrous upon the dependent dharmas. Looking back from this point at the closing sentence, the wondrous underlying substance’s lack of difference does not cancel the causes, fruits, and coarse and wondrous qualities of the dependent; that all dharmas depend pervasively upon the true mark does not turn the true mark into many differentiated substances.

Zhiquan encompasses the different names through emptiness, the provisional, and the Middle and also says that the true mark pervades all dharmas. Zhili distinguishes Dharma-body from the wisdom able to correspond with it. Zhiyuan illuminates the same topic through many names, horizontal pervasion and vertical inclusion, and one principle viewed according to faculties. These later parallel rays of light do not replace the sequence within the treatise’s own three topics from the sutra’s substance, through the substance of practice, to the substance of all dharmas.

Zhixu’s Essential Digest of the Fahua Xuanyi preserves the later graph forms “place of treasure” and “planting the roots of manifold virtues” in the fifth topic, while merely pointing to the full fascicle for the sixth and seventh. Such an abridgment can help distinguish graph forms, but its abbreviation of the latter two topics cannot make it a dissenting interpretation; the complete account must still be read through the three continuous topics of the root treatise.

The preceding chapter discerned the true mark as the substance. Since every cause and fruit is inseparable from the true mark, why establish a separate “purport”? If the purport is simply the substance, the five chapters repeat themselves; if the purport is another Dharma outside the substance, practice departs from the true mark. The chapter on clarifying the purport begins with precisely this dilemma.

It does not begin by giving the purport an isolated definition. Instead, it draws four pictures: throat and collar, a road, beams and columns, and the cords of a net. The throat and collar are vital points of a body and a garment, while a road provides a course to follow; beams and columns enable a house to stand, and when the governing cord is lifted, every mesh moves. The purport is therefore not merely one proposition that is believed. It is the governing outline that gathers up the causes and fruits of practice and keeps the many practices from falling apart.

1. Purport and Substance: Neither Identical nor Separate

Why can the purport not simply be called the substance? Because the purport concerns cause and fruit, which have a beginning and a completion, whereas the substance is neither cause nor fruit and does not fall into a duality. To identify the two would be like calling the beams and columns the empty space within the house, and then calling that empty space the beams and columns. They are related, but they do not refer to the same thing.

Why can the purport and substance not be completely different? If the purport left the substance, the causes and fruits of practice would lose the seal of the true mark and become a crooked and inverted course. If the substance left the purport, it would become narrow and fail to pervade, as though causes and fruits existed somewhere outside Dharma-nature. The two Dharmas would stand isolated from one another: the purport would no longer be a purport that reveals the substance, and the substance would no longer be that upon which the purport relies.

The positive answer is therefore “not different, yet distinct.” They are not different because every cause and fruit depends entirely upon the true mark; there is no path of practice outside Dharma-nature. Yet they are distinct because the true mark is spoken of as neither cause nor fruit, while the purport is spoken of as the beginning of practice being cause and the completion of practice being fruit. The substance indicates the principle upon which practice relies; the purport indicates practice’s beginning and end in reliance upon that principle. The two names are distinguished, while what they describe remains one path that never leaves the true mark.

2. How Can One Copper Substance Have Two Kinds of Beginning and End?

The copper simile makes this relation visible. The substance of copper is not called a beginning or a completion. When one prepares to cast it as an image, there is the image’s beginning; when the finishing and polishing are complete, there is the image’s completion. If one prepares to make a vessel, the vessel likewise has its own beginning and completion. The one copper substance does not become two copper substances because two things can be made from it, nor are the causes and fruits of the image and vessel thereby erased.

Perfect cause and fruit and partial cause and fruit are like the image and vessel, each with its own beginning and completion. Arousing the mind of the seven kinds of skillful means is partial cause; realizing nirvāṇa with remainder and without remainder is partial fruit. Opening the Buddha’s knowing-and-seeing is perfect cause; ultimate wondrous awakening is perfect fruit. Distinguishing these two kinds of cause and fruit does not divide the substance of the true mark into two kinds. Knowing that both rely upon one substance does not make their causes and fruits indistinguishable.

The example of buddha-nature makes the same point again in terms of time. Buddha-nature is not fixed as belonging to the future, nor is it fixed as something already possessed from the beginning; yet in relation to sentient beings now and their future fruit-virtues, one can speak of its being “originally possessed” and “to be attained in the future.” Sentient beings all possess buddha-nature, while the thirty-two marks and vajra body still await accomplishment. Both “original” and “future” are said in reliance upon buddha-nature, yet neither can confine buddha-nature to a fixed point in time. The distinction between purport and substance likewise speaks of the beginning and end of practice in reliance upon the same true mark.

3. Why Do the Old Interpretations Keep Losing the Balance between Cause and Fruit?

At this point Guanding separately sets out the purports established by earlier masters. This passage is no longer only Master Zhiyi’s positive discernment of purport and substance. The recorder spreads out the preceding views one by one and examines whether they can encompass cause and fruit, beginning and end, and both earlier and later passages of the sutra.

One view takes the One Vehicle but attends only to the one established by refuting the three; one takes only the wisdom of buddhahood and abandons the cause of practice; one adds object and wisdom but still leaves out fruit; one makes the whole earlier section cause and the whole latter section fruit, thereby erasing the other side from each section. Others take the two wisdoms of the provisional and the real, the sutra’s title, permanence, the myriad wholesome practices, uncontaminated good, or awakening as the purport. Each view elevates a single item as the sutra’s purport. The question is whether that item can bear the beginning and end of the entire sutra.

If only cause is taken, the purport cannot reach fruit; if only fruit is taken, the fruit has nothing from which to arise. If the purport is reduced to the name permanence, the practice of cause and fruit disappears. If awakening is fixed as the sole purport, one invokes a Dharma without fixed characteristics while fixing awakening rigidly in place. Adding an object while still lacking fruit is like swelling that does not increase healthy flesh. Being asked about the cause of practice but answering only with the fruit of awakening is like being asked for the south and pointing north. Guanding’s analysis does not merely ask whether a term sounds elevated; it asks whether the term can gather up the sutra’s causes and fruits without harming its text.

4. Why Must the Sutra’s Governing Purport Embrace Both Its Earlier and Latter Parts?

The earlier part of the present sutra, from “Introduction” through “Peaceful Practices,” abolishes skillful means and reveals the real: the Buddha’s knowing-and-seeing. It speaks both of the disciples’ real cause and fruit and of the teacher’s provisional cause and fruit, but the essential point of this entire part is to accomplish the disciples’ real cause. Cause is therefore principal and fruit collateral, and this is called the cause and fruit within the Trace Gate.

The latter part, from “Emerging from the Earth” through “The Encouragement of the Bodhisattva Universally Worthy” (Samantabhadra), reveals the Origin by disclosing the Trace, abolishes the expedient display of a recent lifespan, and reveals the distant real fruit. This part likewise possesses the causes and fruits of both disciples and teacher, both real and provisional; but its essential point is to reveal the Buddha’s distant real fruit. Fruit is therefore principal and cause collateral, and this is called the cause and fruit within the Origin Gate.

“Cause principal, fruit collateral” does not mean that the earlier part has no fruit, and “fruit principal, cause collateral” does not mean that the latter part has no cause. Principal and collateral indicate only where a passage places its emphasis. When the two parts are joined, disciples and Buddha, cause and fruit, provisional and real are all complete at once. This is why the sutra’s title raises both Dharma and simile and places lotus and blossom together, and why the sutra’s purport cannot take only one side.

5. If All Scriptures Have Cause and Fruit, How Does the Present Sutra Still Have Its Own Purport?

The true mark can seal and determine the substance of the various scriptures, and the various scriptures can all discuss cause and fruit in reliance upon the true mark. Their difference lies in the capacities they address and the point upon which each places its emphasis.

The Great Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra takes the true mark, neither cause nor fruit, as its substance. Although it possesses both cause and fruit, prajñā’s clearing-away makes the cultivation of cause principal. In the Vimalakīrti Sūtra’s questions and answers about the buddha-land, Ratnākara asks fully about cause and fruit and the Buddha answers fully about cause and fruit, so both meanings serve as its purport. The Avataṃsaka Sūtra can be read as taking cause for its purport through the myriad practices that adorn; as taking fruit for its purport through Buddha and Dharma-body; or as combining the Buddha-fruit in the title with the cause of “flower-adornment” and so taking cause and fruit together as its purport.

These comparisons do not arrange the scriptures along one linear scale. Whether a scripture addresses three kinds of people or bodhisattvas in particular, whether it addresses sharp or dull faculties, and whether the meaning of buddha-land is taken in one way or three, its causes and fruits can be the same in one respect and different in another. Cause and fruit within the Trace can be compared within these distinctions of capacities.

The causes and fruits within the distant Origin, however, open another level. The Tripiṭaka and Shared Teachings speak of cause and fruit from an initial practice and initial attainment. Although the Great Prajñāpāramitā, Vimalakīrti, and Avataṃsaka speak in various ways of the embodied life, Dharma-body, transformations, or Origin and Trace of buddhas and bodhisattvas, they do not directly reveal the true and response bodies first attained in the distant past, together with the distant original causes and fruits of the Buddha and his disciples. The present sutra reveals that the śrāvakas originally have an Origin and that their causes and fruits as members of the Two Vehicles within the Trace are manifested from that Origin. It gathers the birth of the embodied life in the royal palace, the birth of the Dharma-body beneath the bodhi tree, and every manifestation in between into the Trace, then points back to the very first attainment as the Origin. In this respect the original causes and fruits of teacher and disciples are absent from the other scriptures.

6. How Are Coarse Causes and Fruits Opened into Wondrous Causes and Fruits?

After discerning the sutra’s purport, another question remains: when scriptures alike speak of perfect cause and fruit, why are some coarse and others wondrous? The criterion is not merely whether the perfect is mentioned, but whether perfect cause and fruit remain mixed with and encumbered by expedient causes and fruits.

The Great Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra says that practicing prajñā for a single day is like sunlight breaking darkness, and that upon arousing the mind a bodhisattva can sport in supernormal powers; yet perfect cause remains together with coarse cause. It says that the Dharma-body neither comes nor goes; yet perfect fruit remains together with coarse fruit. The Vaipulya teachings use the image that lotus blossoms do not grow on high dry ground to rebuke partial causes and fruits, but do not reveal how the partial enters the perfect. The Avataṃsaka is like the sun first illuminating the high mountains and speaks of a perfect cause and the perfect fruit of one in the ultimate final body, but still carries Distinct causes and fruits. Wherever what is carried has not been resolved, the perfect meaning cannot appear by itself.

The present sutra gives predictions to śrāvakas and removes the doubts of bodhisattvas, opening the Buddha’s knowing-and-seeing for all and bringing them into one perfect cause. It also reveals the Origin by disclosing the Trace, bringing all to awaken to the real fruit. Its cause is perfect and its fruit real, without the continued admixture of skillful means, and it is therefore called wondrous.

Opening the coarse, however, does not discard the past expedient causes and fruits. When sentient beings’ faculties were dull, expedient causes and fruits first met and guided their immediate dispositions. After they had been tempered and matured, coarse causes were resolved so that they together became wondrous causes, and coarse fruits were resolved so that they together became wondrous fruits. The minute causes of scattered goodness—bowing the head, raising a hand, and “adhering to the Dharma”—are all opened and resolved as perfect causes; no practice of the Two Vehicles or of bodhisattvas is excluded. The wondrous is not another cause and fruit outside the coarse. It reveals the shared destination of every former cause and fruit.

7. From the First Abode to Wondrous Awakening, How Is Each Step Both Cause and Fruit?

The sutra teaches cause and fruit for the benefit of practitioners in embodied life and Dharma-body alike. When it teaches opening the provisional to reveal the real, it principally enables those in embodied life among the seven kinds of skillful means who have not yet entered to enter, while also advancing those in embodied life and Dharma-body who have already entered. When it teaches the distant lifespan, it principally advances those who have already entered, while also enabling those in embodied life who have not yet entered to enter. Principal and collateral are reversed, yet the benefit in both cases concerns entering and advancing.

From the first entry into the Perfect through the seven kinds of skillful means, at the stage of the copper wheel, it is called cause; when only one life remains and that life is turned so that wondrous awakening is attained, it is called fruit. This describes cause and fruit from the general path’s first and last endpoints.

Viewed within each intervening stage, there are causes and fruits in each successive part. Suppressing one part of ignorance through the uninterrupted path is cause; severing that part of ignorance through the path of liberation is fruit. The liberation already attained becomes the basis for the next uninterrupted path and is therefore called cause of the cause; the next uninterrupted path again obtains liberation, which is therefore called fruit of the fruit. Cause of the cause and fruit of the fruit are not two additional kinds of stage. They name the same part-by-part advance when viewed from its preceding and following sides.

Viewed through adjacent stages, the ten abodes are cause and the ten practices fruit; the ten practices become cause and the ten dedications fruit; the ten dedications become cause and the ten grounds fruit; the ten grounds become cause and equal awakening fruit; equal awakening becomes cause and wondrous awakening fruit. The fruit in one relation can become cause in the next. Cause and fruit are not two permanently fixed labels, but relational names within the course of practice.

The two endpoints must nevertheless remain clear. The first abode sees the true and is only cause and only uninterrupted path, never fruit or path of liberation. Wondrous awakening is ultimate and is only fruit and only path of liberation, never again cause or uninterrupted path. Snapping the fingers and scattering flowers, hearing a single phrase, and merely being a being with mind can be spoken of distantly as the seeds of the three causes; yet these remain seeds of intrinsic virtue and have not reached the real opening and development taken here as cause. The purport’s cause asks not only whether a possibility exists, but whether practice has actually opened and developed it.

8. Having Entered the Perfect Principle, Why Does One Still Speak of Gradual Study?

If “perfect” refers to the principle seen, the first entry and the ultimate completion do not behold two different true marks. If “gradual” refers to the phenomenal work of practice, however, practice remains incomplete after the first seeing. Perfect and gradual can therefore both apply from different perspectives.

Gradual-perfect means gradually entering perfect cause from the seven kinds of skillful means. Perfect-gradual means that one has initially entered and already seen the perfect principle, while the practices of the higher stages still require cultivation. Gradual-gradual is the gradual advance within the Perfect from the second abode through equal awakening. Perfect-perfect is wondrous awakening, where the principle was perfect beforehand and phenomenal practice is now also perfect.

The same four names are then assigned again from within the stages of the Perfect: the first abode is perfect-gradual; the second abode through the thirty minds is gradual-gradual; the first ground onward is gradual-perfect; and wondrous awakening is perfect-perfect. The two explanations employ different scales, but together answer one question: seeing the perfect principle does not mean that every function of practice is complete at that very moment.

The moon simile illuminates the distinction between principle and practice. The new moon’s outline is already round, while its light is incomplete: this represents perfect-gradual. From the second through the fourteenth day its light increases: this represents gradual-gradual. On the fifteenth it is full: this represents gradual-perfect as well as perfect-perfect. The moon itself undergoes no real waning or waxing, yet people speak of waning and waxing according to its appearance. There are not two principles, one gradual and one perfect, yet gradual and perfect can still be distinguished through the phenomenal work of practice.

The final mutual inclusion of teaching names follows the same method. Within one teaching, a particular meaning can carry the name of another: morality, concentration, and wisdom can carry the Tripiṭaka name; nonarising and true truth can carry the Shared name; distinctions of stages and gateways can carry the Distinct name; completion and interpenetration can carry the Perfect name. The names can meet one another while the meanings proper to their positions remain distinct. This does not erase distinctions. It shows how one Dharma gate can be named from several angles.

Clarifying the purport has now moved from purport and substance as neither identical nor different, through the causes and fruits of Origin and Trace, the sameness and difference among scriptures, judging and opening coarse and wondrous, the causes and fruits of each successive part and stage, and the fourfold analysis of perfect and gradual. The purport is the throat and collar and the governing cord precisely because it can gather up all these paths while always enabling the many practices to rely upon the substance and return to the substance.

Through the Eye of the Shiqian

The preceding exposition follows the sequence of Master Zhiyi’s teaching and Guanding’s private broad survey. Zhanran’s Fahua Xuanyi Shiqian first divides the six opening phrases into two groups: the first two say that the purport is essential to practice, and the latter four say that the purport has the function of revealing the substance. “Gathering the many practices through cause and fruit, the many practices rely upon the substance and return to take the substance” is the first eye of the whole chapter. If the purport gathered practices without returning them to the substance, it would lose the seal of the true mark; if the substance could not be revealed through practice, it would become a principle outside phenomena.

The second eye concerns authorial layers. Zhanran explicitly judges that the discernment of purport and substance first refutes what is wrong and reveals what is correct, after which Guanding “privately sets out the old views broadly and discerns their errors.” The views from Master Yuan onward, together with “I privately say” and “I now say,” therefore belong to the recorder’s ordering of earlier interpretations. Master Zhiyi’s positive teaching comprises the refutation of identity, the refutation of difference, the positive revelation, the two examples concerning buddha-nature, and the ensuing direct clarification of the purport. This boundary prevents the earlier interpretations from passing as the treatise master’s own continuous teaching, while also keeping Guanding’s work visible.

The third eye is the completeness of both Origin and Trace. Zhanran divides each of the two parts into citing the scriptural passage, direct explanation, determining principal and collateral, and conclusion. Cause is principal and fruit collateral in the earlier part; fruit is principal and cause collateral in the latter. This indicates only the different emphasis of each part, for both still contain cause and fruit. When the various scriptures are compared, sameness and difference can be distinguished within the Trace; the distant Origin, by contrast, is consistently different. These two comparisons cannot be collapsed into one level.

The fourth eye is that coarse and wondrous must first be judged and then opened. Zhanran places the Dharma-body’s neither coming nor going back within the scene in which Sadāprarudita sees a buddha and Dharmodgata then teaches the Dharma. The judgment that perfect fruit still carries something coarse is thereby not turned into an aphorism without a speaker or context. Judging the coarse points out that skillful means remain; opening the coarse then carries the preceding causes and fruits together into the wondrous. Joined together, these two steps neither treat former expedients as ultimate nor allow their former benefit to be lost.

The fifth eye concerns the scale of cause and fruit. Zhanran first describes the general beginning and end from the first entry into the Perfect through wondrous awakening. He then explains that every stage has uninterrupted cause and liberation-fruit, and finally uses the relation between preceding and following to explain cause of the cause and fruit of the fruit. Although the three causes as intrinsic virtue can be posited distantly, they are still excluded from the principal judgment here. The cause taken as the purport is actual opening and development; it does not place a resemblance-stage and an intrinsic-virtue seed on the same level.

The sixth eye concerns the two fourfold analyses. Zhanran first distinguishes the four terms gradual-perfect, perfect-gradual, gradual-gradual, and perfect-perfect, and then the four terms involving worthy and noble. Within the former, he further distinguishes the scale of entering the Perfect from the partial and the scale internal to the stages of the Perfect, warning that configurations in other treatises differ slightly and cannot simply be imposed here. In the later question he gives the governing rule: “names may mutually occur, but meanings necessarily do not interpenetrate.” The names can include one another, while their doctrinal positions still return to their proper places.

At the end the mirror also preserves one textual doubt. The root text says gradual-perfect twice; according to the sequence, Zhanran thinks one occurrence should name perfect-gradual, but he records the suspicion only in the commentary and does not erase the base text. This moment fittingly echoes the whole chapter: distinctions may be clearly raised, while the text upon which they rely is not silently replaced by a later editor’s ordering.

In Guanding’s record of Zhiyi’s teaching, the fourth chapter turns from name, substance, and purport toward function. The first three chapters have already shown what the sutra’s name summons, where its true substance lies, and how cause and fruit are established. Clarifying the function brings the question to bear upon sentient beings: if what is taught is real but cannot sever doubt, and if the cause and fruit clarified cannot give rise to faith, reality remains only a principle that has been understood and has not yet become an active power.

This chapter therefore does not add another system of doctrine. It asks how everything already clarified actually takes effect.

Why Are Provisional and Real Wisdoms the Wondrous Capacity, and Severing Doubt and Giving Rise to Faith the Supreme Function?

Who is functioning? The Tathāgata responds to faculties through provisional and real wisdoms; discussed from the side of the person, these are the wondrous capacity. What takes place? The doubts of sentient beings are severed and faith in reality arises; discussed from the side of the Dharma, this is the supreme function. Person and Dharma are not two causal sequences but two sides of the same event: the two wisdoms sever doubt and give rise to faith, while severing doubt and giving rise to faith precisely reveal the capacity of the two wisdoms.

Will purport and function then become confused? Purport discusses cause and fruit, while function discusses severing doubt and giving rise to faith. Cause and fruit have their own effects of severing and subduing delusion; severing doubt and giving rise to faith also rely upon compassion. Zhiyi therefore uses the four compounds “the function within the purport,” “the function within the function,” “the purport upon which the function relies,” and “the purport established within the purport.” They clarify where the two interpenetrate while preserving the principal place of each. When discussing the purport, attention rests upon cause and fruit; when discussing the function, it rests upon how sentient beings turn from doubt to faith. They complete one another without displacing one another’s topic.

The whole chapter therefore unfolds as five questions. Where does the present sutra’s power lie? It shares the names provisional and real with other scriptures, so where does its difference lie? How does this power unfold as ten functions each within the Trace and the Origin? How do these twenty functions correspond to the four siddhāntas? Other scriptures also speak of breaking, abolishing, opening, gathering, and the four siddhāntas, so why is the present sutra’s function still supreme? From beginning to end, all five divisions circle one event: how Buddha-wisdom precisely turns the doubts and faith of sentient beings.

If the Rain Has One Flavor, Why Must It Fall Equally in the Four Directions?

The present sutra’s power first appears in the fact that it says not only that what the Buddha transforms is Trace, but also that the Buddha-body now before the assembly is itself Trace. Once attention turns from external transformations to the Buddha’s own body, awakening in the recent past is no longer the final boundary. The conjured-city fruit attained by the two vehicles can be broken, and the attachment of bodhisattvas under skillful means who take the near Trace as ultimate can be opened. Near doubt is severed and distant faith arises; Dharma-body bodhisattvas further advance along the path because the merit of the Origin is disclosed. This is why the chapter is named for function.

What does it mean for rain of one flavor to fall equally in the four directions? The four directions are not four mutually isolated kinds of water; the rain always has one flavor. Yet it must fall everywhere for attachment at all four gateways to loosen at once. Those seeking the complete path are thereby fulfilled, turn from deep doubt to great faith, and enter the One Perfect cause. The Great Vehicle cart then travels through the four directions and finally reaches the bodhimaṇḍa. Rain and cart, one still and one moving, reveal two sides of the same movement: rain shows universal moistening, while the cart shows unobstructed passage. Together they show that the one in which real wisdom abides does not obstruct the many to which provisional wisdom responds.

This field of benefit extends from the initial graph a to the place near the final graph cha, and further to bodhisattvas advancing along the path too numerous to count even if lands throughout the ten directions, in number like nayutas, were ground into dust. Although its scope is so vast, its point is not abstract grandeur. It is that the deep doubt of every recipient of the Dharma can truly be severed and great faith can truly arise.

Why Does What Most Resembles a Dead Seed Best Reveal the Power of the Dharma-Medicine?

