摩訶止觀 大意·修大行

Constantly sitting for ninety days leaves the body almost no escape, forcing it to face the Dharma realm in one thought. Constantly walking for ninety days binds every step, voice, and thought to the Buddha. Half walking and half sitting uses worship, circumambulation, scripture recitation, repentance, and contemplation to keep phenomenal practice from leaving the true mark. Neither walking nor sitting extends the practice site into seeing, hearing, awareness, knowing, walking, standing, sitting, and lying down—even into every wholesome, unwholesome, and indeterminate thought.

Four bodily forms regulate the same mind. Calming does not mean refusing to move, and contemplation does not mean thinking more. Samādhi means that mind does not scatter among the objects it traverses and simultaneously illuminates their lack of fixed intrinsic nature. Sitting in torpor, walking in distraction, clinging to ritual forms during repentance, or forgetting contemplation in daily life can all leave only an outer shell.

Because the fourth gate includes unwholesome objects, it must especially be read with the warning against abuse. Affliction resembles a strong fish and calming-and-contemplation the hook and bait. The hook must follow the fish in order to see desire and anger before they arise, as they are about to arise, while they arise, and after they have arisen. Following the fish is not feeding it. Without investigation through the four phases, precepts, and discernment of faculties, “evil can be an object of contemplation” becomes only the creation of evil in obedience to desire.

The treatise therefore gives no separate, fervent encouragement for following one’s own intention. It instead devotes its longest passage to warning against abuse. An ugly woman imitating Xishi’s frown only becomes uglier; a mad dog chasing thunder gains nothing; when a good ford lies open, there is no reason to drive cattle into a dangerous crossing where scarcely one in a hundred survives. When skillful means leaves wisdom, the closer the imitation looks, the farther it may move from the path.

Nor are the four kinds of samādhi four identities from which one must choose. Illnesses of mind are immeasurable and Dharma gates resemble the many medicines of a physician. At different times, even one person may need to walk, sit, counteract, or enter the principle. Following one’s own intention means cultivating contemplation the moment mentation arises. The four samādhis must themselves be adjusted according to person and time; it does not mean obeying the moment desire arises.

Cultivating the great practice therefore has one common floor: after arousing the mind, put body, speech, and mind actually upon the road; when an object appears, do not leave calming-and-contemplation; when affliction appears, illuminate it more exactly instead of giving it wider license; and from hearing through reflection into actual cultivation, never stop.

General Heading of the Four Kinds of Samādhi

〔科§01b-01〕 From Arousing the Mind to Entering the Great Practice

The second of the Five Summaries urges people to cultivate and advance through the four kinds of samādhi so that they may enter the bodhisattva stages. Calming-and-contemplation is taught because anyone who wishes to ascend to the wondrous fruition has no steps to climb without actual practice. Churn curds skillfully and clarified butter can be obtained. In the same way, children of the Buddha cultivate many practices precisely in order to seek the Buddha path. The methods of practice are numerous; here they are briefly gathered into four: first, constantly sitting; second, constantly walking; third, half walking and half sitting; and fourth, neither walking nor sitting.

All four are commonly called samādhi. Samādhi means straightening and settling the mind so that a wholesome mind remains focused in one place without wavering. The Dharma realm is that single place of abiding, and correct contemplation can abide there unmoving. The four practices are conditions that assist contemplation of mind. Because contemplation of mind is straightened through these four conditions, all four are called samādhi.

Constantly Sitting Samādhi

〔科§01b-02〕 Scriptural Sources and Bodily Permissions and Prohibitions

The first is constantly sitting. This practice comes from the two Mañjuśrī prajñāpāramitā scriptures and is called the single-practice samādhi. The method is explained first, followed by encouragement to cultivate it. The method has three aspects: the body is treated in terms of permission and prohibition, speech in terms of voicing and silence, and mentation in terms of calming and contemplation.

For the body, only constant sitting is permitted; walking, standing, and lying down are prohibited. One may live with a community, though solitude is even better. Stay in a quiet room or secluded place far from noise. Set out one rope bed and put no other seat beside it. Take ninety days as one period, sit cross-legged, and hold the neck and spine upright. Do not move, sway, slump, or lean, but make a vow to remain seated upright. One may not even rest the ribs against the bed or seat, much less lie like a corpse, play about, or stand. Apart from walking meditation, eating, and relieving oneself, choose the direction in which one buddha dwells, sit upright facing that direction, and continue moment after moment without wasting even an instant. Exclusive sitting is what is permitted, and what is prohibited must not be violated. Do not deceive the Buddha, betray your own mind, or deceive sentient beings.

〔科§01b-03〕 When Speech Is Silent and When It Is Voiced

For speech, remain silent during normal practice. If sitting brings extreme exhaustion, illness causes distress, sleepiness and torpor cover the mind, or internal or external obstructions enter and seize right mindfulness so that you cannot dispel them yourself, then exclusively recite the name of one buddha. Give rise to shame, repent faults, and entrust body and life to the Buddha. Exclusively reciting one buddha and reciting the names of the buddhas of the ten directions have equal merit.