Those of the two vehicles fear birth-and-death, enter emptiness, and take realization, regarding themselves as secure and delivered. Why is this security portrayed as a pit? Once what has been realized is sealed as the endpoint, it is like falling into the three pits of the unconditioned, where the road no longer continues. The suffering of death or death-equivalent suffering, the scorched sprout, ruined seed, high and dry ground, deafness, and muteness form a sequence of images that presses the same predicament ever deeper: life seems to have lost all possibility of renewed growth; the ear cannot hear, the tongue cannot speak, and the Dharma-medicine finds no place to enter.

Icchantikas still possess mind, so where there is mind there remains the possibility of buddhahood. Yet in those who have reduced the body to ashes and extinguished cognition, even the place that could receive treatment seems to have disappeared. Precisely because the difficulty has reached this point, the power of the present sutra appears at its deepest. Buddha-wisdom is like a great physician and the Wondrous Dharma like good medicine: the physical body is not reduced to ashes but becomes like pure beryl, within which all forms inside and outside appear; cognition is not extinguished, but can open, reveal, awaken to, and enter the Buddha’s knowing-and-seeing.

The lowly hired laborer receives the family estate of awakening, and high, dry ground receives the Buddha’s lotus. Both enact the same reversal: what had previously been judged unable to receive the Dharma now becomes the ground of prediction and disclosure. The ear hears the sounds of the ten Dharma realms at once, the tongue gives voice to the Buddha’s sound according to every kind of being, and one faculty can even perform the functions of all the others. This brings the reversal into the body itself. The function of the Lotus not only changes how practitioners understand the fruit; it also reveals anew, within the life judged barren, a body and mind able to hear, speak, and receive the family estate of the Buddha-Dharma.

Why Does One Chain of Comparison Concern Wisdom and the Other Power?

Zhiyi first says that even Cao Cao’s strategic intelligence fell thirty-five li short of Yang Xiu’s. He then proceeds from worldly intelligence in the Central Lands to that of non-Buddhists in foreign lands and onward to Śāriputra. Firefly and sunlight compare the wisdom of the two vehicles and bodhisattvas; a wild goose represents a bodhisattva of the Shared Teaching; a garuḍa able to travel from one Mount Sumeru to another represents a bodhisattva of the Distinct Teaching; finally, soil upon a fingernail and soil throughout the ten directions compare the wisdom of Distinct bodhisattvas with Buddha-wisdom. At each higher level, the range visible to the preceding level is shown to be limited. The chain ends in Buddha-wisdom as consummately integrated, immediate, sudden, and real—neither vertical nor horizontal, perfectly interfused and wondrous beyond comparison. It reveals real wisdom: the principle illuminated is impartial, and the wisdom that illuminates is unobstructed.

He next speaks of ten calves, then one dragon, ten dragons, one strongman, and ten strongmen, who still do not equal a person possessing the five supernormal powers. An outsider with the five powers does not equal one arhat; all arhats do not equal one Maudgalyāyana; Maudgalyāyana does not equal Śāriputra; Śāriputra does not equal a bodhisattva; a bodhisattva does not equal a Distinct bodhisattva; a Distinct bodhisattva does not equal a Perfect bodhisattva; and a Perfect bodhisattva does not equal the Buddha. This chain reveals provisional power: the Buddha’s Trace is immensely broad, one transformation can produce another, and transformations within transformations are inexhaustible. The asura’s lute sounds responsively without anyone planning it, perfectly gathering the meaning of “without contrivance yet fitting.” Real wisdom makes what is seen perfectly clear; provisional wisdom makes every manifestation precisely fit the faculties before it. Only together do the two chains show the complete wondrous capacity able to sever doubt and give rise to faith.

If They Are All Called Provisional and Real Wisdoms, Where Does the Difference Actually Lie?

Someone asks: the substance of the true mark and the purport of cause and fruit extend through the various scriptures, and provisional and real wisdoms are not unique to this sutra. Why, then, can the present sutra alone be said to possess the supreme function?

The answer lies in what doubt is severed and what faith arises. The Tripiṭaka and Shared Teachings sever doubt concerning the four abiding delusions and produce faith in partial truth. Although the Vimalakīrti Sūtra rebukes the two vehicles and bodhisattvas practicing partial ways, its function remains within the realm. The general intention of the Mahāprajñāpāramitā Sūtra also remains within the realm; although its distinct intention reaches beyond the realm, it still does not sever doubt in the near or give rise to faith in the distant. The principal intention of the Avataṃsaka severs doubt beyond the realm and gives rise to Perfect faith, yet it still does not push aside attachment to recent awakening and disclose the distant Origin.

Identical names therefore show only that all these scriptures employ Buddha-wisdom; they do not show that their functions reach the same place. The present sutra uses the Buddha’s two wisdoms of awakening to enable the seven expedients to sever their greatest ignorance and enter the Perfect cause together. It further breaks attachment to the near Trace and enables deep faith in the Origin to arise; even bodhisattvas at equal awakening thereby sever doubt and advance along the path. The sameness lies in the names of the two wisdoms; the difference lies in the depth of the transformation of doubt and faith and in where that transformation reaches.

Why Must Breaking, Abolishing, Opening, and Gathering Be Four Different Actions?

The ten functions within the Trace begin by unfolding through breaking the three, abolishing the three, opening the three, and gathering the three. All four actions move toward the one, but each performs different work.

Breaking the three breaks attachment. In the past, sentient beings could not bear the Buddha-Vehicle, so the Buddha followed the skillful power practiced by buddhas of the past and taught the three vehicles. After long habituation, their minds became enclosed within the three vehicles and no longer sought Buddha-wisdom. To say now that after teaching the Dharma for a long time the real must be taught breaks open that enclosing attachment.

Abolishing the three abolishes the teaching insofar as it is grasped as ultimate. Even when attachment has been broken, if that teaching is still fixed as final reality, the conception of the teaching will grow again like a tree. Directly relinquishing skillful means and teaching only the unsurpassed path keeps a once-effective teaching from being mistaken for the endpoint.

Opening the three is discussed from principle. The true emptiness realized by the two vehicles itself possesses the true mark. Opening and revealing does not carry in another one from beyond the three, but sees within true emptiness the reality that had not previously been perceived wondrously. Thus definitively understanding the Dharma of the śrāvakas, opening the gateway of skillful means, and opening the wisdom-eye for śrāvakas all point to the real within the provisional being disclosed.

Gathering the three is discussed from practice. Such practices as the four establishments of mindfulness and the four dhyānas are all gathered into the Great Vehicle, yet the practitioner must also be gathered. Thus “what you practice is the bodhisattva-path” does not merely rename the Dharma being practiced; it also brings the practitioner to prediction and buddhahood. Only when person, Dharma, and practice are all gathered is gathering the three to reveal the one complete.

Breaking loosens the mind; abolishing prevents teaching from enclosing it again; opening reveals the real meaning within the provisional; gathering brings both person and practice into it. The four actions succeed one another, and none can substitute for another.

If the Buddha Abides in the One, Why Does He Still Abide in, Cover, and Employ the Three?

Abiding in the one to reveal the one expresses the Buddha’s original intent. He originally transforms beings through real wisdom, teaches equally like rain of one flavor, abides in the Great Vehicle himself, and uses the Dharma he has attained—adorned by the power of concentration and wisdom—to liberate sentient beings. Only because beings have obstructions do they see the Tathāgata smear milk with poison and put on tattered, filthy clothing. The milk remains milk and the elder remains the elder. Temporarily changing the outward flavor and appearance enables those unable to receive the Great directly to be led toward it by degrees.

Abiding in the three to reveal the one is then discussed from provisional wisdom. Like the buddhas of the past, the Buddha goes to Vārāṇasī and teaches the five bhikṣus, using different skillful means to help reveal the ultimate meaning. He abides in skillful means so that skillful means can perform its work of leading toward the one.

Abiding in neither three nor one to reveal the one opens from both principle and phenomena. In principle, Dharma abides in its Dharma-position yet lacks intrinsic nature; precisely because it arises through conditions, the one can be revealed through three kinds of conditions. In phenomena, the human and heavenly vehicles are neither the three nor the one, yet can still become paths of entry into the Great Vehicle. Neither three nor one does not stop at double negation; it enables every set of conditions to become an entrance into the Buddha-path.

Covering the three to reveal the one shows that provisional Dharmas at times become hidden and at other times appear. Only the illness is removed; the provisional Dharma is not removed. Once the illness has been cured, that Dharma can remain for later faculties. When faculties subside, it is covered; when faculties arise, it is employed again. The Buddha’s skillful means are therefore not disposable tools, but appear and disappear in response to the roots and conditions of sentient beings.

The last two functions distinguish teacher and disciples. In abiding in the three and using the one, Dharma-body retinues such as Pūrṇa appear as śrāvakas, constantly revealing the one real while inhabiting the identity of the three vehicles and benefiting their fellow practitioners of the pure life. Abiding in the one and using the three arises from original vows: Flower-Light Buddha teaches the three vehicles in a world that is not evil, while the present Buddha also vowed before Treasure-Treasury Buddha to teach the three vehicles in an evil world. The three can be used within the one, and the one can be used within the three; the function of the provisional and real unfolds through both teacher and retinues.

How Is the Distant Origin Opened from the Trace of Recent Awakening?

The ten functions within the Origin still include breaking, abolishing, opening, and gathering, but what they address has shifted from the three and one to the near and distant. Following the sutra’s language, one may speak of opening the near to reveal the distant; following the meaning, one may speak of opening the Trace to reveal the Origin. The near is Trace; the distant is Origin.

Breaking the Trace first breaks attachment to recent awakening. Eight princes once studied under Miaoguang; one prince later became a buddha named Dīpaṃkara. Dīpaṃkara’s disciple later manifested as Śākyamuni, while Miaoguang manifested as Mañjuśrī. The order of teacher and disciple appears reversed, but the real key is that Śākyamuni attained awakening long ago: in the past he could appear as a disciple, and today he can appear as a teacher. The emergence of the jeweled stūpa, gathering of emanation bodies, and appearance of bodhisattvas from beneath the earth press the question further: how could teaching of such scope have been accomplished by a Buddha who awakened only recently?

The passages in three chapters are like lotus leaves gradually accumulating until they cover a pond, building the power to break attachment to the near layer by layer. Maitreya recognizes those taught at the bodhimaṇḍa of quiescent cessation and those transformed by emanation bodies in other directions, but does not recognize the assembly emerging from beneath the earth. His astonishment makes the distant Origin a question that must be answered. When the number implied by recent awakening can no longer be held, and even the numbers of worlds and dust motes cannot be exhausted, the duration of the Origin emerges through the question.

Abolishing the Trace next abolishes the teaching of recent awakening. When the obstructions of the five turbidities were heavy, awakening beneath the bodhi tree near the royal city was all that could be taught. Once faculties matured, the Buddha could say that since the distant past he had constantly taught and transformed beings in Sahā and in immeasurable lands. The near teaching accomplished the work of training and maturing; the distant teaching prevents it from being sealed as ultimate.

Opening the Trace points out that Mañjuśrī’s account, Dīpaṃkara Buddha, the praise and revelation of the path to nirvāṇa over the distant past, and the emanation buddhas already bore the meaning of revealing the Origin. The road to the Origin lies within the near Trace: deeply contemplating the Trace of skillful means enables one to obtain the Origin within the Trace. Gathering the Trace then gathers predictions received beneath this buddha or another, appearances in one’s own body or another’s, and every manifestation—long or short, great or small—back into the Origin. All Traces descend from the Origin; although Origin and Trace differ, they are one at the inconceivable point.

If the Origin Is So Distant, Why Must the Buddha Still Abide in the Trace?

Abiding in the Origin to reveal the Origin first lets the distant Origin itself speak. Bodhisattvas from beneath the earth abide in space, and the Dharma-body Buddha teaches Dharma-body bodhisattvas. The Sahā world is made entirely of gold and filled with humans and devas; although the people see the world burn away, the Buddha’s pure land is not destroyed; and the Buddha’s lifespan is immeasurably long as he constantly abides without cessation. Deep faith and understanding take shape in this contemplation: abiding in the Origin constantly reveals the Origin.

Abiding in the Trace to reveal the Origin still begins from Śākyamuni’s physical body. The stūpa of an ancient buddha emerges and summons the emanation bodies; their gathering leads to the search for one who will propagate the sutra; the appearance of bodhisattvas from beneath the earth leads Maitreya to ask; the question then leads to the disclosure of the distant lifespan. Every link abides in visible Trace while leading the reader toward an immeasurable Origin.

Abiding in neither Trace nor Origin to reveal the Origin reaches where language ceases. Neither real nor false, neither such nor different: it is fixed neither as Origin nor as Trace, and therefore can send forth Trace and reveal Origin. This active capacity does not leave conditions behind, but occurs because the Tathāgata clearly sees sentient beings.

Covering the Trace to reveal the Origin possesses the lion’s vigorous power. When attachment to Trace obstructs the Origin, Trace is temporarily covered; when later faculties need it again, Trace reappears. Many kinds of words, causes and conditions, similes, and teachings all express the lion’s sovereign freedom across earlier and later occasions; buddha-work never ceases even for a moment.

Abiding in the Trace and using the Origin, and abiding in the Origin and using the Trace, each have teacher and disciple aspects. Amid the many intervening Traces of birth and cessation, the Buddha uses the Origin’s real cause and fruit to perform buddha-work; retinues from the Origin also send down forms into the nine paths and use the Dharma of the Origin to benefit sentient beings. Conversely, while the Origin remains unmoved, Trace pervades the Dharma realm: what is not born manifests birth, and what does not cease manifests cessation. Dharma-body bodhisattvas likewise abide in the Origin through the Dharma of nonabiding, making the functions of Trace inexhaustible. Trace is where the Origin functions; Origin is the source of Trace’s power. The two disclose one another in benefiting sentient beings.

Why Are the Twenty Functions Finally Gathered into the Four Siddhāntas?

The twenty functions appear numerous, but their core remains the provisional and real wisdoms benefiting beings according to kind. One voice teaches and sentient beings understand according to their kinds; the one Buddha-wisdom takes the different forms of breaking, abolishing, opening, gathering, abiding, and covering when it meets different doubts, illnesses, and desires. The four siddhāntas gather precisely these benefits responsive to faculties.

In the separate binding of the Trace, opening the three, abiding in the three and using the one, and gathering the three enable people to remain on their familiar road and give rise to understanding of the one within the Dharma already practiced; these therefore belong to the individually adapted siddhānta. Breaking, abolishing, and covering the three remove the illness of attachment and therefore belong to the counteractive siddhānta. Abiding in the three to reveal the one and abiding in the one and using the three accord with different desires and therefore belong to the worldly siddhānta. Abiding in the one to reveal the one and abiding in neither to reveal the one directly enable the seeing of principle and therefore belong to the siddhānta of ultimate meaning.

Yet one function can itself possess all four benefits. Take breaking the three: delighting in hearing one’s own faults and gladly correcting them is a worldly benefit; awakening through the breaking of attachment and increasing wholesome Dharma is an individually adapted benefit; obtaining ease from teaching the one as medicine for the illness of grasping the three is a counteractive benefit; and seeing principle through the breaking of the three is a benefit of ultimate meaning. The other nine functions are the same. Separate binding reveals the principal direction of each function; general binding reveals that any one function can possess all four benefits in response to faculties.

The Origin is likewise. Abiding in the Trace to reveal the Origin and abiding in the Origin and using the Trace accord with desires. Opening the Trace, gathering the Trace, and abiding in the Trace and using the Origin enable goodness to arise through the Dharma of the Origin. Breaking, abolishing, and covering the Trace counteract attachment to the near. Abiding in the Origin and abiding in neither enable the seeing of the ultimate meaning. The two sets of ten functions, Trace and Origin, are therefore not merely sequences of names, but a complete journey through which the two wisdoms discern faculties and mature sentient beings by different entrances.

A Hundred People Surround a Thief—Why Does the Merit Belong to the Captor?

Other scriptures also employ the four siddhāntas and speak of breaking, abolishing, establishing, and revealing. Where does the difference lie? The Tripiṭaka Teaching’s function stops at nirvāṇa with remainder and without remainder. The shared prajñā of the Mahāprajñāpāramitā Sūtra enables realization of truth but does not yet bring distant fulfillment. The vaipulya teachings rebuke the two vehicles and praise the inconceivable Great Vehicle, yet those of the two vehicles still do not enter reality. In the present sutra, they finally sever doubt and remove attachment, enter the Buddha’s true path, and receive predictions of buddhahood. Shared terms accomplish different things for different faculties and at different stages of teaching.

Someone therefore asks: today’s revelation of the one in the Lotus plainly relies upon earlier rebuke and training, so why is the merit attributed only to the present sutra? The simile of a hundred people surrounding a thief gives the answer. The force of attack and encirclement truly depends upon all hundred, but when the thief is captured, the merit belongs to the one who completes the capture. Earlier teaching matured the faculties; today’s opening and revealing completes their severing of doubt and entrance into reality. Earlier work is acknowledged, while the name of completion has its proper bearer.

The function within the Trace already exceeds the various teachings; the ten functions within the Origin further reveal distant workings unspoken in other scriptures. The chapter has now taken “function” to its furthest point. Function is neither display nor the number of doctrinal categories. It is the Buddha’s use of provisional and real wisdoms to enable sentient beings to rise from the ruined-seed ground where hearing and growth appeared impossible, pass through skillful means, sever doubt in the near, give rise to faith in the distant, and finally abide in real wisdom.

Through the Eye of the Shiqian

Zhanran first divides the chapter into two levels: explaining the name “function,” then opening the five divisions. Merit is the fulfillment of cause, attainment is realization and awakening, and power is supreme capacity. These three are first discussed from the Tathāgata’s own practice, while function is principally revealed in benefiting others. The Mirror adds another layer: capacity and function can each extend through self and other, but Zhiyi places attention in this chapter upon the benefit received by sentient beings. It therefore establishes the principal positions as the person possessing the skillful capacity to benefit others and the sutra possessing the function of severing doubt and giving rise to faith.

This judgment brings the four opening formulations into a single relation. The person requires the Dharma, and the Dharma must also be propagated by a person. The two wisdoms are the capacity, while severing doubt and giving rise to faith are what that capacity accomplishes; merit and function are mutually implicative while remaining separately expressible. What Guanding records is Zhiyi’s teaching throughout the chapter, without a separately marked interpolation by the recorder. Only in the later Fahua Xuanyi Shiqian do a commentator’s further judgments concerning the outline and difficult phrases begin.

The first division is illuminated as first directly clarifying effective power, then successively comparing and deciding. Although the passage on the two vehicles mentions the three pits of the unconditioned, the Mirror says that cessation through discernment is principally intended here. From “the physical body is not reduced to ashes” onward, the persons and Dharma able to transform are first shown to be supremely wondrous, and the transformed body then discloses the depth of the benefit. The supreme benefits of the six faculties appear to be described from the stage of resemblance, yet their meaning also reaches higher stages. The ruined seed’s renewed growth is therefore more than a word of encouragement: it has distinct levels of bodily benefit, wisdom benefit, and the transformation of body and wisdom together.

The key phrase of the second division is “the names extend generally, but the matters differ.” The two names provisional and real may pervade the various divisions of the teaching; the distinction lies in what doubt is severed and what faith arises. The third division first establishes the ten functions each of Trace and Origin, then separates their general application across the subtleties from their individual explanations. The first six functions in the Trace mostly possess three intentions: first stating the doctrinal position to which a function corresponds, then recounting the teaching of the past, and finally describing today’s opening and revealing. The last four clarify their present operation directly and need not all be supplemented into the same pattern.

Covering the three most clearly shows the work of the Mirror. The illness is attachment to the provisional as real; the Dharma is every provisional Dharma. Once the illness of attachment is removed, the provisional Dharma itself can reveal the real, and therefore removing the illness does not mean destroying the Dharma. Zhiquan later says that the ten functions of the Trace can be gathered under bestowing, opening, and abolishing, and that the two wisdoms discern faculties so that the ten functions appear and disappear. He follows this reading path, making clearer how the Dharma is covered when faculties subside and used again when they arise.

For the ten functions within the Origin, the Mirror first distinguishes the enumeration, statement of intent, and listed explanations. The first four mostly recount Trace and then brush it aside; the latter six mostly discuss Origin directly through Trace. Abiding in the Origin means abiding in the Origin and constantly revealing it; it does not mean that Origin exists only after every Trace has been left behind. The lion’s vigorous power can leap forward and backward; the backward leap becomes the mark of future benefit, so covering Trace likewise preserves a direction of function for later faculties.

Where the ten functions within the Origin are correlated with the subtleties, Zhanran points out that the original list omits abiding in the Trace to reveal the Origin. He proposes adding an item and rearranging the correlations, while finally leaving room for the possibility that a different intention is present. This is the Shiqian’s textual-critical judgment; the original order of Zhiyi’s root text remains a layer in its own right. When this chapter is read alongside the Mohe Zhiguan and Fahua Wenju, each work’s named doctrinal classifications must likewise remain in its own context. The scriptural current of this chapter is always the way the two wisdoms unfold as twenty functions.

In the Mirror, the fourth division is threaded through by “removing and retaining, appearing and disappearing at the proper time.” Removing means removing the three and removing Trace; retaining means still retaining the three and Trace. If the two wisdoms could not discern faculties, the twenty functions would remain a fixed sequence. Because they remove and retain at the proper time, the ten functions can first be assigned separately to the four siddhāntas and then possess all four benefits generally within each function. This returns to the opening of the chapter: every division ultimately serves to enable sentient beings to sever doubt and give rise to faith.

The eye of the fifth division is that the names three and one are the same while their meanings differ. The rebuke and maturing performed by earlier teachings truly contribute, while the present sutra completes entry into reality. The hundred surrounding the thief and the one capturing him distinguish supporting conditions from accomplishment. When the root text says that other scriptures possess “not one” of the functions within the Origin, the Mirror reads this only as taking any single function as an example to refute equivalence; it does not establish another gateway named “not one.” The Mirror consistently preserves the distinct historical places of root text, later commentary, and still later reception, while the axis of severing doubt and giving rise to faith never changes. The finer the Mirror’s illumination, the less the function of benefiting others departs from the present faculties of sentient beings. Seen from here, the complexity of the twenty functions always serves the compassion through which beings understand one voice according to their kinds.

Why does the text and meaning of the Lotus become incomplete if the characteristics of the teaching are not understood? The fifth chapter opens by drawing a sharp distinction: when one propagates other scriptures, the teaching of the individual scripture can still stand even if the overall characteristics of the teaching are not explained. But when one propagates the Lotus, the text and meaning lack a crucial dimension unless one understands how the Tathāgata taught before and after.

What the present scripture reveals is precisely why the Buddha first taught the many Dharmas and how he then caused them to converge upon the one great matter. Reading what each scripture teaches at that moment enables one to gain the benefit of that particular scripture. To understand further why the teachings open and gather in this sequence, however, one must inquire into the Buddha’s intent.

This distinction makes the sequence of the teachings a complete process of the Tathāgata’s discerning faculties, bestowing benefit, and opening and revealing. It also turns the fifth chapter’s inquiry from the teachings back toward the Buddha’s intent.

Within What Has No Name or Form, Why Still Teach through Provisional Names and Forms?