How can voicing a name assist the path? When people are worried, joyful, depressed, or resentful, singing or crying aloud lets grief or delight unfold. Practitioners are the same. Breath touches seven places in the body and becomes bodily action; sound leaves the lips and becomes verbal action. Body and speech together can assist mentation in completing a responsive connection and bring the Buddha’s protection. It is also like someone dragging a heavy object: personal strength alone cannot move it, but with help from another it can easily be lifted. When a practitioner’s mental strength is weak and cannot remove an obstruction, reciting a name and asking the Buddha for mindful protection prevents adverse conditions from destroying right mindfulness.

If you do not yet understand the Dharma gate, draw near someone who comprehends prajñā. Practice according to what you hear, and you can enter the single-practice samādhi, directly see the buddhas, and ascend the bodhisattva stages. Even the sounds of scripture recitation and dhāraṇī chanting disturb the quiet, much more conversation about miscellaneous worldly matters. Except for removing obstructions and requesting instruction, do not speak at will.

〔科§01b-04〕 Mental Calming and Contemplation

For mentation, straighten the body and sit upright, abide in right mindfulness, remove unwholesome mental activity, and relinquish scattered delusive thoughts. Do not mix in other reflections or grasp appearances. Exclusively bind the mind to the Dharma realm and contemplate the Dharma realm in a single thought. Binding conditions is calming; the single thought is contemplation. Trust that all dharmas are Buddha-Dharma, with none before or after and no boundary. Within them there is no fixed knower and no fixed speaker. Since neither knower nor speaker is fixed, they cannot be declared existent or nonexistent, nor can one say that a knower exists or does not exist. Leave the two extremes of existence and nonexistence and abide in non-abiding, as the buddhas abide, securely established in the quiescent Dharma realm. Do not become frightened when hearing such a profound Dharma.

This single Dharma realm is also called awakening, the inconceivable object, prajñā, and neither arising nor ceasing. The Dharma indicated by all such names is neither two nor different from the Dharma realm. Do not doubt upon hearing that they are neither two nor different. To contemplate in this way is to contemplate the Tathāgata’s ten epithets. When contemplating the Tathāgata, do not identify a fixed tathāgata as the Tathāgata; there is no other tathāgata to establish as the Tathāgata and no independent wisdom of the Tathāgata. When the Tathāgata is known, Tathāgata and Tathāgata-wisdom have no dual mark, motion, or fabrication. They are not fixed in one direction and do not depart from any direction; they are not the three times or outside the three times; they are neither dual nor a graspable nonduality; they are neither defiled nor purified. Contemplating the Tathāgata in this way is exceedingly rare. Like space, it has no fault and enables right mindfulness to grow.

Seeing the Buddha’s marks and excellences resembles seeing your own form and shadow upon water or in a mirror. First see one buddha, then the buddhas of the ten directions. There is no need to travel to the Buddha by supernormal power. Remaining here, you see the buddhas, hear them teach, and attain meaning as it really is. See the Tathāgata for all sentient beings without grasping the Tathāgata’s marks. Guide all sentient beings toward nirvāṇa without grasping nirvāṇa’s marks. Undertake great adornment for all sentient beings without seeing a fixed mark of adornment. Here there is no form to grasp and no seeing, hearing, awareness, or knowing to grasp. Even a buddha does not separately realize one dharma; this is why it is rare. The Buddha is the Dharma realm. If the Dharma realm were separately used to realize the Dharma realm, contention would result. In reality, there is neither realization nor attainment.

Next contemplate sentient beings. Their marks are like the buddhas’ marks, and the measure of their realm is like the measure of the buddhas’ realm. The realm of the buddhas is inconceivable, and so is the realm of sentient beings. The realm of sentient beings abides like space, abiding in prajñā through the Dharma of non-abiding and the signless Dharma. Since no fixed ordinary dharma is seen, what could be abandoned? Since no fixed noble Dharma is seen, what could be grasped? Birth and death and nirvāṇa, defilement and purity, are likewise neither abandoned nor grasped; one simply abides in the ultimate limit. Contemplating sentient beings in this way is the real Buddha Dharma realm.

Next contemplate afflictions such as greed and desire, anger, and delusion. Their true nature is constantly a practice of quiescence and non-motion; it cannot be fixed as a dharma of birth and death or of nirvāṇa. Do not abandon views, or separately abandon an unconditioned object, in order to cultivate the Buddha path. Do not establish a substantially existent cultivation or non-cultivation of the path. This is called correctly abiding in the Dharma realm of afflictions.