What the Buddha realizes is originally unrestricted by name and form, yet in facing sentient beings he must still teach by means of names and forms. Teaching therefore has two aspects: reality cannot be exhausted by language, while compassion does not abandon sentient beings who can benefit through language.

The Avataṃsaka first illuminates great faculties and directly explains the stages, practices, and virtues of bodhisattvas. The four Āgamas respectively explain causes and fruits among humans and devas, the profound meaning of true quiescence, the various meditative concentrations, and the refutation of non-Buddhist teachings; together they also teach impermanence and knowing suffering, severing accumulation, realizing cessation, and cultivating the path. The Vaipulya teachings subdue attachment to the small, rebuke partial views, praise the great, and extol the perfect. The Prajñāpāramitā teachings enable three kinds of people to enter together while bodhisattvas advance alone, dispelling attachment to the aggregates and sense fields. The Nirvāṇa Sūtra later rejects the three kinds of practice and indicates the five flavors. Each teaching goes forth to the appropriate faculties and bestows benefit, and each has an irreplaceable function.

Yet bestowing benefit in response to faculties is not the same as having revealed the Buddha’s entire intent in arranging the teachings of his lifetime. What each scripture teaches in its own moment brings benefit to the corresponding faculties. The characteristics of the teaching explain further why these teachings were established, how they connect before and after, and where they ultimately return.

Why Does the Present Scripture Not Explain the Fine Mesh of Dharma Gates?

The Great and Lesser Vehicle contemplations, the ten powers and fearlessnesses, and the many regulations were already explained extensively in earlier scriptures. The present scripture instead reveals the original beginning of arranging the teaching, the selecting and bestowing that occur in the middle, how gradual and sudden teachings each become timely, and how the causes and conditions of the great matter reach their ultimate conclusion. What it preserves is the framework of establishing the teaching, gathering the beginning and end of the Buddha’s lifelong dispensation.

Those whose faculties had been deeply planted and matured in past lives could suddenly receive the great Dharma from the outset and directly enter the Tathāgata’s wisdom. For those unable to bear the great, the Buddha concealed his wondrous virtues and drew near by skillful means through a Dharma pleasing to the impoverished son, telling him to work diligently. Those who had already gained the path were then rebuked through the great to break their attachment to the small and shown the jewel tied to their robe. Those suited to the concurrent treatment of the great and the small were cleansed of attachment through the Prajñāpāramitā teachings and brought to a shared purport. Once this difficulty had been passed, the relation of child and father was settled, the family estate could be entrusted, the provisional Trace was brushed aside, and the real Origin revealed.

This sequence centers on the correspondence between Dharma and faculties. Sudden bestowal, skillful means, rebuke, concurrent treatment, and entrusting the estate are all skillful acts of the same Buddha-wisdom facing different degrees of maturity. An earlier Dharma gives sentient beings benefit; a later Dharma takes up what they have gained and enables them gradually to receive the entire family estate.

Why Does the Calculator First Set Figures Down and Later Eliminate Them?

The calculator first sets down the figures one by one, thereby establishing the total. At settlement, the scattered figures are gathered into the total; only the great number is recorded, and minute amounts measured in pecks and bushels are omitted. The Buddha’s teaching is the same: first he teaches distinctively according to faculties, unfolding the several teachings one by one; later he draws the immeasurable back into the one and gathers the three into the great, returning the earlier distinctions to the total.

“Immeasurable meanings arise from one Dharma” is like figures unfolding from one; “within the One Buddha-Vehicle, he distinctively teaches the three” is like first setting down the calculation. Drawing the immeasurable into the one and gathering the three into the great is like eliminating the figures later and recording only the great number. Only after the prior figures have each been established can they finally be gathered into the real total. Eliminating the calculation shows precisely that the distinct teachings each confer their own benefit while converging together upon the One Buddha-Vehicle.

When Did the Buddha See the Faculties of Sentient Beings?

The treatise places all these intentions of the teaching within “the Dharma-body ground, quiescent yet constantly illuminating.” The Buddha did not wait until he sat beneath the tree of awakening to decide on the spot whether to teach the great or the small. The causes and conditions of the great matter, the praise of skillful means, and the teaching of the real after a long time all show that he had long seen the great faculties, the lesser faculties, and the time for gathering the small into the great.

The “Faith and Understanding” chapter turns this long illumination into a sequence of images: seated on the lion throne, the father sees his son and recognizes him; from the window he sees his son in the distance; he secretly dispatches two men, who draw near by skillful means; their minds come to trust one another, and the son enters and leaves without difficulty; the son takes charge of and understands all the goods; finally, the father entrusts the family estate to him. The father always knows who the child is. What changes is whether the child can bear the inheritance and when he is ready for the next step.

Skillful means and opening and revealing both occur within this long-standing illumination of faculties. When men are sent to tell the son to work diligently, the Buddha’s intent receives him in accord with his faculties. When the family estate is entrusted, the same Buddha-intent brings those being transformed toward maturity. Although the teachings differ before and after, the wisdom that discerns remains continuous throughout.

Why Does the Buddha Stop Three Times and the Assembly Request Four Times?

Even Maitreya cannot recognize the causes and conditions of what the Buddha does, much less other practitioners. Among what has already been taught, what is being taught now, and what will be taught, the present scripture is the most difficult to believe and understand. Its difficulty lies in the fact that it does not merely teach one Dharma gate but reveals the intent of the teaching; the intent of the teaching is the Buddha’s intent, and the Buddha’s intent is Buddha-wisdom.

Thus, as the teaching is about to begin, doubts and requests arise layer upon layer. The Buddha stops three times, while Śāriputra repeatedly makes the request on behalf of the assembly. After the Buddha agrees to teach, Śāriputra again declares his wish and joy in hearing, completing the fourth request. The Origin Gate likewise reveals its profundity through repeated admonitions to believe and requests for the teaching. The stops show how difficult the teaching is to receive; the requests show that the assembly genuinely wishes to hear it.

Brahmā’s initial request simply asked for the Dharma directly, while the Vaipulya and Prajñāpāramitā teachings did not contain the same interwoven net of doubts. The scene in the Avataṃsaka in which Liberation Moon and the assembly request Vajragarbha to teach the ten grounds can be read alongside the present scripture from the perspective of repeated stops and requests. The identity of the Dharma requested and of the one asked to teach, however, must retain their own respective positions.

When Comparing the Two Scriptures, Why Finally Stop at the Buddha’s Purport?

If one looks only at the requester’s identity, it is easy to say that Śāriputra is inferior to a bodhisattva. Yet Śāriputra speaks for the entire assembly, including eighty thousand bodhisattvas seeking the Buddha path. If one looks at the Dharma requested, the Origin Gate has bodhisattvas ask the Buddha to teach the Buddha-Dharma, whereas the Avataṃsaka has bodhisattvas ask a bodhisattva to teach bodhisattva-Dharma. If one looks at the retinues, on one side are Vairocana Buddha’s acquaintances from past lives, gathering like clouds from the ten directions; on the other are bodhisattvas emerging from the earth, who aroused the aspiration under Śākyamuni and were taught and transformed by him. If one looks at the teaching lord, on one side those empowered bear the same names, such as Dharma Wisdom and Vajragarbha; on the other, the buddhas gathered from the ten directions are explicitly said to be emanations of Śākyamuni.

The point of these comparisons is to reveal the distinct teaching scene of each scripture while safeguarding the Buddha’s purport. The treatise states clearly that fixation on comparing superiority and inferiority may instead lose the Buddha’s purport. The Lotus has more doubts and doubled requests because, proximately, it gathers the perfect cause and, remotely, it extends the original fruit, deeply discussing the Buddha’s teaching and subtly revealing the sage’s heart. To understand the characteristics of the teaching is to see how the Tathāgata’s provisional and real wisdoms unfold from a single mind that discerns faculties into the teachings of a lifetime.

The earlier scriptures are easier to believe and understand because each benefits the faculties of its own moment without directly laying open the Tathāgata’s full intent in establishing the teachings before and after. The Sūtra of Innumerable Meanings is what is being taught now, and the Nirvāṇa Sūtra what will be taught; each is also easier to receive in accordance with the place it takes up. The present scripture is difficult because it asks one to look back from what is gained before one’s eyes toward the wisdom with which the teacher discerned faculties from the distant past: the provisional is what is bestowed in response to faculties, while the real is the ultimate destination. Though the teachings differ before and after, the Buddha’s intent remains consistent throughout.

The distinction between easy and difficult therefore lies in whether what is revealed is only the attainment made possible by an individual scripture or the Buddha’s intent running through the entire beginning and end. Upon reaching the characteristics of the teaching, the inquiry is precisely into the latter.

Through the Eye of the Shiqian

Zhanran’s Fahua Xuanyi Shiqian first divides the fifth chapter into the reason for its introduction and the explanation that opens the chapter. It then divides the general purport into three layers: the basis for teaching, the proper clarification of the general purport, and the concluding exhortation. The basis for teaching is that the Buddha’s own realization is originally inexpressible, yet vocal teaching is provisionally established for the faculties of this land. This allows “without name or form” and “teaching through provisional names and forms” to stand together.

The proper clarification of the general purport is illuminated through four gateways: the relative superiority of the teachings, the differences among beings’ faculties, the Tathāgata’s capacity to discern them, and comparison of what is taught. The first four kinds of scripture each benefit the faculties of their own moment and the teaching of their own section, while the present scripture preserves the great outline of establishing the teaching. Zhanran further organizes their sequence by using the later summary name “the Five Periods”; this name belongs to an ancient master’s classification and is not substituted for the root treatise’s own wording.

Within the gateway of beings’ faculties, those deeply planted in past lives, those unable to bear the great, those suited to rebuke, and those suited to concurrent treatment are gathered as four kinds of disposition. Settling the relation of father and son is explained as opening and revealing the provisional person; entrusting the family estate is explained as entrusting the provisional and real Dharmas. Brushing aside the provisional Trace and revealing the real Origin then turns into the Origin Gate. The calculator’s first setting down and later eliminating is further divided into Dharma explanation, simile, and the combined simile from the Sūtra of Innumerable Meanings, revealing the sequence of first unfolding and later gathering.

In the gateway of the Tathāgata’s capacity to discern, the Mirror first clarifies that the discernment of faculties comes from long ago and then that the Buddha’s intent is difficult to fathom. The lines from “Faith and Understanding”—seeing the son, looking through the window, secretly dispatching, mutual trust, taking charge of the goods, and entrusting the estate—are illuminated as one sequence of maturation. The gateway of comparison first compares what has already been taught, what is being taught now, and what will be taught, then compares the doubts and requests with those in the other scriptures.

The Mirror’s most important boundary is that the Avataṃsaka can be grouped with the present scripture only in the structure of stops and requests; the Dharmas taught must not therefore be conflated. The Trace Gate’s three stops and four requests and the Origin Gate’s four requests and three admonitions must likewise be understood in the sequence of their events. Zhanran finally repeats Zhiyi’s self-admonition: if one competes over superiority and inferiority, one may lose the Buddha’s purport. The eye of the characteristics of the teaching thus returns to the root treatise’s concluding exhortation: recognizing the provisional and real before and after never departs from the Tathāgata’s one mind discerning faculties.

Why does Classifying the Teaching not state its own framework directly, but first list ten older explanations? The difficulty of the characteristics of the teaching lies not only in the abundance of names, but in the fact that one and the same scripture can be placed within different chronologies, schools, and structures of teaching. After the General Purport, Master Zhiyi first sets out divergent classifications, and Guanding’s record unfolds the masters of the South and North completely in their original order. Only when it is clear precisely how each explanation arranges the scriptural teachings can the later difficulties and acceptance and rejection have definite objects.

What Each of the Three Shared Names Says

The South and North first shared the three names sudden, gradual, and indeterminate. The sudden takes as its focus the Avataṃsaka teaching bodhisattvas, like sunlight first illuminating the high mountains. The gradual begins with the Tripiṭaka first teaching the half-word and marks, then extends to the Great Vehicle, Prajñāpāramitā, and permanence after the twelfth year, describing a path of teaching that unfolds in sequence. The indeterminate separately takes scriptures outside the sudden and gradual that nevertheless clarify the permanence of buddha-nature, with the Śrīmālā and Golden Light as examples.

Beneath the three names already lie three ways of viewing the teachings. The sudden attends to the faculties first addressed; the gradual, to the sequence of what is taught; and the indeterminate, to whether a scripture falls outside an established sequence. The sequence of Tripiṭaka, Prajñāpāramitā, and permanence, together with other scriptural teachings branching off to one side, forms the boundary between gradual and indeterminate. This layer is the shared base map of South and North; the differences among the ten classifications divide that base map in different directions.

Why the Three Southern Classifications Increase from Three Periods to Five

Shanji of Huqiu retains the sudden and indeterminate while dividing only the gradual into three periods: first the teaching of marks, in which one sees existence and attains the path; then the teaching without marks, in which one sees emptiness and attains the path; and finally the teaching of permanence, in which the Twin Trees disclose buddha-nature and the buddhahood of icchantikas. Existence, emptiness, and permanence form the three joints of this sequence.

Zong’ai increases the gradual to four periods. The first three remain as before, but after the teaching without marks and before the teaching of permanence he places the Lotus, calling its gathering of the three into the one and the tendency of all wholesome practices toward bodhi the common-return teaching. Master Sengrou of Dinglin Monastery, Master Huici of Xie Monastery, and Master Huiguan of Daochang Monastery increase the number again to five periods. The first four remain as before, but after the teaching without marks and before the common-return teaching they place the Vimalakīrti, Questions of Brahmā Viśeṣacintin, and other Vaipulya scriptures under the name teaching of praise and reproach, suppression and promotion.

In each increase from three to four and from four to five, the older sequence is not overturned in its entirety. Rather, another teaching function is distinguished anew between the teaching without marks and the teaching of permanence. The differences among the three Southern classifications thus center on where the Vimalakīrti, Questions of Brahmā Viśeṣacintin, and Lotus should be placed.

The Seven Northern Classifications Do Not Follow Only One Timeline

The first Northern classification also establishes five periods, but places Tiwei and Boli first as the human-and-deva teaching and combines the Vimalakīrti and Prajñāpāramitā as the teaching without marks; the remaining three periods stay the same as in the South. It alters the beginning and the scope of the teaching without marks without creating three new final periods. The second classification does not use the finer distinctions of three or four periods, but judges half-word and full-word solely by what comes before and after the twelfth year.

The next three classifications instead use schools to gather scriptures and treatises. The four schools distinguished by Tripiṭaka Master Fotuo and the scholar Guangtong take the Abhidharma’s six causes and four conditions as the school of causes and conditions, the Satyasiddhi Treatise’s three provisionalities as the school of provisional names, the Large Prajñāpāramitā and Three Treatises as the school of deceptive marks, and the permanently abiding buddha-nature of the Nirvāṇa, Avataṃsaka, and other scriptures as the school of permanence. The five-school classification retains those four and adds the Avataṃsaka Dharma-realm school. The six-school classification also retains the original four, but adds the Lotus true school and Great Collection perfect school. Both five and six open out from four, but what each adds is different. The treatise also records their adopters separately: the five schools were used by Zigui of Hushen, honorifically called Mahāyāna, while the six were used by Master Qishe Lin. The number of categories, added content, and lineages of masters are all preserved together.

The ninth classification shifts perspective again, dividing the Great Vehicle into with marks and without marks. Scriptures of the Great Vehicle with marks teach graded levels, the ten grounds, qualities, and characteristics of practice; scriptures of the Great Vehicle without marks say that the real Dharma has no sequence arranged by verbal expression and that all sentient beings are the mark of nirvāṇa. The boundary here concerns how scriptural teachings present differences in cultivation and realization.

Under One Sound, Why Do Sentient Beings See Three?

The tenth classification sets aside the preceding four schools, five schools, six schools, two marks, and half and full, and teaches only the One Buddha-Vehicle, without two and without three. The Buddha teaches the Dharma with one sound, but sentient beings form different understandings according to their kinds; what the buddhas constantly practice is the One Vehicle, while sentient beings see three vehicles.

This conclusion pushes the question into the space between speaker and hearer. How does the same Buddha-Vehicle appear as many kinds of understanding? Do the various characteristics of the teaching arise from differences in what the Buddha teaches, or from differences in how sentient beings receive it? This unit places this explanation too among the ten views, alongside chronologies, schools, half and full, and with marks and without marks, allowing the full shape of the divergent classifications to appear clearly first.

Setting out divergent classifications accomplishes only one thing at this point: it gives each classification its own names, sequence, indicated scriptures and treatises, and relations of opening and combining. Only when the three classifications of the South and seven of the North are no longer merely a collective label can the following passage examine, item by item, whether their meanings hold, and then distinguish what can be accepted from what must be rejected.

Through the Eye of the Shiqian

Zhanran first divides the whole passage into two layers: the three ideas in common use and the differences among the various masters. He further points out that although the names sudden, gradual, and indeterminate are the same, the meanings explained by the older accounts are still incomplete. This illumination fixes the boundary of the ten views: the three shared names are the preliminary base map, while the three Southern and seven Northern classifications are the ten systems subsequently listed.

The Mirror further locates South and North within the regions of the Southern and Northern dynasties, saying that the Satyasiddhi Treatise flourished south of the Yangzi while Abhidharma was especially esteemed north of the Yellow River. Yet the Tiantai house does not therefore belong to the Southern school. Master Zhiyi uses Abhidharma, the Satyasiddhi Treatise, and the Three Treatises according to their meanings, without partiality based on region or school.

Zhanran gathers the position of the mountain gate in the words, “when challenging, both South and North are refuted; when accepting, both South and North are preserved.” Refutation and acceptance must both proceed meaning by meaning: where names are the same, their incompleteness can still be discerned, and within divergent explanations, their strengths can still be preserved. This establishes the reading sequence for the later clarification of difficulties and acceptance and rejection.

Finally, the Mirror specially explains how to punctuate the phrase “Zigui of Hushen, Mahāyāna.” Mahāyāna is an honorific epithet for Master Zigui of Hushen Monastery, used out of respect for the teaching he studied. This insight keeps personal epithet, school name, and book title each in its own place, and it also preserves the original number of the five-school classification.

If a chart classifying the teachings cannot withstand its own scriptural evidence, whom can it still guide? In this series of difficulties recorded by Guanding from Master Zhiyi, Zhiyi does not first superimpose another set of names upon the old explanations. Instead, he asks each in turn: if a classification uses dates as boundaries, do the scriptures on the two sides of the boundary truly possess the difference it claims? If it defines a school through characteristics, signlessness, permanence, or perfect interfusion, can that name contain the scripture it designates in full? If the same criterion is valid in one place, does it remain valid in another?

The question is therefore not merely how many periods or schools one master establishes. What is truly being tested is whether a classificatory name and what the scriptures teach can bear one another. If a name can stand only by omitting part of a scripture’s meaning, tidiness is not accuracy. If a sequence can stand only by reversing the generative order stated in the scripture, its before and after lose their basis.

Before the Twelfth Year, Was the Meaning of Emptiness Truly Absent?

The Southern five-period scheme first classifies the first twelve years as the teaching with characteristics. Zhiyi begins by asking about the Satyasiddhi Treatise, on which this claim relies. Its masters say that it seeks to clarify the real meaning within the Tripiṭaka, and that real meaning is precisely emptiness. If the Tripiṭaka belongs before the twelfth year, how could emptiness appear only afterward?

This is not simply a challenge based on the name of one treatise. The Āgamas use “this is aging-and-death” and “who undergoes aging-and-death” to reveal, respectively, the emptiness of dharmas and the emptiness of persons. The Dazhidu Lun calls the emptiness of dharmas taught in the Tripiṭaka “great emptiness” and also says that the Buddha constantly taught prajñā from the night of attaining the path to the night of entering extinction. The Aṅgulimālīya Sūtra, taught six years after the Buddha’s awakening, explains emptiness with particular force. The timeline has not yet reached the twelfth year, yet the wisdom of emptiness has already appeared in many places.

Zhiyi next presses the question toward attainment of the path. If a teaching with characteristics can enable people to attain the path, this contradicts the treatise master’s claim that only seeing emptiness enables attainment. If it cannot enable attainment, what use does the Buddha have for establishing it? Kauṇḍinya and the other four men first became quiescent within the Buddha-Dharma, left sound and written words behind, and gained real knowing-and-seeing. If they saw emptiness and attained the path, what they received cannot have been merely a teaching with characteristics. If one can attain the Buddha path without seeing emptiness, it collapses into a path outside the Buddha-Dharma. The name “with characteristics” is thus pressed from both the chronology and attainment.

After the Twelfth Year, Can Signlessness Exclude Buddha-Nature and Permanence?

The second period is called signless: emptiness can sweep away characteristics, but it is said not yet to clarify buddha-nature and permanence. Zhiyi first asks directly: if it is truly signless, why does it not sweep away the characteristic of impermanence? So long as “impermanence” remains fixed in place, signlessness has not been carried through.

At a deeper level, do prajñā and buddha-nature differ only in name? The Nirvāṇa Sūtra says that buddha-nature is also called prajñā and points back to the Mahāprajñāpāramitā teaching that the natures of self and nonself are nondual. This nondual real nature interconnects precisely with buddha-nature. The Prajñāpāramitā teaches the true mark and the real limit as neither coming nor going; the Nirvāṇa Sūtra teaches Dharma-nature as permanently abiding and incapable of change. In meaning, the true mark of Dharma-nature is buddha-nature as direct cause, prajñā’s contemplative illumination is buddha-nature as understanding-cause, and the merits of the first five perfections that support and arouse prajñā are buddha-nature as conditioning cause. These three prajñās do not stand apart from the three buddha-natures.

A difference in names cannot sever a shared meaning. Zhiyi says that this would be like hearing the name “Śatamanyu” and concluding that it is not Śakra: the appellation has changed, but the referent has not therefore become two people.

Nor can a lifespan of eighty years alone determine that the Dharma-body is impermanent. The Nirvāṇa Sūtra likewise says that the Buddha had back pain and illness and entered extinction between the śāla trees, yet no one therefore denies the permanence it teaches. The Dazhidu Lun distinguishes the birth-body from the Dharma-body. The birth-body experiences cold, heat, and sickness, as well as the hardships of horse fodder and begging for milk. The Dharma-nature body has boundless radiance and boundless forms and teaches Dharma to bodhisattvas with Dharma-nature bodies. The birth-body’s lifespan is limited; the Dharma-body’s lifespan is immeasurable. To impose the former’s eighty years upon the latter is precisely to confuse two bodies as one.

Can Gathering the Three, Rebuke, and the Second Dharma-Wheel Belong to Only One Period?

The old classification further says that Prajñā neither gathers the three vehicles nor contains rebuke, praise, and censure. Zhiyi therefore asks from what Prajñā itself teaches: devas who have not yet aroused the aspiration for awakening should arouse it; if someone who has entered the fixed position of a śrāvaka can arouse that aspiration, Prajñā rejoices as well, because a superior person should seek a superior Dharma. If the Dharmas of the three vehicles were completely sealed off from one another, this rejoicing could not occur.

Its rebukes are even more vivid. The wisdom of the two vehicles is like a firefly, while the wisdom a bodhisattva learns in a single day is like the sun illuminating the four continents. Abandoning profound prajñā to take up scriptures practiced by śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas is like a dog seeking food not from the great household but from its laborers. Seeing an image and examining its tracks alone are both called unintelligent. Firefly and sun, great household and laborers, image and tracks all press the same question: if this force of language does not count as praise and censure, how much stronger would it have to be?

Calling Prajñā alone the second Dharma-wheel likewise cannot rest on the single phrase “seeing the second Dharma-wheel turn.” The Vimalakīrti sets the Buddha’s first sitting beneath the tree of awakening, subduing Māra, and accomplishing the path against his subsequent teaching of Dharma. The Lotus sets the first turning of the Four Truths at Vārāṇasī against the present turning of the supreme Dharma-wheel. The Nirvāṇa Sūtra likewise sets the eighty thousand devas and humans who gained the fruit at the first turning against the eighty trillion people who gained nonretrogression at Kuśinagara. The scriptures can all set a later teaching against an earlier one. “Second” therefore cannot by itself become Prajñā’s exclusive period-name. Still more, Prajñā was constantly taught from the night of awakening onward; the twelve-year boundary cannot contain it.

Can Rebuke, Convergence, and Permanence Each Remain within One Scripture?

The third period is marked by rebuke and praise, yet it is placed after Prajñā. During the teaching of Prajñā, however, the great disciples already relayed the teaching and taught Dharma to bodhisattvas, fully knowing the bodhisattva Dharma-gates. If they later encountered rebuke without recognizing what was said or knowing how to answer, the before and after would not connect. Maitreya, moreover, was also subdued; it was not only śrāvakas.

If a lifespan of seven hundred asaṃkhyeyas is used to classify the Buddha as impermanent, the scripture itself says that the Buddha-body is unconditioned and falls within no number, that the adamantine body has no illness, and that such things are manifested only to liberate sentient beings. It also says that contemplating the true mark of one’s body is the same as contemplating the Buddha and teaches three kinds of inconceivable liberation: true nature, real wisdom, and skillful means. The company of sensory troubles is the Tathāgata-seed, revealing the direct cause; illumination and liberation arise without severing delusion and craving, illumination revealing the understanding-cause and liberation the conditioning cause. When these three meanings are distinctly present, to classify the scripture as impermanent solely because of a number of years hides its other side.

The fourth period is marked by gathering the myriad wholesome Dharmas into the One Vehicle, yet is said not to teach permanently abiding buddha-nature and merely to prolong lifespan through supernormal power. The Lotus teaches one kind of nature and mark, produced from one ground, and that all the Dharmas taught reach the ground of omniscience. At the beginning of the chapter, opening, revealing, awakening to, and entering the Buddha’s knowing-and-seeing are already expressly announced.

When the Avataṃsaka teaches buddha-wisdom, it still carries bodhisattva-wisdom with it: bodhisattva-wisdom is like soil on a fingernail, while tathāgata-wisdom is like the earth in the ten directions. The Lotus purely teaches buddha-wisdom like the earth in the ten directions, yet is classified as impermanent; the relative weights have been reversed. Just one word from the Son of Heaven can still constitute an edict. Statements of permanence do not lose their force because they are few. “The marks of the world constantly abide” and “lifespan is immeasurable, permanently abiding and never extinguished” answer the question of permanence directly.

The three buddha-bodies further open up the meaning of lifespan. Leaving the Śākya palace and realizing buddhahood at the place of awakening near Gayā is a responsive transformation manifested according to what beings should see. Fulfilling the ten grounds and having realized buddhahood immeasurable, boundless kalpas ago is the reward body. The pure nirvāṇa of tathāgata-garbha, permanently pure and unchanging, is the Dharma-body. The near attainment manifested in response and the distant Origin do not cancel one another. The Buddha manifests birth everywhere and extinction everywhere, yet abides permanently in the future and benefits beings in the three times. Though the multitude sees the great fire consume everything, the Buddha-land remains undestroyed. This is not a finite lifespan forcibly prolonged.

Buddha-nature also does not stand outside the Lotus. The Bodhisattva Never Disparaging says that everyone will become a buddha, revealing the direct cause. Opening the Buddha’s knowing-and-seeing reveals the understanding-cause. The buddha-seed arising from conditions reveals the conditioning cause. The Nirvāṇa Sūtra further points back to the prediction bestowed upon eight thousand śrāvakas in the Lotus, comparing it to autumn harvest and winter storage: once the great fruit is accomplished, nothing further remains to be done. It also calls the One Vehicle buddha-nature. If a later scripture itself points back to the fruit accomplished in the Lotus, one cannot say that the Lotus did not clarify buddha-nature.

The Fifth Period, the Sudden, and the Indeterminate Must Answer the Same Questions

The fifth period is linked to permanence beneath the twin trees, the buddha-nature of sentient beings, and icchantikas becoming buddhas. Zhiyi again begins from the Two Truths employed by the other side. If the fifth period is encompassed by the Two Truths, it is the same as the earlier teachings. If the Two Truths beneath the twin trees can illuminate their principle, break their delusions, and so be called permanent, the Two Truths of the earlier teachings likewise illuminate principle and break delusion. Why are they alone called impermanent? The buddha-nature of sentient beings and icchantikas becoming buddhas are questioned in the same way. Permanence cannot be established merely by being placed fifth.

The name “sudden teaching” has the same difficulty. If the reality revealed is the same, on what basis is only one scripture classified as sudden? Provisional phenomena may differ, but one cannot judge the magnitude of real meaning solely through differences among phenomena.

The so-called indeterminate teaching for a particular quarter places the Golden Light, Śrīmālā, Laṅkāvatāra, Aṅgulimālīya, and similar scriptures outside the sequence as teachings given for just one set of conditions. Yet the Aṅgulimālīya was taught six years after the Buddha’s awakening, lists its audience in detail, rebukes partial attachments, and clarifies permanence; Śakra, Brahmā, the four heavenly kings, the ten disciples, and even Mañjuśrī are all rebuked. If the Vimalakīrti, which likewise centers on rebuke, can be placed within the sequence, the Aṅgulimālīya cannot be moved to a particular quarter merely because it was taught early. The rebukes recounted by the Vimalakīrti also occurred before the twelfth year, and it too says that the company of sensory troubles is the Tathāgata-seed. Like the Aṅgulimālīya teaching of permanence, it cannot be isolated by a single timeline.

If the Five Flavors Are Misassigned, What Remains of the Sequence?

Assigning milk, curds, raw ghee, refined ghee, and clarified essence respectively to the teaching with characteristics, the signless teaching, the teaching of rebuke and praise, the teaching of convergence, and the teaching of permanence appears to provide the clearest sequence. Zhiyi, however, examines whether each correspondence accords with the scriptural text.

First, the scripture uses milk coming from a cow to symbolize the twelve divisions of scripture first emerging from the Buddha. Milk cannot be assigned only to a teaching with characteristics that neither has all twelve divisions nor was the Buddha’s first teaching. Even if one concedes that Great and Lesser Vehicles each have twelve divisions, one must still answer why the twelve divisions that clarify buddha-nature are not chosen as milk. To say that something possesses all twelve divisions yet does not clarify buddha-nature instead falls under the scripture’s censure.

Second, sūtra emerging from the twelve divisions cannot be assigned exclusively to signless Prajñā. Sūtra extends through teachings with and without characteristics. Prajñā does not contain direct discourse alone, but also simile, causes and conditions, prediction, and discursive exposition. If it is called sūtra because it speaks directly, other scriptures also speak directly. If it is so called because it ranks second, other scriptures can likewise become second by being set against what was taught before.

Third, if Vaipulya emerges from sūtra and is assigned to teachings of rebuke such as the Vimalakīrti, the Vimalakīrti must first be placed after the Great Prajñā. The preceding scriptural evidence has already prevented that sequence from standing.

Fourth, in “Prajñā emerges from Vaipulya,” the scripture expressly says Prajñā, yet the scheme reassigns it to the Lotus. The Nirvāṇa Sūtra expressly says that eight thousand śrāvakas received predictions in the Lotus, not that they did so in Prajñā. Bending the scripture’s name to accommodate the correspondence loses both wording and purport.

Fifth, “great nirvāṇa emerges from prajñā” is rephrased as great nirvāṇa emerging from the Lotus. Such refusal to follow the scriptural wording is like a refractory child or a refractory sheep. The generative order of the five flavors is not wrong. The error lies in moving each teaching to a different position in order to fix the five periods. Once the five periods have been subjected to this refutation, schemes of four or three periods derived from it cannot escape the same problem merely by reducing the number of names.

The Tiwei and Half and Full: What the Scripture Attains Exceeds Its Label

The Northern five-period scheme makes the Tiwei the initial teaching for humans and devas. Yet the scripture teaches only the five precepts, not the ten wholesome acts. If that makes it only a teaching for humans, it cannot at the same time be called a teaching for devas. If teaching precepts and wholesome conduct is sufficient to call it a teaching for humans and devas, every other scripture that teaches them should bear the same name.

More important are the scripture’s own substance and the attainments it records. The five precepts are called the mother of all buddhas; those seeking the Buddha path and those seeking arhatship alike are told to read the scripture. The talisman of long life points to the Dharmas of the three vehicles, while the seal of lasting bliss points to the path of nirvāṇa. The Elder Tiwei attained patience regarding the non-arising of dharmas; three hundred people attained the patience of faith; two hundred attained stream-entry; the four heavenly kings attained compliant patience regarding the Dharma; the dragon king attained the faculty of faith; and the asura assembly all aroused the aspiration for unsurpassed true and correct awakening. These six kinds of attainment cannot be flattened by the two words “human and deva.”

At the compilation of the Dharma treasury, the Lesser Vehicle teachings from Vārāṇasī to the night of extinction were gathered as the three Dharma treasuries, while the Great Vehicle teachings from the Buddha’s birth to his extinction beneath the twin trees were gathered as the Mahāyāna treasury. Before the Deer Park there was not yet a Jewel of the Sangha, and the teachings did not belong to the Lesser Vehicle treasury. If the Tiwei is instead called a secret teaching heard differently from one voice, it cannot simultaneously be placed first among the revealed teachings.

The distinction between half and full is the same. To call everything from the Deer Park onward half hides the constant teaching of prajñā from the night of awakening, devas and humans attaining patience regarding non-arising at the time of Tiwei, the Aṅgulimālīya being taught six years after awakening, and bodhisattvas as numerous as the sands of the Ganges already asking about the meaning of nirvāṇa when the Buddha first awakened. If all scriptures from Prajñā through Nirvāṇa are called full, one must still explain why Prajñā was entrusted to Ānanda while the Lotus was entrusted to bodhisattvas—one not secret, the other secret—and why they do not all gather the three. Since raw ghee, refined ghee, and clarified essence possess distinct flavors, the Dharmas they symbolize cannot all be flattened by the single word “full.”

The Difficulty with the Four Schools Is Whether School and Teaching Sustain One Another

The four schools first establish a school of causes and conditions from the Abhidharma’s six causes and four conditions. Yet the Satyasiddhi Treatise also teaches three causes and four conditions and says that all dharmas are produced through causes and conditions. Since “causes and conditions” is a shared expression, it cannot belong to only one treatise. If this school leads to a distinct attainment, it must also explain what path is attained. If it is still a Lesser Vehicle path, it does not differ from the school of provisional names. If it is a Great Vehicle path, it does not differ from the later schools.

The school of provisional names takes the floating unreality of the three provisionalities—established through causes, continuity, and relation—as its defining principle. Yet these three provisionalities are only phenomenal dharmas of the conventional truth; the Satyasiddhi Treatise attains the path by seeing emptiness, so its school should be defined by emptiness. If the name is severed from the meaning that actually enables attainment in the treatise, only a label imposed by the classifier remains.

The school of unreality takes the ten similes of the Great Prajñā as deceptive characteristics, but Nāgārjuna rebukes the Fangguang school for taking the ten similes to mean simply that all things are like illusions and transformations, neither arising nor ceasing, and thereby losing the intent of Prajñā. What is refuted is not the ten similes themselves. The Avataṃsaka also teaches patience like an illusion and patience like a dream, and that the mind is like a skillful illusionist. The Nirvāṇa Sūtra also says that dharmas are like illusions and transformations while the Buddha is not attached among them. Since illusion extends across the scriptures, it cannot make the Great Prajñā alone unreal.

The school of permanence is also incomplete when it takes only the permanence of the Nirvāṇa Sūtra. That scripture further clarifies neither permanence nor impermanence, can employ both permanence and impermanence, and fully possesses eight operations. To take only one side is like having one wheel or one wing: it can neither roll nor fly.

Finally, the four names must be tested against one another’s own meanings. If the unreal side is called the Shared Teaching while the true side is called the shared school, why does the former suppress “school” while the latter suppresses “teaching”? Without teaching, how is the truth of the school to be known? Without a school, toward what does the teaching point? When the true and unreal, school and teaching, are reversed and combined in every possible way, the names repeatedly overlap. The Laṅkāvatāra passage says that the sharedness of verbal teaching instructs the uninitiated, while the sharedness of purport instructs bodhisattvas. If this makes all the first three schools instruction for the uninitiated, it can no longer explain why they are each called a school.

With Five and Six Schools, Does Another Name Add Another Measure of Reality?

The five-school scheme adds a Dharma-realm school belonging exclusively to the Avataṃsaka. Yet the Nirvāṇa Sūtra also says that great nirvāṇa is the Dharma realm of all buddhas, while the Great Prajñā says that no dharma is seen outside Dharma-nature and that all dharmas proceed toward form without passing beyond that destination. If Dharma-nature is the Dharma realm, the Dharma realm cannot belong to a single scripture. If permanence is not the Dharma realm and the Dharma realm is not permanent, the Dharma realm falls into arising and ceasing, while permanence fails to encompass all dharmas.

The six-school scheme further separates the true and permanence schools and adds the perfect school. If the true and permanent are the same, they need not be divided. If they differ, truth without permanence arises and ceases, while permanence without truth is false. Nor can making the Mahāsaṃnipāta alone the school of perfect interfusion of defilement and purity block the same meaning in other scriptures. The Great Prajñā teaches that form itself is emptiness, not that form becomes empty only after being destroyed. The Dazhidu Lun teaches that the limit of birth-and-death and the limit of nirvāṇa are one and nondual. The Vimalakīrti says that sensory troubles are the Tathāgata-seed, that illumination and liberation arise without severing delusion and craving, and that one travels a non-path while penetrating the Buddha path. Perfect interfusion does not belong exclusively to one scripture.

The five and six schools are both opened from the four, yet the transmitted basis for the four cannot establish itself. A tradition says that the Sūtra of the Crowned King first teaches the emptiness of dharmas produced through causes and conditions and later teaches the children the permanently abiding Dharma of the One Vehicle. Yet the first clause does not prove the school of provisional names, and the second does not prove the school of unreality. If the scripture is also no longer transmitted, the additional schools established on this basis become still harder to trust.

Why Do the Teachings with Characteristics, Signlessness, and One Voice Each Lack One Side?

Dividing the Great Vehicle into one teaching purely with characteristics and another purely signless overlooks the mutual dependence of true and conventional. One originally discusses the conventional on the basis of the true and the true on the basis of the conventional; those possessed of wisdom make distinctions on the basis of unconditioned dharmas. Though the Avataṃsaka teaches the ten grounds, it still does so in relation to the Dharma-body. Though the Laṅkāvatāra and Questions of Brahmā Viśeṣacintin teach emptiness, they still teach patience regarding non-arising.

If one uses characteristics alone, characteristics lack intrinsic substance, so there is nothing for the teaching to express and no path that can be attained. If one uses signlessness alone, the real quiescence of signlessness is beyond words and apart from characteristics: the path of language is severed and the activities of mind cease, so no teaching can be formed. So long as one still teaches through language, teaching already possesses an expressible characteristic. The Great Prajñā places both sides in a single answer: precisely because all dharmas are ultimately nonexistent, there are a bodhisattva’s first through tenth grounds; if dharmas each possessed a determinate intrinsic nature, there would instead be no first through tenth grounds. Nonexistence and stages are not alternatives.

The single-voice teaching sees only the real wisdom of the One Great Vehicle and not the provisional wisdom of the three vehicles. The Lotus says that if the Buddha praised only the Buddha Vehicle, sentient beings would sink into suffering and fall into the three evil destinies through disbelief, and that he therefore reflected upon skillful means. The elder possesses both the elder’s body and the appearance of one clothed in filth; teaching likewise contains both great and small. To say that the Buddha always teaches only the One Vehicle while sentient beings themselves see the three vehicles turns sentient beings into those who transform and the Buddha into the one transformed, completely reversing agent and object.

To acknowledge that the Lotus is purely one does not establish that every scripture teaches only the One Vehicle. The Avataṃsaka’s passages through the heavens also open separate skillful means for bodhisattvas of dull faculties. A single-voice teaching without skillful means is like one great cart without servants or skillful attendants, or the perfection of wisdom without the perfection of skillful means.

Clarifying the Difficulties thus leaves behind not a string of defeated ancient names, but a responsibility in reading scripture: chronology, names of schools and teachings, similes, and scriptural evidence must correspond to one another. The real must not be concealed by skillful means, nor skillful means deleted for the sake of the real. Only by seeing both can classifying the teaching become more than arranging scriptures along a line.

Through the Eye of the Shiqian

Zhanran first illuminates the entire chapter as “the three Southern and seven Northern.” The Southern positions are not a loose list of old explanations: first comes the difficulty with the five periods, next the difficulty with the sudden and indeterminate teachings shared with them, and finally the difficulty with matching the Nirvāṇa Sūtra’s five flavors to the five periods. The three-period theory is then questioned anew, with the four-period theory refuted by analogy. The Northern positions are, in order, the five periods, half and full, four schools, five schools, six schools, the Great Vehicle divided into teachings with and without characteristics, and the seven passages on one voice. The long series of citations thus acquires clear sectional boundaries.

The first two Southern periods have their own exact layers. The teaching with characteristics has four levels: a general difficulty with “before the twelfth year” and “with characteristics”; using emptiness to challenge characteristics; using the Aṅgulimālīya to challenge the claim that only the Lesser Vehicle was taught before the twelfth year; and using the Satyasiddhi account of attaining the path to turn the claim back upon itself. The signless teaching has six levels: the failure of signlessness, not clarifying buddha-nature, not gathering the three, no rebuke, being exclusively the second period, and Prajñā not extending before the twelfth year. The Mirror distinguishes in particular that Prajñā had not yet gathered the people; here the root treatise merely adopts, as a difficulty, the gathering of Dharmas under the other side’s own criterion. This reveals the force of the question without conflating what Prajñā and the Lotus each accomplish.

The firefly, dog seeking food, and image and tracks in Prajñā respectively rebuke a kind of wisdom, a teaching sought, and loss of the teaching’s purport. The third period has four further difficulties: Vaipulya should not come after Prajñā; Maitreya too was subdued; seven hundred units of lifespan cannot decide the classification; and the three buddha-natures equally imply permanence. The fourth period begins with a general rejection and then proceeds through three routes: clarifying permanence, buddha-nature, and the fault of prolonging lifespan through supernormal power. The permanence route has five levels—the parallel difficulty from the Avataṃsaka, confirmation from the prefatory scripture, how many words are needed for an edict, explicit wording in the present scripture, and the three bodies. The buddha-nature route likewise has five—the Bodhisattva Never Disparaging, the treatise’s explanation, the Nirvāṇa Sūtra pointing back, the shared name of the One Vehicle, and comparison of the two scriptures.

The fingernail-earth simile is used in the root treatise to challenge the Avataṃsaka, but Zhanran traces the simile itself back to the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra. This eye keeps the borrowed use in the argument distinct from the original scriptural source of the simile. The refractory child and sheep are likewise explained by the Mirror as contentious and disobedient, directly addressing the error of twisting the scriptural wording to fit the five flavors.

The fifth period is first challenged by whether it still falls within the Two Truths, after which the same question extends to the buddha-nature of sentient beings and icchantikas becoming buddhas. The sudden teaching divides into two levels: reality is the same, though provisional phenomena differ. The indeterminate teaching moves from a general list of scriptures to the Aṅgulimālīya’s audience and teaching of permanence and then to the parallel question from the Vimalakīrti. The five-flavor section first rejects reversal as a whole and then forms five refutations in the order milk, curds, raw ghee, refined ghee, and clarified essence. The Mirror’s outline returns every question to its proper object instead of allowing it to disappear amid the dense scriptural evidence.

The Northern Tiwei passage contains six difficulties: precepts and wholesome acts, the substance of the scripture, the five precepts as the basis of practices, the assembly’s attainments, the sequence of compilation, and secret versus revealed teaching. Half and full is divided first into refuting “half” and then refuting “full.” Among the four schools, the ten similes belong to the text of the Great Prajñā; what Nāgārjuna refuted was the Fangguang school’s failure to understand emptiness as neither empty nor nonempty. “The sharedness of verbal teaching instructs the uninitiated; the sharedness of purport instructs bodhisattvas” must be read in terms of verbal teaching as that which expresses and purport as that which is expressed. The word “teaching” cannot be cut away to form another name for a school.

The five-school section treats only the Dharma-realm school added to the preceding four. The six-school section first questions the true and permanence schools, then the perfect school, and only at the end gathers the lack of textual basis. Zhanran personally checked and did not find the passage traditionally attributed to the Sūtra of the Crowned King and therefore records only that its meaning remains unexamined. The teachings with and without characteristics are analyzed in three levels: the mutual identity of the Two Truths, the overall intent of the scriptural divisions, and the concluding difficulty from the Great Prajñā. One voice is analyzed in six: bestowing the small, the two bodies of robe and jewels, the transformed reversing into the transformer, provisionally allowing that the Lotus is purely one, the Avataṃsaka still opening skillful means, and the final difficulty.

Where the root treatise writes that the Avataṃsaka “went back and forth through five heavens,” the Mirror says this is a general reference to the preceding five, while the actual places of teaching are four heavens: the ten abodes in Trāyastriṃśa, the ten practices in Yāma, the ten dedications in Tuṣita, and the ten grounds in Paranirmitavaśavartin. This textual explanation preserves the wording recorded by Guanding while making the separate skillful means required by the argument more precise.

The citations in the Mirror also do not all bear the same textual relationship. Some quote clause by clause, some combine wording from several places, some summarize the purport of a passage, and some borrow a simile from another scripture. The scenes and graph-meanings supplied by Zhanran belong to the later eye of explanation. Once these layers are distinguished, what Zhiyi taught, what Guanding recorded, and what the ancient commentary clarified each bears a different function, yet all point toward the same field of difficulties.

Looking back through this Mirror, the core of Clarifying the Difficulties can be gathered into “turning them over, reversing them, pairing them, and deciding them”: repeatedly setting true against unreal, school against teaching, sameness against difference, and provisional against real, to see whether each name can still stand. It does not devise another sectarian chart. It returns classification to scripture, attainment, and the function of teaching, where it must undergo examination.

Examining in detail what to accept and reject does not first divide the various masters into those to retain and those to discard, then preserve or delete each system wholesale. It begins with three questions. What has this classification genuinely obtained? What has it omitted? If its name is still adopted, how must it be used so that its original one-sided error is not repeated?

The root treatise answers from two successive sides. The first half investigates the classifications of the various masters, identifying in each case what was obtained and what was lost. The latter half turns to acceptance and rejection: what is removed is the illness of false correspondence, while the Dharmas and their names can still be used anew according to their complete meanings.

Why Should Scriptural Wording Remain Usable While Fixed Correspondence Ceases?

Matching the five periods to the five flavors appears to have the strongest scriptural basis. The root treatise first acknowledges that this account obtains the scriptural wording concerning the expedient sequence of the five flavors, then immediately points out that it loses the intent of the one path of reality. The problem does not lie in the scriptural passage on the five flavors itself. It lies in fixing that passage into a single sequence of correspondences, after which skillful means and reality can no longer be seen together.

The treatise therefore says that the scriptural wording remains generally usable, while the old correspondence should cease. This statement establishes the method of the entire section. A scriptural passage has a real function that it bears and is not abolished along with an erroneous old classification. At the same time, a classification cannot claim to have grasped a scripture’s intent merely because it has found similar wording.

Investigation verifies the real; detailed examination verifies the provisional. To see reality while losing skillful means is incomplete, and to see skillful means while losing reality is likewise incomplete. Acceptance and rejection measure precisely whether these two sides can each take their proper place without separating.

Why Can One Gateway Not Stand for Four?

The problem with the teaching of marks begins in using one gateway to encompass four. Within the Tripiṭaka Teaching are four paths of entry: seeing existence and attaining the path, seeing emptiness and attaining the path, seeing both existence and emptiness and attaining the path, and seeing neither emptiness nor existence and attaining the path. Nirvāṇa is the true Dharma treasure, and sentient beings enter it through various gateways. Since there are four, one cannot single out only the gateway of marks and cause the other three to disappear.

If a comprehensive name is sought, Tripiṭaka can gather them all. If they are to be explained extensively, all four gateways must be presented. Preserving only one gateway not only leaves śrāvakas without three roads of entry into nirvāṇa, but also prevents bodhisattvas from studying the four gateways broadly and mastering the various skillful means. Something is missing on the śrāvaka side and on the bodhisattva side alike: only one gateway is obtained, while much is lost.

The teaching without marks involves the same one-sided acceptance. Shared prajñā opens four gateways through the illusory and transformational: immediately existent, immediately nonexistent, existent yet not truly existent, and the double negation of illusion and transformation. If no marks is equated only with the gateway of emptiness among these, one gateway is obtained and all the others are lost, while unshared prajñā is not gathered at all. The name appears to correspond to prajñā, but what it can actually contain remains too narrow.

This is why the passage repeatedly counts three gateways, seven gateways, seven kinds of śrāvakas, five, and seven. It is not turning the work of classifying the teaching into a contest of numbers. It uses what is obtained and lost to reveal the cost of accepting only one side. When an account sees only the single compartment it has retained, it leaves outside all the gateways of entry and faculties of sentient beings that compartment does not contain.

Why Can Praise and Reproach and Common Return Still Fall Short?

If the third period is described only as reproaching śrāvakas and praising bodhisattvas, it grasps only one contrast between small and great. Partial and perfect, provisional and real, each also have what must be reproached and what must be praised. To state only one pair is to obtain little while leaving much still unobtained.

If the fourth period is described only as the myriad wholesome practices returning together to the One Vehicle, it obtains only the name of common return, not the destination of that return. The destination is buddha-nature and permanence. To speak only of gathering the three into the one, while five and seven have not yet been gathered, also fails to connect return to the one with permanently abiding buddha-nature. “Common return” remains merely a name if it does not reveal where the return leads.

If the fifth period establishes only permanence, it too remains at one extreme. True permanence cannot stop at an isolated “permanent.” It must also include neither permanent nor impermanent, and must employ permanence and impermanence together. To obtain only one operation is to lose the others; if permanence and impermanence cannot be used together, neither can the two birds range together.

Once Provisional and Real Are Divided, Why Can Teaching No Longer Be Established?

The twofold Great Vehicle teaching splits the provisional from the real. The root treatise compares this to parents separating: once the parents have separated, a guide cannot be born. When the provisional is separated from the real, what is taught loses the seal of the true mark. When the real is separated from the provisional, reality cannot be taught and revealed to sentient beings. The provisional makes reality teachable and revealable, while the real gives skillful means the seal that confirms it. Once the two are separated, taking either side alone can no longer complete the work of teaching and transformation.

The one-sound teaching takes only the real and loses the provisional, so the root treatise next uses the simile of a widower and widow. Each remains alone; they cannot make a household and have no descendants. The first simile concerns the failure to give birth to a guide, and the second the failure to sustain a shared life. Both point to the same inability to produce benefit after what belongs together has been separated.

The various masters each regarded their own explanation as possessing profound intent. As these accounts circulated, their meanings were continually augmented and mixed; later worthies then grasped their respective extremes, and disputes grew still more tangled. Detailed examination asks item by item what was obtained and what was lost so that names no longer become banners for defending one extreme and excluding another.

Removing the Illness and Using the Dharma: Why Must Its Meaning in Use Change?

The decisive turn of the entire section comes after the words “if the illness is removed.” What the preceding discussion removes is the illness of one gateway swallowing many, skillful means and reality being separated, common return being asserted without knowing its destination, and similar errors. The Dharmas and their names do not thereby disappear. If those names continue to be used, their contents must be opened again.

The teaching of marks must fully employ four gateways, and the teaching without marks the eight gateways of shared and unshared prajñā. Praise and reproach must simultaneously illuminate small and great, partial and perfect, provisional and real. Common return must lead to the One Vehicle, permanently abiding buddha-nature, and the ultimately perfect destination. Permanence must include neither permanent nor impermanent and must also employ permanence and impermanence together, so that the two birds range together and all eight operations are complete.

The five flavors are used in the sequence stated in scripture, while Tiwei and Boli are not confined to the human-and-deva vehicle. Half and full are not two static compartments but stand in five relations: full; opening the full to establish the half; breaking the half to clarify the full; carrying the half while clarifying the full; and abolishing the half to clarify the full. Causes and conditions and provisional names each serve as one gateway of the Tripiṭaka Teaching, while deceptive marks serve as one gateway of the Shared Teaching. The real and the permanent reveal one another; the Dharma realm is not exclusive to the Avataṃsaka, and the perfect school is not confined to the Great Collection.

Marks can be used to clarify no marks, and no marks to clarify marks; the two do not separate. The one sound likewise retains both liberation through skillful means endowed with wisdom and liberation through wisdom endowed with skillful means. This does not take the old explanations back unchanged. It makes the old names enter new doctrinal relations: the names may be accepted, but their meaning in use has become wholly different.

Through the Eye of the Shiqian

Zhanran first divides this section into two layers: explaining the chapter heading and then properly undertaking the detailed examination. He also uses numbers to make explicit what the root treatise states briefly. When the teaching without marks takes only the gateway of emptiness within shared prajñā, the seven gateways lost are the remaining three gateways of shared prajñā together with the four of unshared prajñā. When reproaching the small takes only one kind of śrāvaka in the Tripiṭaka gateway of existence among the eight Tripiṭaka and Shared gateways, the remaining seven kinds are lost. Gathering five means humans, devas, and the three vehicles; gathering seven further divides śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas into two kinds each.

In the passage on the eight operations, Zhanran explains the total through the four of permanence, bliss, and the rest, together with the four of neither permanence nor impermanence and the rest. This makes the error of “obtaining permanence alone” clearer: of eight relations, only one extreme has been retained. A later ancient commentary disagrees over their arrangement. The total can therefore be clarified, while two ancient interpretations of the arrangement remain.

In the simile of the two birds, Zhanran sets aside disputes over the sounds and meanings of the birds’ names and takes the female and male ranging and resting together. He refutes two forms of separation in succession. If one bird remains below in birth-and-death and one above in nirvāṇa, they cannot range together. If two instances of permanence become two males and two instances of impermanence become two females, the paired relation is likewise lost. The Mirror takes birth-and-death and nirvāṇa each to possess permanence and impermanence, with phenomena and principle mutually implicative, and then threads their ranging together vertically through the six identities.

At the one-sound teaching, Zhanran identifies wisdom as the real and skillful means as the provisional, emphasizing that the two meanings are mutually implicative and cannot be separated. If the five periods retain only the gradual guidance of skillful means, or the one sound retains only the equal real wisdom, each still holds one side. Only when wisdom and skillful means accomplish one another do “liberation through skillful means endowed with wisdom” and “liberation through wisdom endowed with skillful means” genuinely become liberation.

Why does one Buddha-Dharma have the three appearances sudden, gradual, and indeterminate? The characteristics of the teaching first raise a general outline and only afterward unfold the detailed topics. The outline has three lines—sudden, gradual, and indeterminate—and each simultaneously opens into the teaching gate and the contemplation gate. The teaching gate looks at how the Buddha teaches and how sentient beings hear; the contemplation gate looks at how practitioners turn what they have heard into contemplative practice. Only when teaching the Dharma and settling the mind are joined do the three lines become a complete entrance.

Why the Teaching Gate and Contemplation Gate Must Stand Together

The teaching gate is for people who practice through faith and accomplishes the aspect of hearing. The contemplation gate is for people who practice through Dharma and accomplishes the aspect of wisdom. The relation between hearing and wisdom is written as eyes, sunlight, and various colors: eyes can see, yet still require light to illuminate objects; light may be bright, yet still requires eyes to receive it. Hearing brings Dharma-meaning before one, and wisdom enables one to see it as it is. Only when both are complete does teaching genuinely enter contemplation.

This also shows that classifying the teaching answers not only “What did the Buddha teach?” but also “How is this teaching received, and how does it become practice?” If the same sudden, gradual, and indeterminate are viewed only as verbal teaching, the aspect of settling the mind is missing. If they are viewed only as contemplative practice, the source in what was heard is lost. The two gates illuminate one another, just as eyes and sunlight together make seeing colors possible.

How Characteristics of Sudden Teaching Appear Throughout the Great Vehicle Scriptures

Characteristics of sudden teaching are disclosed through several images. The rising sun first illuminates the high mountains, meaning that the great Dharma first responds to great capacities. Smelling only campaka means hearing only the fragrance of the one-flavored great Dharma. Prajñā not shared with the Two Vehicles discloses the profundity of what bodhisattvas hear. Teaching only the unsurpassed path and entering the Tathāgata’s wisdom upon first seeing the Buddha’s body disclose hearing the Dharma and proceeding directly toward the Buddha-path. A cow eating the Forbearance herb and immediately obtaining clarified essence further discloses a practitioner directly obtaining clarified essence without waiting to transform through each flavor in sequence.

These examples come from different Great Vehicle scriptures but together disclose sudden meaning, so the conclusion falls upon “characteristics of sudden teaching.” A characteristic is the meaning displayed by a teaching at a particular place, and a scripture can display the sudden wherever that characteristic is present. A division fixes a whole scripture in one place. The root treatise separates the two, allowing the sudden to be seen according to what each scripture actually teaches.

What Are the Three Kinds of Gradual Sequence?

The first kind of gradual is the arising of scriptural teachings from one another: from the Buddha issue the twelve divisions of scripture; from the twelve divisions issues sūtra; and in sequence issue Vaipulya, prajñā, and nirvāṇa. This speaks of the gradual according to the successive arising of scriptural teachings.

The second kind proceeds from humans and devas through the Two Vehicles and bodhisattvas to the Buddha-path. This views the stages of persons within the teaching.

The third kind begins at some point midway and enters successively. This views how a practitioner need not begin at the very first station.

Each of the three sequences answers a separate question: how teaching unfolds, how a person advances, and how one gradually enters from one’s present location. All bear the name gradual, but the sequence each examines is not the same.

Why Does the Indeterminate Use Poison as Its Simile?

The indeterminate does not establish another Dharma apart from sudden and gradual teaching. It points to how the Great Vehicle true mark heard in the past has already become a deep seed, like poison placed in milk beforehand. When one again encounters the Buddha’s voiced teaching in this life, the past seed is activated and the bonds of delusion are severed. Milk changes into curds, raw ghee, refined ghee, and clarified essence, yet the poison remains within it; activation in any flavor can kill.

Tiwei and Boli merely heard the five precepts, yet in the same assembly some gained the forbearance in which dharmas do not arise, three hundred people gained faith-forbearance, and the Four Heavenly Kings gained pliant forbearance. The discipline remains at the milk flavor, but what they gain is like consuming the medicine of enduring bliss, wearing the talisman of long life, and abiding in discipline while seeing the mother of the buddhas. This image discloses a past seed maturing within the five precepts heard at present.

At the curds flavor, within the same initial turning of the Dharma wheel, the five bhikṣus and eighty thousand devas gain purity of the Dharma-eye, while measureless bodhisattvas gain the forbearance of non-arising. At raw ghee, bodhisattvas see buddha-nature and abide in great nirvāṇa within the Vaipulya Great Vehicle teaching. At refined ghee, bodhisattvas see buddha-nature within the Mahāprajñā teaching. At clarified essence, śrāvakas of dull faculties open the wisdom-eye and see buddha-nature, while pratyekabuddhas of dull faculties and the bodhisattvas’ seven kinds of skillful means also enter ultimate nirvāṇa. The five flavors mark where development occurs; activation of the poison marks breaking delusion and gaining entry. In this way, the characteristics of indeterminate teaching are clarified on the basis of sudden and gradual without forming another division.

How the Three Characteristics of Teaching Become Three Gates of Contemplation

Perfect-and-sudden contemplation immediately contemplates the true mark from the initial arousal of mind, cultivates the four kinds of samādhi, and practices the noble eightfold path, opening the Buddha’s knowing-and-seeing at the place of awakening and gaining the forbearance of non-arising. The simile of a cow eating the Forbearance herb and immediately obtaining clarified essence here turns from sudden teaching of the Dharma to sudden contemplative practice. The condition from the outset is the true mark, yet the practice still possesses samādhis and the right path.

Gradual-and-successive contemplation takes the perfect ultimate as its direction from the initial arousal of mind and then cultivates in sequence the twelve-gate dhyāna of ānāpāna, the Six Wondrous Gates, the sixteen excellent practices, contemplating, refining, perfuming, cultivating, the factors of the path, and contemplation of the Four Truths. Śrāvaka practice is like pure milk, and contemplation of the twelve links is like curds. The four universal vows, six pāramitās, and phenomenal and principial dharmas practiced by bodhisattvas of the Shared and Tripiṭaka Teachings are like raw ghee. The practices of bodhisattvas of the Distinct Teaching are like refined ghee. Intrinsic-nature dhyāna, entering-all dhyāna, and the practices through pure-purification dhyāna can reveal buddha-nature and enable one to abide in great nirvāṇa, like clarified essence.

Thus the gradual succession describes practices unfolding step by step, while the perfect ultimate describes the direction already established from the initial arousal of mind. The sequence makes every step beneath one’s feet clear, while the perfect ultimate lets every step know where it is going. If the five flavors are distinguished specifically according to bodhisattva stages, the characteristics of practice at each level are still viewed again within this same direction.

Indeterminate contemplation places the development of past seeds within five levels of cultivation. One may suddenly gain the forbearance of non-arising while cultivating the twelve gates of dhyāna; while cultivating contemplation of impurity, the nine perceptions, ten perceptions, liberations, superior bases, and contemplation of the constructed Four Noble Truths, one may likewise open in mind and understanding. One may awaken while arousing the four private vows, cultivating the six perfections, embodying provisionality and entering emptiness, and contemplating the non-arising Four Truths. One may awaken while cultivating the six perfections, emerging from emptiness into provisionality, and contemplating the immeasurable Four Truths. One may also awaken while cultivating correct Middle-Way contemplation through intrinsic-nature dhyāna and the other dhyānas, the unconstructed Four Noble Truths, and the Lotus and pratyutpanna samādhis and the other forms among the four kinds of samādhi. Every level has an actual practice, and every level may become the place where a past seed matures.

Why Can a Brief Indication Broadly Encompass the Buddha-Dharma?

People who practice through faith traverse teaching according to the three meanings sudden, gradual, and indeterminate, and people who practice through Dharma traverse contemplation according to the same three meanings. The former enter the path through hearing Dharma, while the latter cultivate through settling the mind. One side discerns how the various teachings are established, and the other how the various contemplations arrange practice in the mind. The threefold outline therefore interpenetrates the teaching and contemplation gates.

“Brief indication” says that only the guiding lines are first pointed out, while “broadly encompasses” says that these lines already extend throughout the vast Buddha-Dharma. The scriptural evidence, five flavors, opening and combining, resolution of questions, and increasing numbers that follow will unfold step by step within this threefold outline. The first topic first enables one to see how teaching and contemplation together bear the work of classifying the characteristics of the teaching.

The conclusion twice states that each topic differs from those of established Dharma masters or worldly meditation masters. The difference is not merely a change of names. The sudden, gradual, and indeterminate heard in practice through faith must each return to capacities and attainments. The three contemplations cultivated in practice through Dharma must each become a method for settling the mind. Only when the teaching and contemplation gates are both made practical is “the names are the same as of old, but their meanings differ” answered at the end of the whole passage. This also shows that although the general outline is brief, each topic’s actual operation remains its content. Beneath the same names, every referent, doctrinal level, and function must still be distinguished.

Through the Eye of the Shiqian

Zhanran first analyzes this unit into listing the divisions and explanation, then divides the explanation of the general outline into marking the topic, listing, and explaining, with teaching and contemplation again opened within the explanation. This joins the three names at the beginning to practice through faith and practice through Dharma at the end: the threefold outline is established first, and afterward the three lines are shown traversing teaching and contemplation respectively.

The Mirror’s judgment concerning the sudden is that sudden meaning can occur from the Avataṃsaka through the Lotus. The manifest teaching at the Deer Park belongs to the small teaching, while the sudden benefit raised there is explained by borrowing its secret aspect. “Characteristics of sudden teaching” are thereby not narrowed to a fixed label for one scripture.

The gradual is further expressly divided into three: the beginning and end of the whole lifetime, persons within the teaching, and gradual entry beginning midway. A person traversing gradual teaching may still gain a sudden benefit, so the sequence in which verbal teaching unfolds and the benefit sentient beings actually gain can be viewed separately.

The key to the indeterminate is gathered as “hearing Dharma in the past and habituation developing in the present life.” Tiwei remains manifest indeterminacy; mentioning only bodhisattvas at the raw- and refined-ghee levels is an abbreviation in the exposition. The Mirror further uses the expedient stages as the naming boundary of the indeterminate, giving regular entry into the real and extraordinary development of past habituation their respective places.

The most important illumination in the contemplation gate concerns the starting point of gradual-and-successive contemplation. Although practices unfold in sequence, from the beginning all three contemplations know their perfect direction. When bodhisattva stages are specifically pointed out again, characteristics of sequential practice are borrowed while the initial mind still knows the perfect ultimate. Indeterminate contemplation specifically indicates a seed from past hearing developing in accordance with contemplation cultivated now; it has a different context from an indeterminate mode of practice received from a teacher.

Finally, Zhanran explains “general outline” through the three meanings extending throughout one lifetime of transformation whether as teaching or contemplation, while noting that the various gates and meshes have not yet been discussed in detail. The general outline gives direction; specific scriptural divisions, stages, manifest and secret teaching, and benefits to capacities still require distinction according to each matter. It can therefore broadly encompass the Buddha-Dharma without flattening the detailed classifications that follow.

As Part One of Fascicle Ten turns into Part Two, Guanding preserves both the fascicle title and the attribution “taught by Tiantai Master Zhiyi.” The continuous teaching concentrates on three questions. Since the Buddha initially intended to teach the Great Vehicle directly, why did he later distinctly teach the Three Vehicles? Why can the same initial sudden teaching be compared both to milk and to clarified essence? Since the Lotus and Nirvāṇa are both the final flavor, why must they still be divided into an earlier and a later batch?

Zhiyi takes three scriptural passages that mutually supply what the others lack. “Skillful Means” reveals the turn from the sudden to opening the gradual. The Sutra of Immeasurable Meanings supplies the middle sections after that turn. “Faith and Understanding” transforms the entire process into the long simile of father and son recognizing one another and the family estate being entrusted. Read together, the sequence of the scriptures reveals a process in which sentient beings mature from being unable to bear the teaching to being able to receive, know, and attain it.

Why Was the Initial Intention to Teach the Great Turned into Distinctly Teaching Three?

“Skillful Means” first places the Buddha’s two directions within one process of reflection. The wisdom attained by the Buddha was subtle, wondrous, and foremost, and he originally intended sentient beings to enter it directly. Seeing that sentient beings’ faculties were dull and recalling the skillful means practiced by past buddhas, he decided to distinctly teach the Three Vehicles within the path of the One Vehicle.

“First sat at the place of the path” reveals the sudden teaching. When the Buddha descended from Tuṣita Heaven, his Dharma-body retinue accompanied him like dark clouds enclosing the moon. Within his mother’s womb he constantly taught the wondrous Dharma, continuing until he first accomplished complete awakening at the quiescent place of the path and first taught the Great Vehicle purely for the bodhisattvas, like the newly risen sun first illuminating the high mountains. “First illuminating” reveals the higher and lower capacities of sentient beings to receive the light and the sequence in which they do so.

The same turn is repeatedly revealed through three sets of scenes. The present Buddha emits light from between his brows: first the buddhas are seen teaching bodhisattvas, and afterward nirvāṇa is taught for those who suffer. Past buddhas first extensively expound the profound Dharma, and afterward there are innumerable assemblies of śrāvakas. Śākyamuni Buddha likewise says that those who first saw the Buddha and heard the Dharma could enter the Tathāgata’s wisdom, while those who had previously studied the Lesser Vehicle later heard this scripture and entered the Buddha’s wisdom. Teaching the sudden first and the gradual afterward thus becomes the common sequence in which the great Dharma meets different faculties.

Why Does One Initial Sudden Teaching Have the Two Names Milk and Clarified Essence?

The initial sudden teaching is addressed to Dharma-body bodhisattvas, while ordinary beings of great faculties can also receive it. Those who awaken immediately through the perfect and sudden teaching realize the ultimate and are like clarified essence. Those who are only beginners hear the great teaching but have just entered the ten faiths; this is the beginning of practice and is like milk. The two names respectively answer “How deep is what is attained?” and “Where has the journey reached?”

Among those receiving the teaching, some have both vehicle and discipline urgent, while others have discipline relaxed and the vehicle urgent. Great faculties such as these cannot reach the Buddha’s assembly by themselves; they must accompany the Buddha as response-born beings and enter the seven places and eight assemblies. From the standpoint of the teacher, when the Buddha newly accomplished complete awakening, the blood of ignorance and the other delusions had already transformed into illumination. The eighty thousand Dharma treasuries and twelve divisions of scripture were inherently present in the Dharma-body and flowed forth first in response to the stimulation of great faculties.

Pure milk is already present within a cow that has newly given birth; once the calf makes the sound 『𡂡』, the mother cow lets down milk. Great faculties stimulating the Buddha are like the calf, and the Buddha suddenly teaching the great Dharma is like the mother cow letting down milk. Here milk means initial and fundamental. The forbearance grass causing a cow to produce clarified essence means that what great faculties stimulate and what the perfect response teaches can directly reach the ultimate flavor. The same sudden teaching is called milk according to its being the beginning of the teaching and clarified essence according to the ultimate principle. Viewed through practice, those who break ignorance and attain the forbearance of non-arising are like clarified essence; those just establishing practice and people of lesser faculties who have not yet changed are like milk.

The two names of the initial sudden teaching are therefore not two names accidentally superimposed. “Sudden” is established according to the Dharma and “milk” according to flavor; the root treatise uses each in accordance with the meaning of its immediate context.

Milk Producing Curds Means Successive Arising, Not Thickness and Thinness

When sentient beings could not bear the great Dharma the Buddha originally intended to bestow, he traveled to Vārāṇasī and distinctly taught the Three Vehicles within the path of the One Vehicle. The great Dharma remained the Buddha’s original intent in giving, while the Three Vehicles became an entrance through which sentient beings could at that time sever their bonds and accomplish the noble.

From the Buddha are born the twelve divisions of scripture, and from the twelve divisions of scripture is born sūtra. This is like milk coming from a cow and curds from milk. Those of gradual faculties had not yet changed within the sudden teaching and remained entirely raw like milk. Within the Tripiṭaka Teaching, they shed the ordinary and accomplished the noble, like milk changing into curds. The passage expressly takes only the successive arising of earlier and later; it does not use thickness or thinness of flavor as a basis for classifying the teaching by superiority and inferiority.

This also changes how skillful means is understood. If skillful means is seen only as a lower answer, one cannot see that it begins to transform those unable to advance. If it is made a permanent destination, one cannot see that milk will in turn produce curds. Successive arising preserves both the benefit of the present moment and the road that continues afterward.

How Does the Sutra of Immeasurable Meanings Supply the Three Middle Stages?

The second scriptural passage begins from sentient beings’ differing dispositions and desires. The dharmas contemplated by the Buddha-eye cannot be expressed, while sentient beings’ dispositions, desires, and understanding all differ. The same transformation therefore produces different understanding and different attainments of Dharma, fruit, and path in different people.

At first the Four Truths are taught for those seeking to become śrāvakas; in the middle the twelve links of dependent origination are taught for those seeking pratyekabuddhahood; later the twelve divisions of Vaipulya scripture, Mahāprajñā, and the oceanic emptiness of the Avataṃsaka are taught, revealing the bodhisattvas’ practice over successive kalpas. This long list also reveals faculties intermingling: when the Four Truths are taught, some gods already arouse the mind of awakening; when the later great Dharma is taught, some still remain as śrāvakas or pratyekabuddhas. The teachings have a sequence, while each being’s benefit follows their faculties.

The Tripiṭaka Teaching enables people to sever their bonds and accomplish the noble, which is already a real benefit, but it is still not the Buddha’s original intent to bestow the great. Vaipulya therefore follows attainment of the fruit by reproaching partiality that clings to the fruit. When Subhūti faces Vimalakīrti’s question, he bewilderedly sets down his bowl and wishes to leave. Śāriputra tries to remove the heavenly flowers from his body but cannot. Aṅgulimāla ridicules, and Vimalakīrti subdues. These scenes cause those who attained the fruit no longer to treat their attainment as the whole. Having already received the Buddha’s kindness and come to trust one another, they can endure reproof without anger, turn from curds into raw ghee, and gain the benefit of being ashamed of the small and aspiring to the great.

Prajñā then transforms this aspiration into the ability to know the great Dharma. From form and mind all the way to the knowledge of all modes, impermanence, no-self, emptiness, and non-arising and non-extinction are turned repeatedly sentence by sentence, and all are Dharmas of practice. The śrāvakas are commanded to relay the teaching and can teach it for bodhisattvas; their minds gradually become open and at ease. They are like someone who takes charge of and knows the goods in a storehouse, knowing how much the estate contains and how goods are to be taken or given, but not yet intending to take any for themselves. This is raw ghee becoming refined ghee.

Why Does “Oceanic Emptiness of the Avataṃsaka” Appear after Prajñā?

If these four words referred only to the Avataṃsaka initially taught at the quiescent place of the path, they would not fit the present sequence. Zhiyi first cites the Treatise on Dharma-nature, which says that bodhisattvas of dull faculties enter the Dharma realm in three places—Prajñā, the Lotus, and Nirvāṇa—to explain that entering the Dharma realm through Prajñā can also be called the oceanic emptiness of the Avataṃsaka.

He further speaks in terms of faculties. The duration of the Avataṃsaka teaching was long, but those of lesser faculties had not entered in the past. They were formerly like the deaf and mute; now, on hearing Prajñā, they had the capacity to enter. The Large Prajñāpāramitā extends to people of the Three Vehicles and can therefore speak of the four fruits; the Avataṃsaka excludes those of lesser faculties and does not have the same scene of the four fruits. Read together, the “oceanic emptiness of the Avataṃsaka” after Prajñā means that people who formerly could not enter now attain entry into the Dharma realm.

Viewed from the following section, the reopening of the perfect and sudden after Prajñā is the Lotus. Faculties have been tempered and matured through the Tripiṭaka, Vaipulya, and Prajñā teachings, their obstructions removed, and they are now able to hear the perfect and sudden. Entering the Tathāgata’s wisdom when the Buddha first accomplished the path and entering the Buddha’s wisdom later upon hearing the Lotus are alike in their perfect and sudden meaning. The same perfect and sudden light becomes manifest later as the faculties of those receiving it mature.

If Both Are Clarified Essence, Why Are the Lotus and Nirvāṇa Divided into Two Batches?

The Lotus is called the great king’s feast and the Nirvāṇa clarified essence; both scriptures come after all the other flavors. After the Buddha Sun-Moon-Lamp Radiance taught the Lotus, he entered nirvāṇa at midnight. At the time of Kāśyapa Buddha, the Nirvāṇa likewise was not separately elucidated and the Lotus was treated as the final teaching and final flavor. In all these conditions of transformation, the Lotus serves as the final teaching and final flavor.

The sentient beings transformed by Śākyamuni Buddha, however, include those who mature earlier and those who mature later. The earlier-maturing receive predictions and see the Tathāgata-nature in the Lotus, like a field sown first that ripens and is harvested first. The five thousand who rose and left on their own and the humans and gods moved elsewhere are like late-sown crops that have not matured. They must still be tempered again through Prajñā and gathered in through the Nirvāṇa. The two batches are like one farmer facing two sets of crops that mature at different times and harvesting each according to when it ripens.

The question and answer on certainty directly establishes the later batch. Subhūti had already heard in the Lotus that bodhisattvas received predictions of buddhahood, yet later, within Prajñā, still asked whether bodhisattvas were certain or not certain. Zhiyi sees in this that, after the Lotus, there remained space for teaching Prajñā again to those who had not entered. Transformation does not end because the earlier batch has already been harvested.

How Does One Household Reveal All Five Stages of Maturation?

The “Faith and Understanding” chapter transforms the teaching sequence in the preceding two scriptural passages into the distance between father and son.

In the first scene, the poor son happens upon his father’s residence and runs as soon as he sees its wealth. The father sends someone to pursue him urgently; startled, the son shouts, thinking that he is being imprisoned though innocent, and even faints. The father can only order his release. This is like the sudden teaching first opening at the quiescent place of the path: the Buddha intends the great Dharma for those of lesser faculties, but they are unable to bear it. The sun has risen and first illuminates the high mountains; for the poor son, this is still only the initial milk.

In the second scene, the father secretly sends two haggard men without imposing virtue to hire the son slowly to clear away dung. The father himself removes his jeweled necklace and puts on filthy clothes before he can approach. This is like the Buddha concealing Vairocana’s majestic virtues and excellent marks, manifesting the appearance of an old bhikṣu, and having people clear away dung for twenty years in return for a day’s wage. The delusions of views and thought are severed and the uncontaminated mind purified, like milk becoming curds.

In the third scene, father and son trust and understand one another and go out and enter without difficulty, yet the son still stays in his original location. Hearing the great Dharma is entering, remaining in the small Dharma going out, and undergoing severe reproach without anger being without difficulty. Entering the residence and seeing ministers and powerful clans, great meritorious powers, the Jewel-Torch Dhāraṇī, and the supernormal transformations of inconceivable liberation is also entering; returning to the grass hut and remaining in the sphere of the Two Vehicles is going out. The distance has narrowed, but the dwelling has not changed, like curds becoming raw ghee.

In the fourth scene, the father gives his son responsibility for the gold, silver, precious jewels, and full storehouses. The son can take charge of and know how much there is and what should be taken or given, yet has no intention of taking even one meal. Prajñā’s contemplative wisdom is the family estate, while name-and-form through knowledge of modes are the goods. Subhūti and the others can relay the teaching to bodhisattvas but have not yet practiced and realized it themselves. Being able to know without yet personally possessing is the mature position of refined ghee.

In the fifth scene, before the relatives the father declares their relation as father and son and transfers the entire family estate to him. Since the son previously took charge of and knew all the goods, they need not be explained again. The grass hut only has to be demolished, the one great cart bestowed, and a prediction of buddhahood given. Ignorance is broken and the Middle Way revealed; the poor son rejoices at attaining what he never had before, like pure clarified essence emerging from refined ghee.

The five scenes always revolve around the same father, the same son, and the same household. The distance the son can bear and his relation to the family estate gradually change. First he sees and flees, then he is hired; later he can enter and leave and manage the estate; only at the end does he learn that he has always been the son of the household.

If the Two Scriptures Share One Flavor, Why Do Their Teaching Intents Still Differ?

Those who mature earlier enter the Lotus through Prajñā, while those who mature later enter the Nirvāṇa through Prajñā again. Both see buddha-nature and are therefore clarified essence. The main teaching of the Lotus first returns the śrāvakas to the one real, then reveals buddhahood attained in the distant past and clarifies bodhisattva matters. The Nirvāṇa likewise first uses the superior three cultivations to bring the śrāvakas into the secret treasury, then clarifies bodhisattva matters through the thirty-six questions. Viewed from the first and last parts of the main teaching, the beginning and end of the two scriptures correspond.

As the Buddha approaches extinction, however, the Nirvāṇa must also restate discipline and admonish the future, preventing those of dull faculties in the latter age from producing annihilationist views upon hearing emptiness and quiescence. It extensively clarifies permanent abiding, breaks inversions, and causes buddhadharma to abide for a long time. This is the distinct intent the Nirvāṇa bears in facing the future.

Their shared flavor therefore lies in ultimate buddha-nature, while their distinct intent lies in safeguarding the Dharma as extinction approaches. A farming family harvests at different times, and a family estate is entrusted in stages. The fruit ultimately matured is the same, while those who mature later are still cared for through a complete method.

Through the Eye of the Shiqian

In the Fahua Xuanyi Shiqian, Zhanran first says that the three passages establish the three major outlines, then distinguishes what each passage covers. “Skillful Means” takes the movement from the sudden to the Deer Park; the Sutra of Immeasurable Meanings supplies the Vaipulya and Prajñā after the Deer Park; and “Faith and Understanding” gathers the first two passages. The wording and meaning of the first two illuminate one another, while the last encompasses beginning and end. Thus, although the three passages are few, they illuminate the opening and closing of an entire course of transformation.

For the three periods of seven days in “Skillful Means,” the Mirror first lists several old explanations, then marks the present master’s intent. The three periods successively represent the three cycles of Dharma exposition, exposition through simile, and exposition through causes and conditions. Applied generally to the Great Vehicle, they also represent intents to teach the Perfect, Distinct, and Shared Teachings, for which in each case there were no responsive faculties, so the Buddha ceased the great and administered the small. This judgment reads the number of days as a structure of teaching and does not combine the divergent views listed alongside it into a single chronology.

The initial sudden teaching’s two names, milk and clarified essence, are further viewed through faculties and conditions, the transforming lord, teaching flavor, and practice. Because it is great it is called sudden; because it is initial it is called milk. From the Buddha’s standpoint it is always sudden; from the ultimate principle realized by practitioners it is clarified essence; from the beginning of great practice and the lack of transformation in lesser faculties it is milk. In the Mirror’s light, the two names reveal criteria of observation rather than canceling one another.

In the section on the Sutra of Immeasurable Meanings, the Mirror first distinguishes the initial great followed by the small and the initial small followed by the great, then unfolds Vaipulya, Prajñā, and the Lotus. Vaipulya has six levels: the purport of the class, those reproached, time, the intent of reproach, the benefit attained, and the conclusion on the period. Prajñā preserves both shared and unshared aspects. Concerning the “oceanic emptiness of the Avataṃsaka,” one route explains it through the Dharma realm, while another uses the Avataṃsaka’s long duration to extend it into later periods. Both routes are coherent, and so both are retained.

The Mirror likewise illuminates the five stages of “Faith and Understanding” one by one. First seeing the father’s residence and fleeing reveals the initial sudden teaching being intended for those of lesser faculties. Secretly sending two men to clear away dung reveals concealing the great and administering the small. Going out and entering without difficulty while still staying in the original location reveals entering the great and going out to the small within Vaipulya. Taking charge of and knowing the goods without intending to take them reveals being able to know without personally attaining within Prajñā. Father and son recognizing one another and the estate being transferred to the son reveals the Lotus’s opening and revelation. The five stages follow one relation between father and son, making “encompassing beginning and end” present in every step from inability to bear the estate, through the growing ability to enter, leave, and know it, to personally receiving the estate.

Concerning the Lotus and Nirvāṇa, Zhanran first distinguishes their shared flavor from the different conditions they transform, then uses the question and answer on certainty to illuminate Prajñā for the later batch. The five stages of “Faith and Understanding” continuously present the sequence of Avataṃsaka, Deer Park, Vaipulya, Prajñā, and Lotus within one simile. Finally, “beginning” is defined as the first part of the main teaching and “end” as its final part, explaining the shared flavor through correspondence between the two scriptures’ structures.

This Mirror ultimately preserves two points. Each of the three passages has an irreplaceable task, and the same clarified essence allows for different conditions of transformation. At the closing sentence, the sameness of the Lotus and Nirvāṇa no longer means that the two scriptures are without any difference. It means that the earlier- and later-maturing both see buddha-nature, while the Buddha still preserves a complete road for those who mature later. Shared flavor is spoken of from the buddha-nature seen; the earlier and later batches are spoken of from the sequence of maturation. Both levels stand together.

If skillful means is finally to be abolished, how can it still accomplish the full? The five flavors explain how the teachings unfold in sequence, while half and full explain how skillful means and reality are situated at each step. To take only one axis is to see one side while losing the other. Only when the two axes mutually accomplish one another do both the before-and-after sequence and the functions of provisional and real become clear.

Why Does Using Only One Axis Yield Only One Side?

Discussing only the five flavors reveals the sequence from milk to clarified essence, but what is obtained leans toward skillful means. Discussing only half and full distinguishes half-words from full words, but what is obtained leans toward reality. The former possesses before-and-after application but does not illuminate the reality within it; the latter points to reality but does not see how skillful means functions through the sequence.

The root treatise therefore does not discard the five flavors or half and full. It says instead that the five flavors are not separate from half and full, and half and full are not separate from the five flavors. Every step of the five flavors must be supported by half and full, while every function of half and full must be returned to the five-flavor sequence to see when it is applied and when it is held in reserve.

How Do Wisdom and Skillful Means Become a Pair of Wings?

When the five flavors contain half and full, there is wisdom liberated through skillful means; when half and full contain the five flavors, there is skillful means liberated through wisdom. The reversed order of the two sentences reveals support in both directions: wisdom is not separate from skillful means, and skillful means is not separate from wisdom. The provisional and real thereby range together, while advance and withdrawal each find their proper place.

The provisional and real range together like a bird’s two wings. Only when both wings have strength at once can flight be accomplished. The provisional can still be applied according to faculties, while the real can still indicate that to which the teaching returns. When the two move together, advance and withdrawal each find their proper place.

How Are Half and Full Situated within the Five Flavors?

The Avataṃsaka occupies the milk flavor, revealing the sudden and full Mahāyāna family estate: it clarifies only the one real and is full without being half. The Tripiṭaka occupies the curds flavor; like the poor son still engaged in hired labor, it practices only skillful means and is half without being full. Vaipulya occupies the raw-ghee flavor, setting half and full against one another and using the full to rebuke the half. The Great Prajñā occupies the refined-ghee flavor, carrying the half while discussing the full: the half is shared by the three vehicles, while the full belongs exclusively to bodhisattvas. The Lotus occupies the flavor of clarified essence, entrusting the family wealth and abolishing the half to clarify the full.

The five positions each possess their own function. Milk is full without being half, and curds half without being full, revealing the two extremes. Raw ghee sets half and full in opposition, refined ghee carries the half while discussing the full, and clarified essence abolishes the half to clarify the full. Half and full thereby each find their place according to the course of transformation.

How Do Half-Words Accomplish the Work of Full Words?

When the teaching reaches the Lotus, the half is abolished, yet the work it performed earlier becomes clear precisely here. If those of dull faculties had not been trained and matured through the skillful means of half-words, they could not open the Buddha’s knowing-and-seeing through full words. The Tathāgata therefore earnestly praises skillful means because the half possesses the power to accomplish the full.

The śrāvakas’ understanding makes this function visible as its fruit. The unsurpassed cluster of jewels, never originally sought, comes of itself, and practitioners abide in real wisdom. From hired labor and receiving instruction, skillful means brings people to the place where the family wealth comes of itself and real wisdom becomes their dwelling. Half and full mutually accomplishing one another means precisely that this course of transformation reaches completion.

Through the Eye of the Shiqian

Zhanran first divides the passage into the impediment in using either alone and the direct clarification of mutual accomplishment. Mutual accomplishment is then divided into briefly clarifying freedom from the faults and directly judging each flavor. The five flavors form one path of vertical progress, and every flavor requires half and full to accomplish one another; yet the Avataṃsaka is only full, while the latter four flavors are either single or carry another. Mutual accomplishment therefore does not mean that every flavor contains one fixed half and one fixed full.

The Mirror further explains “wisdom liberated through skillful means” as wisdom obtaining skillful means and thereby being liberated, and “skillful means liberated through wisdom” as skillful means obtaining wisdom and thereby being liberated. The provisional and real ranging together therefore means that each benefits the other. The final passage distinguishes the transforming teacher’s praise from the śrāvakas’ understanding: the former clarifies the half’s power to accomplish the full, while the latter reveals the real benefit obtained through training and maturation. When the half is abolished, skillful means has already brought the practitioner to the place opened by full words.

Zhiyi’s teaching as recorded by Guanding first asks a fundamental question in this topic: at what point do the Dharmas taught in different scriptural teachings and the people receiving them genuinely converge into reality? If “correspondence” meant only joining two sets of names, Vaipulya would already count as correspondence when it teaches half and full together. Yet the root treatise continues asking whether person and Dharma have turned together. Correspondence is therefore not juxtaposition but convergence into reality.

Why Does Hearing Them Together Still Not Count as Correspondence?

The Avataṃsaka directly clarifies the great. There are no śrāvakas in its opening section; even when śrāvakas sit in its later section, they cannot enter that realm. The half teaching has not yet been set alongside it, and there is no correspondence to discuss. The Tripiṭaka then opens the three vehicles and receives those of small faculties, enabling them to sever the delusions of views and thought. Here the effort is again made only through the small teaching, while the full is not yet discussed; correspondence likewise has no point from which to arise.

Vaipulya begins to teach half and full together, to set them against one another, and to use the full to rebuke the half. Yet recipients of the half, even after hearing the full, only recognize the shame of remaining in the small and still do not enter the Great Vehicle. The image of the grass hut lies precisely here: although people have already heard the full teaching, their minds still take temporary lodging in the hut as secure. Two teachings occupying the same setting does not mean that the recipient’s mind has already turned and entered.

If the Dharma Corresponds, Why Has the Person Not Yet Corresponded?

Prajñā advances the question by one level. The half-word Dharma-gates are explained as skillful means that can pass into non-arising and can all converge into the Mahāyāna; the obstruction at the level of Dharma has been opened. Yet although the poor son is commanded to take charge of the family estate, he still has no desire to take even one meal’s worth. He has come to know the Dharma-gates, but father and child have not yet recognized one another. The root treatise therefore judges that the Dharma corresponds while the person does not.

Upon reaching the Lotus, the conjured city is recognized as not ultimate reality, and the practices of the past are revealed as themselves the bodhisattva path. The Dharma thereby corresponds. At the same time, the person’s identity as a buddha-child is confirmed, and the person corresponds as well. The family estate and the child no longer remain on opposite sides. Correspondence of both person and Dharma becomes the Lotus’ concluding statement.

Does First Correspondence in the Lotus Deny Every Earlier Entry?

The statement that correspondence with reality is first attained after the provisional is opened at the Deer Park and the course reaches the Lotus describes the general line of manifest transformation. The root treatise immediately distinguishes secret correspondence and manifest correspondence, preventing “first” from erasing every earlier entry.

Secret correspondence begins from the statement that some secretly awakened when Tiwei received the five precepts and then asks how sūtra, Vaipulya, and Prajñā could be wholly without secret awakening. This path is not individually marked along the public sequence and is therefore only indicated rather than unfolded. Manifest correspondence diverges according to faculties. Those who have not yet entered a stage may attain correspondence wherever they are, as shown by the prediction bestowed on the three hundred bhikṣus. Those abiding in the fruit must reach the Lotus and be pressed to believe. Those who claim to abide in the fruit yet cannot believe and enter are in fact people of overweening pride who have not entered a stage; after withdrawing from the assembly, they must await Nirvāṇa to attain correspondence.

Thus, first correspondence with reality in the Lotus does not conflict with the possibility of secret awakening earlier or of those who have not yet entered a stage attaining correspondence wherever they are. The former concerns where the public course of the Buddha’s teaching converges comprehensively into reality; the latter concerns when particular faculties actually gain entry.

If the Lotus Is Uniform Correspondence, Why Does Nirvāṇa Still Reopen Skillful Means?

The four statements gather the preceding passages tightly. The root treatise places the Avataṃsaka and the Tripiṭaka alike under neither correspondence nor non-correspondence: in the Avataṃsaka, the half has not yet arisen, so what correspondence could be discussed; in the Tripiṭaka, the full is not yet discussed, so what could correspond? In Vaipulya, although half and full are taught together, the person’s mind has not yet turned and entered. In Prajñā, although the Dharma corresponds, the person does not. The two are therefore uniformly non-correspondence. In the Lotus, person and Dharma correspond together, and so it is uniformly correspondence.

After the Lotus, Nirvāṇa again opens skillful means for those of dull faculties in later ages. In relation to those described earlier who did not correspond in the Lotus and attain correspondence in Nirvāṇa, it possesses the side of correspondence. In relation to reopening the provisional for the final age and guiding dull faculties of later generations, it possesses the side of non-correspondence. Correspondence and non-correspondence do not cancel one another; they point simultaneously to the destination and to those still being guided.

Do the Avataṃsaka and the Lotus Correspond in Only One Direction?

The final question and answer test the two scriptures in opposite directions. The questioner already sees that entering the Dharma realm through the Lotus corresponds with the Avataṃsaka, yet does not see entry into the One Vehicle through the Avataṃsaka corresponding with the Lotus. The answer does not establish another bridge. It simply points out that entry into the Dharma realm in the Avataṃsaka is itself entry into the One Vehicle.

This sentence brings the two paths together at what is entered. The names differ, but what is entered is not two destinations. Clarifying correspondence and non-correspondence therefore does not finally decide which scripture is incorporated by another; it distinguishes whether sentient beings have genuinely entered the One Vehicle through skillful means.

Through the Eye of the Shiqian

Zhanran first divides the passage into a general clarification of the intent and a direct clarification of correspondence and non-correspondence. The direct clarification is then divided into the direct explanation and questions and answers; the direct explanation proceeds through the five flavors, the reasons, and the four statements. The reasons first discuss generally how the three vehicles attain correspondence and then separately discuss the śrāvakas’ secret and manifest correspondence. The manifest is further divided into those who have not yet entered a stage, those abiding in the fruit, and those of overweening pride.

The Mirror further explains correspondence through convergence. The Avataṃsaka carries the Distinct and is therefore non-correspondence; because its purely great teaching is not presented alongside the small, it is not non-correspondence. The Tripiṭaka’s purely small teaching has not corresponded with the great and is therefore non-correspondence; because it is not presented alongside the great, it is not non-correspondence. Nirvāṇa originally does not abide in the small and is therefore also correspondence; because skillful means still remains, it is also non-correspondence. Each side of the four statements thereby has its place.

For śrāvakas abiding in the fruit, Zhanran explains pressing belief as a pressing exhortation and takes as his evidence that it is impossible for one who has truly attained arhatship not to believe the Great Dharma. People of overweening pride have not truly gained entry, while those who have gained entry are no longer of overweening pride. This gives the principal convergence in the Lotus and the gathering of the remaining faculties in Nirvāṇa their respective places.

At the final question and answer, Zhanran says only that the doubt is resolved according to the text and does not add an extended explanation. Entry into the Dharma realm is precisely entry into the One Vehicle; this is sufficient for the Avataṃsaka and the Lotus to illuminate one another at what is entered.

Why do some people attain clarified essence at first hearing while others must traverse the whole course? When classifying the teaching reaches the resolution of questions, it no longer asks only where a particular scripture should be placed. It asks why the same account of the five flavors sometimes belongs specifically to one segment and sometimes extends through beginning and end; why the most valuable medicine may bring no immediate benefit while a contracted prescription cures the illness; and why one person needs only one flavor to attain clarified essence while another must traverse them flavor by flavor.

Master Zhiyi answers through a threefold inquiry: first distinguishing shared and specific, next benefit and nonbenefit, and finally placing the five flavors back within each of the various teachings. These are not three tables that replace one another, but three changes in the position from which the matter is viewed.

Fixed Limits Make It Possible to See How Meaning Extends through Beginning and End

The specific views the fixed limit of a teaching within one set of conditions. The shared follows the same meaning to see how it extends through beginning and end. As milk, the Avataṃsaka belongs specifically to the beginning, yet as shared it can extend later. The half-word sūtra as curds belongs specifically to the second period, yet also extends later. Vaipulya and Prajñā each have a specific period, while predictions and teaching between the two nights still disclose their shared reach. Nirvāṇa belongs specifically to the end, yet contemplation of nirvāṇa at the initial arousal of mind and profound questions asked at first right awakening make it extend earlier.

The sun first illuminates high mountains at sunrise and its afterglow still shines upon lofty ridges at sunset. The picture changes neither the mountains nor the sunlight; what changes are the two times of rising and setting. The Avataṃsaka is like first illumination at the beginning and afterglow at the end. The meaning of the ocean of worlds of the Lotus Treasury can therefore be seen from the beginning through even beyond nirvāṇa. Shared does not rename every intermediate teaching as the Avataṃsaka. It says that one profound meaning is not sealed within a single period.

The Tripiṭaka extending later is shown by two personal histories and one account of compilation. Kālodāyin received a prediction in the Lotus assembly, then later entered a settlement, was killed, and became the originating condition for establishing a precept. Śāriputra requested the teaching in the Lotus assembly, then later entered extinction, after which Junti carried the three robes to the Buddha. The discipline, concentration, and wisdom taught from the Deer Park through the night of nirvāṇa were also collected into the treasuries of sūtra and the others. Although the events differ, they all establish that the half-word teaching did not disappear after the second period.

Vaipulya uses predictions at Rājagṛha, Jeta Grove in Śrāvastī, and Vārāṇasī to show that it extends beyond the Lotus. Prajñā uses both constant teaching from the night of attaining the path through the night of nirvāṇa and Subhūti’s question about certainty and uncertainty to show that it extends through beginning and end. Nirvāṇa moves in the opposite direction, from later to earlier: if those who initially aroused the mind already contemplated nirvāṇa, and if bodhisattvas already asked the profound meaning when the Buddha first attained right awakening, the meaning of nirvāṇa cannot begin only in the final assembly.

The Lotus further has manifest and secret sides. On the manifest side, its present declaration of integration into the Buddha’s wisdom is not seen earlier. On the secret side, principle is without obstruction. Śāriputra’s former hearing of bodhisattvas receiving predictions of buddhahood becomes evidence for predictions extending through the past. Shared and specific therefore function like two focal lengths: one sees what was explicitly taught in that moment, while the other sees how the meaning passes through different moments.

The Boundary among Three Kinds of Four Lies in How Buddha-Nature Is Seen

After shared and specific, the root treatise poses a short question. The Nirvāṇa retraces and teaches four, Vaipulya directly opens four, and the Distinct Teaching again has four. How are the three distinguished?

The answer places each in its own position: Nirvāṇa takes up four and universally enters buddha-nature; the Distinct Teaching proceeds in sequence and sees buddha-nature later; Vaipulya preserves realization, while two do not see the nature. All three bear the same number four, but their functions are separated as universal entry, seeing later in sequence, and two not seeing the nature. Here resolving questions displays its task: it does not merge identical names immediately, but asks where each “four” takes the practitioner.

A Medicine’s Value Is Not the Same as Its Power to Cure at This Moment

The second resolution begins with a counterintuitive pairing. The Avataṃsaka is milk and the Tripiṭaka is curds: does this not make the flavor of skillful means rich and that of the Great Vehicle thin? Master Zhiyi does not use the physical properties of milk and curds to value the teachings. He first asks whether the patient actually benefits.

A valuable medicine that does not correspond to the illness brings no benefit when taken. An inexpensive medicine that corresponds to the illness can take effect. Beginners do not yet receive profound benefit from the Avataṃsaka, and gradual faculties have not yet turned; for those two conditions it is therefore called milk. When gradual faculties receive the Tripiṭaka, they can sever views and thought, gradually reduce the three poisons, and turn from ordinary to noble, like milk becoming curds.

The simile preserves both the value of the medicine and the timing of treatment. An effective inexpensive medicine does not thereby surpass the valuable medicine, and a valuable medicine that is temporarily ineffective does not thereby become inferior. For lesser faculties, the Avataṃsaka is like milk; for great faculties, it is clarified essence. The teaching has not changed. What the recipient can bear and the benefit received differ. The simile takes only this part of resemblance, preventing every physical property of milk from governing the doctrine.

Why Does the Good Physician Sometimes Use Only Nine of the Twelve Medicines?

The second medicine simile is more detailed. A good physician has a secret prescription containing twelve medicines, three of them especially valuable. The physician accurately examines the signs of illness, knows when to increase or reduce the prescription, and never misses the condition or applies a mistaken treatment.

The Buddha’s perfect prescription and wondrous treatment contain the twelve divisions of scripture. Among them, teaching without being asked, vaipulya, and prediction are the three most profound. Sharp-witted bodhisattvas can take all twelve. Because those of the Two Vehicles are gravely ill, nine are used as their dose. Giving them all twelve would leave the prescription perfect but might not benefit their illness. Complete use of twelve is likened to milk, while contracting the prescription to nine is likened to curds.

Here milk and curds carry only sequence through successive arising. The perfect prescription is first used in full and is later contracted according to illness. The before-and-after meaning lies in the physician’s diagnosis and administration, not in milk being thin and curds thick. The three most valuable medicines are not declared useless; they are temporarily withheld according to this patient’s condition. Completeness and correspondence to capacity are not competing standards. The physician’s skill lies precisely in making them correspond.

The Flavor Actually Falls upon the Practitioner’s Mind

The third explanation no longer speaks from the medicine of teaching itself, but from the practitioner’s mind. During the Avataṃsaka, ordinary beings’ views and thoughts have not changed and are therefore like milk. During the Tripiṭaka, views and thoughts are severed and are therefore like curds. During Vaipulya, practitioners are rebuked, made ashamed, and subdued, and no longer call their own attainment truly ultimate; they are therefore like raw ghee. During Prajñā, they receive the teaching and recognize the dharmas and are therefore like refined ghee. During the Lotus, they break ignorance, open the Buddha’s knowing-and-seeing, receive predictions of buddhahood, and purify the mind and are therefore like clarified essence.

The five flavors thus trace the maturation of the mind in practice. While the practitioner’s mind remains immature, the teaching has not itself turned into another teaching. When the practitioner’s mind matures, the teaching receives a name in accordance with that maturation. The earlier statement that the Avataṃsaka is milk for lesser faculties but clarified essence for great faculties is explained in the same way: one teaching illuminates different degrees of maturation and therefore displays different flavor-names.

One Person or Five People Is Not a Choice with Only One Side

A person asks whether one person receives all five flavors or five persons each receive one flavor. The answer does not retain only one route.

First there is one person who receives only one flavor. Those whose disposition is purely of one kind within the Avataṃsaka immediately attain clarified essence and need not traverse the five flavors. On Snow Mountain there is an herb, and when the cow eats it, clarified essence is obtained. The herb, cow, and clarified essence disclose direct attainment upon first hearing.

There is also one person who traverses all five flavors in sequence. A person of Lesser Vehicle disposition is like milk when facing the sudden teaching and like curds upon receiving the Tripiṭaka, then passes through raw ghee and refined ghee before reaching the ultimate only at clarified essence. From the cow comes milk and, successively, curds, both ghees, and clarified essence. Cow, milk, curds, the two ghees, and clarified essence reveal one person’s maturation through time.

There are also sharp-faculty bodhisattvas and śrāvakas who have not yet entered a stage but see the nature at different points. Seeing the nature within the Tripiṭaka is called traversing two flavors. Seeing it within Vaipulya is traversing three. Seeing it within Prajñā is traversing four, with the three hundred bhikṣus given as the example. The number is counted from the flavor in which the nature is seen; two, three, and four each record the point of arrival.

Finally there is poison placed in milk. The poison pervades all five flavors, and each flavor can kill. The poison does not wait until clarified essence to become effective, just as a faculty capable of entry need not always proceed to the final flavor before receiving benefit. The three pictures—immediate clarified essence from the Forbearance herb, flavors arising successively from milk, and poison pervading every flavor—stand together. Direct attainment, sequential maturation, and entry midway all have a place.

How Does the Same Set of Five Flavors Appear within Each Teaching?

The third resolution first gives a general judgment: ordinary beings are like milk, śrāvakas like curds, bodhisattvas like raw and refined ghee, and buddhas like clarified essence. As a general statement of the five periods of half and full, ordinary beings have no path to treat delusion and are like untransformed milk; śrāvakas give rise to true wisdom and are like curds; bodhisattvas of the Shared Teaching and the Two Vehicles are like raw ghee; the Distinct Teaching is like refined ghee; and the Perfect Teaching is like clarified essence. This is a general view across different classes.

The perspective next moves inside each teaching. In the Tripiṭaka Teaching, ordinary beings, stream-enterers, once-returners, non-returners, and arhats together with pratyekabuddhas and buddhas are represented in sequence by milk, curds, raw ghee, refined ghee, and clarified essence. Some leap over intermediate fruits and obtain clarified essence directly, while others enter flavor by flavor. Sequential stages, sudden attainment, and differences of entry are all present.

Within the Shared Teaching, the buddha-nature of ordinary beings is like milk mixed with blood. Blood represents all afflictions such as ignorance and formations, while milk represents the five wholesome aggregates. Afflictions and the five wholesome aggregates jointly form the conditions for proceeding toward complete awakening, just as the body of a sentient being is formed from semen and blood. Stream-enterers and once-returners who have severed a small portion of the afflictions are like true milk; a non-returner like curds; an arhat like raw ghee; pratyekabuddhas through bodhisattvas of the tenth ground like refined ghee; and a buddha like clarified essence. Leaping over fruits is again indeterminate.

Within the Distinct Teaching, sentient beings are like a newly calved cow whose blood and milk have not separated. Śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas are like curds, bodhisattvas like raw and refined ghee, and buddhas like clarified essence. Here too, leaping over fruits can be indeterminate. Each correlation follows the names, stages, and flavor-sequence actually listed in its own passage. The five flavors are therefore not only one general chronology; they can also illuminate a course within one teaching.

The Perfect Teaching first speaks of only one flavor. On Snow Mountain there is an herb called Forbearance; when the cow eats it, it immediately obtains clarified essence. Because the teaching is upright and solely one, sequence through the five flavors is not placed first. If distinctions are established within nondifference, identity in name through ultimate identity may still be judged through five flavors arising in sequence. The twelve divisions emerging from the Buddha become milk emerging, and the new physician uses milk. The five flavors can also be distinguished according to the four wholesome roots and the point at which each person develops.

One flavor and five flavors no longer conflict. One flavor speaks of what is entered as upright and solely one. Five flavors speak of sequence in practitioners’ development and maturation. Direct attainment at first hearing, entry flavor by flavor, and leaping over levels can all be seen within one teaching.

Resolving Questions Does Not Break Apart; It Returns Each Explanation to Its Own Measure

The question of shared and specific separates the fixed limits of a particular teaching from the extension of its meaning. The question of benefit and nonbenefit separates the Dharma-medicine’s own value from its actual effect upon this patient. The question traversing the teachings separates the five flavors as a general framework from the five flavors within each individual teaching.

These three separations do not fragment doctrine. They allow sunlight to illuminate only the mountains actually present in the simile, the good physician to expand or contract the prescription according to the illness before him, milk and curds to bear only the meaning of successive arising, and the practitioner’s mind to bear immaturity and maturity. Each simile keeps its own power. Together they answer the initial difficulty: a teaching has fixed limits while its meaning can extend; a Dharma-medicine can be valuable while awaiting the corresponding capacity; and clarified essence can be solely one while sentient beings still mature by one, five, two, three, or four flavors.

Through the Eye of the Shiqian

Zhanran first illuminates shared and specific in two directions: the first four flavors extend from earlier to later, while Nirvāṇa and the Lotus extend from later to earlier. The two scriptures mentioned by the root treatise are identified as Prajñā and the Lotus. Because the high mountains illuminated at sunrise and sunset do not differ and the substance of the illumination is not separate, the Avataṃsaka’s extension through beginning and end receives a clear hinge.

The sūtra passage is further divided into brief establishment, establishment through two events, establishment through compilation, and general conclusion. Kālodāyin’s killing and the resulting precept and the three robes after Śāriputra’s extinction are supplemented by the Mirror; their source attributions still remain with their respective works. The three Vaipulya predictions are judged through Rājagṛha corresponding to the Lotus and Śrāvastī occurring after the Lotus. The two Prajñā proofs are one scriptural citation and one event; the first is not supplied with an additional title.

The answer on the three kinds of four is unfolded in the Mirror as the four levels of the Distinct Teaching’s ten abodes, ten practices, ten dedications, and entry into the grounds. Its subsequent question about training in eight in the abodes and sixteen in the practices is a further difficulty posed by Zhanran. This illumination allows Master Zhiyi’s original answer and the commentator’s development to follow one another without being merged.

Concerning benefit and nonbenefit, the Shiqian says the Avataṃsaka is milk only in the two respects that a capacity is not yet able to enter the great and that it is taught first. The Avataṃsaka’s other dimensions remain outside the partial simile. The good-physician simile then fixes complete use as first and contracted use as next. Milk and curds stand for sequence through successive arising rather than thickness and thinness.

One flavor, five flavors, and two, three, or four flavors are judged as three routes of sudden, gradual, and indeterminate. Two, three, and four are counted by seeing the nature upon reaching that flavor. This does not create three new practices; it answers how many flavors one person receives.

The passage traversing the teachings first gives a general judgment and then shows that every teaching can contain sudden, gradual, and indeterminate. The Mirror expressly separates the path of teaching from the path of realization: the path of teaching proceeds sequentially, while realization can leap over stages. Indeterminate leaping over fruits therefore does not destroy the establishment of stages in the teaching.

The final Perfect-Teaching passage is likewise illuminated as three meanings. Immediate clarified essence from the Forbearance herb is sudden; distinction within nondifference is gradual; and the twelve divisions emerging from the Buddha are the development of the indeterminate. Master Zhiyi says only identity in name through ultimate identity and the four wholesome roots. Correlating the first faith through wondrous awakening with particular flavors is Zhanran’s further stage-judgment.

The Mirror also uses the levels of severing delusion to explain the depth of development, placing the five-flavor stage-judgment in the practitioner’s actual progress rather than leaving it as only an arrangement of names.

Viewed through this Mirror, the heart of resolving questions is not to add another fixed table for the five flavors. It distinguishes the different work performed by one simile in relation to time, faculties, benefit, mind, and realization. The shared does not erase the specific, one flavor does not erase sequence, and leaping into realization does not erase the path of teaching. The threefold inquiry thus becomes the living eye of the preceding classification.

Explaining the teaching through increasing numbers first places the question at the level of faculties. The teaching is spoken to accord with people, and because people’s faculties differ, teaching-gates naturally unfold into many forms. Increasing from one through eight does not confine the immeasurable teachings within eight compartments. It selects several Dharma-numbers so that the same process of opening and combining becomes visible.

Opening Is Compassion Making One Road into Many Entrances

Seen through one Dharma, the point of departure is only the One Vehicle. If sentient beings cannot understand the Perfect One Vehicle, the Distinct One Vehicle is opened. If they still cannot understand, the Shared One Vehicle is opened; if they still do not understand, the Tripiṭaka One Vehicle is opened. All four remain within the One Vehicle of the Great Vehicle because each takes seeking the fruit of buddhahood as its direction.

Only if the four One Vehicles cannot be understood are the śrāvaka and pratyekabuddha teachings opened further from the Tripiṭaka. Someone may thereby sever the bonds and realize the fruit, gradually becoming open and at ease in mind. That person can then put aside the skillful means of the Two Vehicles and turn toward seeking buddhahood through the Great Vehicle. The mind is further tempered and matured by washing and refining through Prajñā, until the skillful One Vehicle is abolished and only the Perfect and real One Vehicle remains.

The transformation of milk reveals this tempering and maturation. While there is no understanding, one remains entirely like milk; first one turns into curds at the point one can understand, and then matures step by step. Every act of opening arises because there is no understanding and unfolds in accordance with what sentient beings are able to understand.

Combining Returns Entrances to Their Destination after Their Work Is Done

The skillful means that are opened differ from one another, but their direction remains the same. The śrāvaka and pratyekabuddha teachings enable people to sever the bonds and realize the fruit. When the mind has become open and at ease, those skillful means can recede. The conjured city enables people to rest; once they are known to have rested, it has completed its work and is removed.

The one-Dharma passage therefore ends by opening one from one and returning from one to one. During opening, every level still bears the name One Vehicle. During combining, what was gained earlier is carried forward so that practitioners continue from skillful means toward the Perfect and real. The Buddha’s vow to cause all sentient beings to enter the Buddha path is the shared direction of opening and combining.

Two, Three, and Four Dharmas Each Illuminate One Aspect of Opening and Combining

Two Dharmas reveal the process through half and full. Full is first taught; when sentient beings lack the corresponding faculties, half is opened from full. Vaipulya reveals full in contrast with half, Prajñā carries half while revealing full, and the Lotus relinquishes half and reveals full. Opening half from full bestows a teaching in response to faculties; abolishing half and returning to full returns to the complete destination after those faculties have matured.

Three Dharmas first mean skillfully teaching three within the One Buddha-Vehicle; the conjured city further reveals removal after rest. The root treatise also cites three kinds of goodness but explicitly names only the śrāvakas as lower goodness, leaving the rest within its abbreviation. The point remains how the same Vehicle becomes three in response to faculties and how, after their work is complete, one does not remain fixed in the three.

Four Dharmas are treated in two ways. The first opens the Distinct from the Perfect, the Shared from the Distinct, and then the Tripiṭaka, finally converging back into the Perfect. The second says that each of the Four Teachings has four gateways: those of sharp faculties can enter progressively, while those of dull faculties require tempering and maturation through the five flavors. The first reveals layers of teaching unfolding; the second reveals that the ways of entering can likewise multiply according to faculties.

From Five through Eight Dharmas, the Numbers Increase as the Framework Becomes Briefer

Five Dharmas are explained through the five flavors. The scriptures in twelve divisions, sūtras, and the sequence through Nirvāṇa are placed within a process of opening, while the five flavors can again be discussed within each teaching. The various flavors that have been opened are finely and gradually combined, still returning to the full and Perfect five flavors. Milk, curds, raw ghee, refined ghee, and clarified essence therefore indicate not only sequence but how sentient beings are tempered and matured.

The six-Dharma passage lists together the Four Teachings, the Great Vehicle’s six perfections, the seven factors of awakening, and the Noble Eightfold Path, then immediately speaks of opening the Distinct from the Perfect through to the Tripiṭaka and combining them back into the one Perfect path. Seven Dharmas list the Four Teachings, the Two Vehicles, and the human and deva vehicles; the Perfect and Distinct may be combined upward, or human and deva combined downward. Eight Dharmas follow the preceding. The farther the numbers proceed, the briefer the wording becomes. The meaning of opening and combining has already been revealed by what precedes, so one may teach freely in response to faculties.

Knowing Origin through Trace: Forms and Dharmas Are Many, but Liberation Is for the One Vehicle

The Origin Gate first says that the Buddha sometimes displays his own body and sometimes another body, sometimes teaches his own Dharma and sometimes another Dharma. His own body is an image of the Buddha Dharma-realm, while another body is an image of the nine Dharma-realms. His own Dharma is the Buddha’s knowing-and-seeing in the Perfect and sudden teaching; everything below that is another Dharma. Bodies and Dharmas can display various forms, yet their shared purpose is to liberate sentient beings. Although many paths are taught, in reality they are for the One Vehicle.

Half and full and the five flavors therefore do not lose their respective places because of opening and combining. The meaning of the sequential becomes clearer, while the nonsequential and the indeterminate can be seen within the same process. Opening and combining pervade all three, showing how the Buddha displays different forms and Dharmas according to sentient beings’ faculties without departing from the One Vehicle’s purpose of liberation.

The Origin Gate Again Reveals Tempering through One, Two, Three, and Four Dharmas

In the Origin one-Dharma discussion, the Distinct is opened from the Perfect, the embodying of Dharmas from the Distinct, and the analyzing of dharmas from the embodying. Only when sentient beings understand through analyzing dharmas does milk turn into curds. They then enter the embodying from the analyzing, the Distinct from the embodying, and the Perfect from the Distinct, becoming raw ghee, refined ghee, and clarified essence in sequence. Sudden, gradual, and indeterminate are all present, so tempering and maturation have multiple rhythms.

The Origin two-Dharma discussion begins from tathāgatagarbha, within which the inconceivable two of half and full are originally complete. Because sentient beings do not understand, the full carrying the half, the full breaking the half, and the half alone are opened in sequence. They first understand through the half alone, then proceed through the full breaking the half and the full carrying the half, and finally hear only the inconceivable full. The two remain half and full: opening reveals their distinctions, and the return still returns to the inconceivable two.

The Origin three-Dharma discussion opens the sequential three, the three that embody truth, and the three that analyze dharmas from what is immediately empty, immediately provisional, and immediately the Middle. Those of sharp faculties enter from analyzing into embodying, from embodying into sequential, and from sequential into immediate. Those of dull faculties must instead be tempered progressively through the three of immediate emptiness and the sequential three before entering what is immediately empty, immediately provisional, and immediately the Middle. Four Dharmas again open and enter progressively through the four gateways, while five through eight are known according to the Trace Gate.

Looking back from here, what increasing numbers reveals is how the One Vehicle unfolds into accessible gateways for faculties that are not one, and how, after each gateway completes its work, people are not allowed to lose their final destination.

Through the Eye of the Shiqian

Zhanran first gathers the purpose of establishing this gateway into two statements: opening the provisional from the real and combining the provisional into the real. One through eight are only examples, and each number must be read according to this shared direction.

The Trace Gate is divided into introduction, explanation, and conclusion. One Dharma is further divided into opening the various ones from the great one and opening the small one from the great one; both levels first open and then combine. The four One Vehicles all take the Great Vehicle aspect seeking the fruit of buddhahood within the Four Teachings, while the original One Vehicle is the Perfect One Vehicle. Seven and eight Dharmas open into eight and combine into seven, so the number itself expands and contracts through opening and combining.

The Origin Gate is divided into indication, establishment of the three Dharma-characteristics of sudden, gradual, and indeterminate, and direct clarification of opening and combining. The same opening and combining is applied to transformations established from the remote Origin. The varied display of one’s own and others’ bodies and one’s own and others’ Dharmas is still gathered into the One Vehicle that liberates sentient beings. Zhanran explains the tathāgatagarbha of the Origin two-Dharma discussion as the principle of the one reality that is the true substance of the Lotus. Within it, provisional and real of a single substance are called half and full; the conceivable two are opened from the inconceivable two and then combined back into them. The name half is established in relation to full as a retrospective term for the intent of the teaching.

For the Origin three- and four-Dharma discussions and those from five through eight, no separate item-by-item correlation table is supplied; they are understood by analogy with the Trace Gate. While faculties remain immature, the real opens into the provisional; once they mature, the provisional combines into the real. Teaching-gates are therefore immeasurable, while the One Vehicle to which liberation returns is never dual. Although the later wording is abbreviated, the eye of the passage is complete here: as the Dharma-numbers increase, the purpose of opening and combining never shifts.

At the end of the Fahua Xuanyi, the voice suddenly changes. The preceding Profound Meaning was taught by Zhiyi, but Guanding titles this long passage “The Recorder’s Private Record of Agreements and Differences.” He gathers teachings he had heard, scriptural and treatise evidence, and his own reconciliations. Only when he marks the final passage “the Master said” does he begin recording Zhiyi’s concluding words.

This level of authorship illuminates the problem addressed by the entire passage. In classifying the teaching, later readers faced with many scriptures repeatedly tried to arrange them in a single line: which came first, which later, which was shallow, and which profound. Guanding returns the question to the wording of the scriptures, the persons addressed, and the purpose of each teaching. Time can record an assembly, but time alone cannot determine the Dharma’s meaning.

Three Statements in One Treatise Cannot Be Flattened into a Single Ranking

The opening asks about the relation between Prajñā and the Lotus. One passage of the same treatise calls Prajñā the greatest among ten great scriptures; another includes the Lotus within the wholesome Dharmas of Prajñā; a third distinguishes secret from non-secret according to whether the buddhahood of those of the Two Vehicles is expressly taught; and another appears to treat Prajñā and the Lotus as different names. If one grasps only the word “greatest,” every other statement will be forced onto one scale of superiority and inferiority. Yet that is precisely the question: why does a single treatise permit several different formulations?

An earlier explanation reconciles them through real and skillful wisdom. Sages enter the absence of marks with an undiscriminating mind, like many streams flowing into the sea. In guiding sentient beings, they take the absence of marks as the purport, like empty space embracing everything. Prajñā specializes in clarifying these two aspects, and the other scriptures are therefore included within it. The questioner immediately reverses the claim: if the other scriptures also clarify both kinds of wisdom, why can they not include Prajñā in return? To answer only that Prajñā “specializes in clarifying” them merely repeats its greatness and does not resolve the opposition among the three statements.

Guanding introduces common and uncommon Prajñā. This turn does not substitute another chronology of scriptures; it changes the unit of comparison. If only book titles are compared, the natural question is which scripture outranks another. If one examines the meaning taught within them, then every scripture that clarifies uncommon Prajñā can be equal in meaning to uncommon Prajñā. “Inclusion” no longer means one book swallowing another, but the mutual containment of corresponding Dharma-meanings.

The questions about secrecy and manifestation employ the same method. Bodhisattvas becoming buddhas is easy to understand; the buddhahood of those of the Two Vehicles contradicts what they heard before. The earlier explanation therefore uses the ease and difficulty of medicine and poison: using medicine as medicine is easy, but using poison as medicine is hard. The text immediately points out, however, that secrecy and manifestation extend through both Great and Lesser Vehicles. They cannot be fixed as a simple equation in which the Lotus is profound and Prajñā shallow. Both scriptures teach that bodhisattvas attain the forbearance of non-arising and possess the six superknowledges, so both have a profound and great dimension. Only when the single criterion is whether the buddhahood of those of the Two Vehicles is expressly stated can Prajñā be called incomplete in that respect.

The ensuing series of questions prevents a judgment about one aspect from usurping the whole. In relation to the two kinds of wisdom, Prajñā may be called profound and great; in relation to the buddhahood of those of the Two Vehicles, something remains unexplained. Sengrui describes Prajñā as illumination and the Lotus as reality, praising on the one side the completion of inquiry into principle and the nature’s illumination of the myriad practices, and on the other the revelation of true transformation. The questioner still replies with the image of grasping a dead tree for support: if the explanation one relies on cannot stand, the person and the stump fall together. Genuine reconciliation cannot merely find reasons for a predetermined hierarchy. It must accommodate the multiple relations disclosed by the scriptures and treatises themselves.

Different Numbers of Repositories Mark Different Ways of Gathering the Teaching

Some scriptures and treatises speak of two repositories, others of three or four, and still another of eight. A larger number does not mean that the later classification necessarily overturns the earlier. Each division answers its own question of how the teachings are gathered. The two repositories classify broadly by śrāvakas and bodhisattvas; the three add a Miscellaneous Repository; the four further open a Buddha Repository; and the eight range from Embryonic Transformation and Intermediate Existence through the Vajra and Buddha Repositories.

Guanding provisionally correlates the classifications level by level. The two repositories each have their counterpart; the three correspond in sequence to Śrāvaka, Miscellaneous, and Bodhisattva; and the four correspond one by one. The eight begin with the descent into the womb, while another system of teachings begins with the turning of the Dharma-wheel. Because their starting points differ, they can be viewed in relation to one another only after the Dharma-wheel has begun to turn. Embryonic Transformation and Intermediate Existence have one status before they are explained to Ānanda and another after they are explained; the remaining six repositories are then distributed through sudden and gradual.

The measure of the passage lies in its closing statement: the Buddha’s intent is difficult to fathom, and this is only a provisional correlation made by looking at the systems in relation to one another. Reconciliation enables classifications to speak to each other without erasing their different beginnings, purposes, and boundaries. If a provisional comparison is turned into the only allowable table, the very method meant to open differences becomes a new form of confinement.

The Names of the Four Teachings Must Be Grounded in What Is Taught

Someone asks in which scripture the names and meanings of the Four Teachings are found. Guanding first cites the four great teaching-principles in the Chang Ahan, and then the four kinds of sūtra in the Moon-Lamp Samādhi Sūtra. The former concern four sources of report: hearing from the Buddha, from the harmonious community, from many bhikṣus, or from one bhikṣu. The latter list conditioned activities, censure, afflictions, and purity, which are then correlated with the meanings of the Four Teachings.

Guanding’s private interpretation unfolds from the four terms themselves. Conditioned activities arise through causes and conditions. Censure brings one to comprehend fault and wrongdoing within the substance of dharmas. Afflictions are explained through the image of entering the great ocean and obtaining a jewel: without afflictions, wisdom would have no occasion to appear. When the single name “pure” is raised, self, permanence, bliss, and the other meanings are naturally present. He is not merely seeking four identical labels but asking how each term bears a corresponding direction of cultivation and realization.

Each teaching also possesses all four kinds of sūtra. In the Tripiṭaka Teaching, conditioned activities form the axis: activities are accumulation, their fruit is suffering, the antidote to afflictions is the path, and the purification of activities is cessation. In the Shared Teaching, censure is the axis: censuring activities is accumulation, censuring forms of existence is suffering, censuring the antidote to afflictions is the path, and censuring purity is cessation. In the Distinct Teaching, afflictions form the axis: afflicted activities are accumulation, afflicted forms of existence are suffering, the censure of afflicted activities is the path, and the purification of afflictions is cessation. In the Perfect Teaching, purity forms the axis: nirvāṇa is birth-and-death as the purification of suffering; awakening is affliction as the purification of accumulation; affliction is awakening as the purification of the path; and birth-and-death is nirvāṇa as the purification of cessation.

The point of this fourfold progression is not to repeat one set of Four Truths four times. It shows how suffering, accumulation, path, and cessation are expressed differently as the meaning contemplated changes. The Moon-Lamp Samādhi Sūtra further lists four discourses, four Dharmas, four objects, four gateways, four knowledges that sever afflictions, four sufferings, four accumulations, and four paths. By saying that all correspond to the Four Teachings, Guanding points toward a much broader field of cross-reading.

The Four Houses in the Treatise on the Ten Stages open another side of the question. One moment of mind possesses the ten perfections, the four means of gathering, the thirty-seven factors, and the Four Houses. The treatise lists the House of Prajñā, the House of Truth, the House of Relinquishing Afflictions, and the House of Purifying Suffering. Guanding begins his correlation with the House of Purifying Suffering and then proceeds through Relinquishing Afflictions and Prajñā to the House of Truth. The citation retains the order of the treatise, while his interpretation unfolds a different sequence according to the meaning of practice: beginning with purified suffering, passing through direct comprehension of the markless and Dharma-gates numerous as the sands of the Ganges, and returning to practice grounded in the true mark. Each sequence explains something of its own; they need not be forced into a single list.

Sudden and Gradual Belong to Those Addressed, Not to a Fixed Clock

Three ancient theories are presented. One says that the teaching of the Buddha’s lifetime does not go beyond sudden and gradual, with the gradual divided into seven stages and five periods. Another says that everything before the passing between the twin śāla trees was incomplete and that only nirvāṇa was complete. The third says that the Buddha responds to myriad beings with one voice, received simultaneously by those of great and lesser faculties, so sudden and gradual should not be established. Guanding tests each against the scriptures and treatises. The four Āgamas and five Vinayas do not exhaust profound meaning and so cannot be called sudden; yet their teaching extends throughout the Buddha’s lifetime and does not advance in the sequence assigned to the Great Vehicle, so they do not fit that form of gradual teaching. Sudden and gradual alone do not encompass the teachings that were actually given.

He does not therefore deny sudden teaching. From the Tathāgata’s side, Great and Lesser Vehicle teachings can be presented at the same time and need have no temporal priority. From the side of those addressed, some receive the teaching suddenly and others enter gradually. Sudden and gradual reside in differences of understanding among sentient beings. Fixed chronological boxes cannot carry this criterion. Two truths are thereby preserved: the Dharma does not need time to establish its depth, while sentient beings truly do receive it suddenly or gradually.

Successive Questions Return Classification to What Beings Are Ready to Hear

The claim that the Buddha first taught only the Five Precepts and Ten Wholesome Actions to Trapuṣa and Bhallika immediately meets a difficulty: the Buddha teaches according to what beings are ready to hear, so why could this teaching occur only at the beginning and only for two people? The two elders attained more than human-and-heaven goodness and also received predictions of buddhahood. They bowed to the Buddha and left without going to the Deer Park, so their meeting cannot be linked before Kauṇḍinya’s in a single gradual sequence.

The claim that the separate teachings of the Three Vehicles were confined to twelve years meets the same difficulty. If people after the twelve years still needed the Four Truths, dependent arising, and the six perfections, then if the Buddha taught them, the teaching exceeded the deadline; if He did not, He abandoned beings ready to receive instruction. The Zengyi Ahan’s account of precepts taught briefly for twelve years and then established extensively as blemishes arose, and the Chang Ahan’s narrative extending to nirvāṇa, both show teachings continuing whenever they were needed. A single deadline cannot cut them off.

The claim that Prajñā, the Vimalakīrti, and the Sūtra of Brahmā’s Questions were taught during a thirty-year period is first asked to produce a scriptural basis for those thirty years. The attempt to use Maitreya’s “more than forty years” to establish that the Lotus necessarily followed the Larger Prajñā is then met by the Da Zhidu Lun’s account of Subhūti already having heard the Lotus. If the scriptures and treatises do not present one linear sequence, one cannot draw the chronology in advance and then force every passage into place.

The deeper question is why the Larger Prajñā, the Lotus, and the Nirvāṇa should be assigned a fixed hierarchy of depth. Buddha-nature is also called Prajñā and the One Vehicle; the One Vehicle is the purport of the Lotus, while Prajñā is taught in the Larger Prajñā. The Larger Prajñā teaches the emptiness of form and even the emptiness of great nirvāṇa, and also says “nirvāṇa is not a conjured phenomenon”; the Vimalakīrti says the Buddha’s body is free from the five forms of impermanence. Emptiness, permanence, buddha-nature, and the One Vehicle illuminate one another across these scriptures. Different titles do not by themselves justify imposing superiority and inferiority.

Using Ānanda and Kāśyapa’s attendance at different assemblies to rank the scriptures creates another immediate difficulty. If the two had not understood permanence at the Lotus assembly and were absent from the Nirvāṇa assembly, how could they understand permanence and transmit the Nirvāṇa? Śāriputra and Maudgalyāyana entered extinction before the Buddha and were not present between the twin śāla trees. Would that mean they never understood permanence? The text answers through responsive participants: these śrāvakas accompany the Buddha’s work of transformation, appearing as great within the great teaching and as lesser within the lesser. Their manifested identity serves the teaching and cannot in turn become a scale for ranking scriptural meaning.

The Lotus has already taught that emergence from the royal palace was not the beginning of buddhahood and that the Buddha awakened in the remote past. The final teaching of permanence in the Nirvāṇa is for the group of beings who were only then ready to hear it. Those who heard the Lotus did not need to wait for another assembly to understand permanence. The Nirvāṇa itself invokes the predictions received by eight thousand śrāvakas in the Lotus as an example of great benefit, thereby showing a shared principle rather than establishing depth by temporal order.

The Great Vehicle Scriptures Have Different Names and One Destination

The Lotus Upadeśa says that the Lotus is Perfect in principle and ultimate in teaching, without deficiency. The Da Zhidu Lun praises it as profound and explains why it is entrusted to bodhisattvas. These passages do not place the Lotus atop another competitive hierarchy; they remove the suspicion that it must wait for a later scripture to become complete.

The various Great Vehicle scriptures are named according to what is appropriate. Avataṃsaka, Immeasurable Meanings, and Lotus are names of samādhis; Prajñā is named for great wisdom; the Vimalakīrti for inconceivable liberation; great nirvāṇa for ultimate cessation; and Mañjuśrī’s question about awakening for the fulfilled path. Their names emphasize different entrances, but the fruit they teach is the fruit of buddhahood, the cause they teach is practice on the bodhisattva stages, the principle they teach is Dharma-nature, and the beings they principally address are bodhisattvas. Different names enable sentient beings to enter through different doors; the destination does not thereby split apart.

The Two Repositories Are Determined by Their Principal Audience, Not Everyone Present

The scriptures and treatises divide the twelve divisions into a Śrāvaka Repository and a Bodhisattva Repository and gather the paths out of suffering taught for śrāvakas and bodhisattvas into those two. Accounts of compilation likewise assign the collection of Mahākāśyapa and Ānanda to the Śrāvaka Repository and the Great Vehicle collection of Mañjuśrī and Ānanda to the Bodhisattva Repository. The Nirvāṇa says that the eleven divisions are upheld by those of the Two Vehicles and Vaipulya by bodhisattvas. Diverse textual evidence converges on two broad collections.

Each repository addresses two kinds of person. Within the Śrāvaka Repository, determinate śrāvakas have long cultivated the lesser teaching, delight only in it, and do not proceed to the Great Vehicle after realization. Śrāvakas who have lost bodhicitta once aroused the Great Vehicle resolve but forgot it while passing through birth and death; they first receive the lesser teaching and later still proceed to the Great Vehicle. One group remains and one departs, but when they receive the lesser Dharma they are alike, so both belong to the Śrāvaka Repository.

Within the Bodhisattva Repository, great beings of sudden awakening do not come through the lesser teaching but enter the Great Vehicle straightaway. Bodhisattvas who enter gradually come from among those earlier śrāvakas who lost their aspiration and enter the Great Vehicle through the lesser teaching. Their routes differ, but when they receive the great Dharma they are alike, so both belong to the Bodhisattva Repository.

Those present in an assembly cannot displace those principally addressed. A bodhisattva may appear responsively within the Śrāvaka Repository without being its principal recipient; a śrāvaka may be present within the Bodhisattva Repository without constituting its principal purport. The teaching is named according to the principal person addressed and the principal Dharma taught. Why, then, are there only two repositories when three vehicles are taught? Those who hear dependent arising are gathered with the śrāvakas, while pratyekabuddhas appear during ages without a buddha, display supernormal powers, and remain silent. They do not leave a separate body of teaching to be compiled, so the scriptures are gathered in brief as two repositories.

Opening “Only Two in Brief” into Four

Guanding finally correlates the two repositories with the Four Teachings. The Śrāvaka Repository opens as the Tripiṭaka Teaching; the Bodhisattva Repository opens as the Shared, Distinct, and Perfect Teachings. The four corresponding groups are determinate śrāvakas, śrāvakas who have lost their Great Vehicle resolve, gradually awakening bodhisattvas, and suddenly awakening bodhisattvas. The correlation first honors the concise gathering of the teaching as “only two in brief” and then unfolds the differences of faculties and meaning within it. Brevity and detail do not refute each other; they are two viewing distances.

Guanding therefore uses the image of fishing and hunting in rivers and marshes. When there is much to catch, many nets and traps must be tied. Speaking at length is not a love of prolixity; if hidden meaning is to be disclosed, the argument must unfold with it. Only then does Guanding turn to recording Zhiyi’s words. The Five Chapters offer the Profound Meaning only in brief, and if speech itself cannot exhaust intent, how could writing exhaust speech? Yet if the seven meanings are used to comprehend the ten subtleties and then examined within the separate explanation, the Five Chapters link together like embroidery and the scriptures cited agree sentence by sentence.

The final two images bring classification back to contemplation. One breaks through the dry earth of ordinary beings and sees the wet clay of the sages’ Dharma; perfect penetration in teaching must become universal illumination in wisdom. The discourse on the Profound Meaning ends here and turns toward interpreting the scripture. If classification does not lead into contemplative practice, it remains nothing more than an order written on paper.

Through the Eye of the Shiqian

Zhanran first establishes the boundary of authorship for the entire passage. From “the recorder’s private record of agreements and differences” onward, this is Zhang’an’s miscellaneous record of divergent reports he himself heard, not Zhiyi’s original teaching. Only at “the Master said” does the recorder begin transmitting the Master’s intent. This single observation returns the passage’s many voices to their proper levels: statements in the treatise, other people’s reconciliations, Guanding’s objections and private interpretations, and Zhiyi’s conclusion cannot be treated as one person speaking directly at one time.

The Mirror divides the divergent reports into four gateways: distinguishing agreement and difference between Prajñā and the Lotus; correlating the separation and combination of the repositories; clarifying the basis of the names and meanings of the Four Teachings; and refuting ancient classifications. It summarizes the first gateway as three statements in one treatise—Prajñā apparently superior, the Lotus apparently superior, and the two apparently equal. Zhanran explains that uncommon Prajñā encompasses all dharmas, so the inclusion of the Lotus presents no difficulty. He also distinguishes concealed secrecy from wondrous profundity, so the same graph does not obscure two different lines of meaning.

Zhanran observes that the older explanation exalting Prajñā through real and skillful wisdom still does not reconcile the three statements. The Mirror’s meaning is not another ranking of the two scriptures. It first distinguishes common from uncommon Prajñā and then explains that uncommon Prajñā can encompass all dharmas. The question concerning “not yet disclosing the provisional” and “secrecy” must likewise be read according to the criterion under discussion: disclosure of the provisional yields one judgment, while ease and difficulty of understanding yield another. A judgment shifts with the point at issue and cannot be detached from the premise of its question and answer.

The general principle of the repository gateway is to correlate separation and combination through the Buddha’s teaching of one lifetime. The two, three, four, and eight repositories each have their own basis, and provisional reconciliation establishes only a relation among them. The four correspond one by one, while the eight correlate according to temporal stage and what was taught; the Lotus is not among the eight repositories. Reconciliation thus preserves each system’s basis while enabling several classifications to be viewed together.

The gateway concerning the basis of the Four Teachings especially distinguishes “also numbering four” from “corresponding in meaning.” The four great teaching-principles of the Chang Ahan merely share the number four and are not equivalent to the Four Teachings discussed later. The four kinds of sūtra in the Moon-Lamp Samādhi Sūtra enter the actual correlation of meanings. The Four Houses, meanwhile, borrow the moment-by-moment possession of Dharmas at a high stage to reveal the possession of Dharmas in the beginner’s mind; the list in the treatise is not simply treated as another ready-made set of names for the Four Teachings.

Zhanran further counts seventy-seven groups of four in the relevant passage of the Moon-Lamp Samādhi Sūtra, giving a direction for unfolding the root treatise’s brief instruction to understand the details from that scripture. In discussing the Four Houses, he emphasizes that the treatise expressly speaks of full possession moment after moment and that Guanding borrows this to establish full possession in the beginner’s mind. Both explanations first respect the original setting of scripture or treatise and then draw out the meaning that can be correlated. The borrowed level is high, but the entrance to practice it reveals is this present moment of mind.

The refutation of ancient classifications is illuminated as three levels: presentation of the ancient views, refutation, and the present establishment. The refutation first rejects fixed chronology and then examines each assigned period. In discussing the three scriptures, it unfolds through different names and one substance, agreement in meaning with different expression, and proof through the persons involved. The present establishment of two repositories likewise has five steps: textual evidence establishes the repositories, persons are divided in relation to them, subsidiary and principal participants are distinguished, a question and answer resolves the difficulty, and the repositories are opened into the teachings. The root treatise may appear to range widely through citations, but its skeleton remains clear: the repositories are established from scriptures and treatises, their persons are distinguished by the principal audience, and the two repositories are opened into the Four Teachings.

The final passage also has three levels: the recorder explains why he must speak at length, records the Master’s intent, and concludes the preceding while giving rise to the following. The seven meanings in the Master’s words first comprehend the ten subtleties and are then brought into the separate explanation. “Perfect penetration” concludes the teaching, while “universal illumination” concludes contemplation. The Mirror finally leaves not a closed chronological table but a way of reading: distinguish who is speaking, for whom the teaching is given, and on what basis it is taught, and then enter present contemplation through the teachings as they link together.