Next contemplate grave karma, of which none is graver than the five heinous offenses. The five offenses and awakening have no dual mark. Within them there is no fixed awakener, knower, or discriminator. The marks of heinous offense and the true mark are both inconceivable, indestructible, and originally without fixed intrinsic nature. Every karmic condition abides in the ultimate limit, neither coming nor going and not fixed as cause or result. Contemplating karma in this way, one knows karma itself as the seal of the Dharma realm. The four māras cannot destroy that seal and have no opening through which to enter, because the māras themselves do not depart from the seal. How could the seal of the Dharma realm destroy itself? Traverse every dharma according to this meaning and understand it in the same way. Everything above expresses the meaning of the two scriptures upon which the treatise relies.

〔科§01b-05〕 Encouragement to Cultivate Constantly Sitting

Encouragement means praising the merit that corresponds with the true mark and urging the practitioner onward. The Dharma of the Dharma realm is the Buddha’s true Dharma and the bodhisattva’s seal. Hearing it without alarm or fear shows that this person has long planted roots of virtue before hundreds, thousands, ten-thousands, and millions of buddhas. It resembles an elder who loses a maṇi jewel and later recovers it, becoming deeply joyful. Members of the fourfold assembly who have not heard this Dharma are distressed; after hearing, trusting, and understanding it, they too rejoice as though recovering the jewel.

Know that such a person thereby sees the Buddha and has heard this Dharma from Mañjuśrī. Śāriputra says that one who truly comprehends this meaning is called a bodhisattva-mahāsattva. Maitreya says that this person has approached the Buddha’s seat because this Dharma is precisely what the Buddha awakened to. Mañjuśrī says that hearing this Dharma without alarm is itself seeing the Buddha. The Buddha further says that this person abides on the ground of non-retrogression, possesses the six perfections of giving, morality, patience, vigor, meditative concentration, and prajñā, and possesses all Buddha-Dharmas.

If you wish to attain all Buddha-Dharmas—the marks, excellences, and deportment, the voice of Dharma teaching, the ten powers, and the four fearlessnesses—cultivate this single-practice samādhi diligently and without indolence; only then can you enter. It is like polishing a maṇi jewel: polish one part and one part emits light. As practitioners cultivate, they realize inconceivable merit. Bodhisattvas who know this Dharma quickly attain awakening. Bhikṣus and bhikṣuṇīs who hear it without alarm have genuinely left home in the Buddha’s following; laymen and laywomen who hear it without alarm have genuinely taken refuge. The foregoing praise comes from the two Mañjuśrī prajñāpāramitā scriptures〔云云〕.

Constantly Walking Samādhi

〔科§01b-06〕 The Three Powers and the Bodily Method

The second is constantly walking samādhi. Again, the method is explained before the encouragement to cultivate. The method is still divided into bodily permission and prohibition, verbal speech and silence, and mental calming and contemplation. This Dharma comes from the Pratyutpanna Samādhi Sūtra and its translated name is “Buddha standing.” Buddha standing has three powers: first, the Buddha’s power; second, samādhi power; and third, the power of the practitioner’s own past merit. Through these three, the practitioner sees the presently abiding buddhas of the ten directions standing before them in samādhi, as numerous as the stars seen by someone with keen eyesight in a clear night sky. It is therefore called the Buddha-standing samādhi.

A verse in the Ten Stages Treatise says that the abiding places of this samādhi differ as few, middling, and many, and that its various characteristics should all be explained. “Abiding place” may mean that the samādhi arises through power generated within the first, second, third, fourth, or intermediate meditative absorption: the first is called few, the second middling, and the third and fourth many. It may also be called few because the time spent abiding in concentration is short, because few worlds are seen, or because few buddhas are seen. Middling and many are understood in the same way.

Only constant walking is permitted for the body. When cultivating it, avoid bad spiritual friends, deluded people, relatives, and the home district. Remain alone, do not hope others will give you anything, and do not solicit things. Always receive food by alms and do not accept special invitations. Adorn the practice site and prepare offerings, incense, fine foods, and sweet fruit. Bathe, changing clothes when entering and leaving so that the garments are not mixed. Walk and circumambulate single-mindedly for a period of ninety days.

You must have a discerning teacher who understands both Buddha-Dharma and worldly dharmas, knows internal and external precepts well, and can remove impediments. Regard the teacher who instructs this samādhi as the World-Honored One: do not despise, resent, or scrutinize the teacher’s strengths and shortcomings. Even cutting your own flesh as an offering to the teacher would be appropriate, much more offering other possessions. Serve the teacher as a servant serves the master of a household. If an unwholesome mind arises toward the teacher, this samādhi will ultimately be difficult to attain. You also need an external protector like a mother raising a child and companions like people crossing a dangerous road together. Fix the period and make this vow: even if sinews and bones wither, I will never stop before learning this samādhi.

Give rise to great faith that no one can destroy, great vigor that no one can overtake, and wisdom into which no one else can reach, and always study with a good teacher. For three months, do not think a worldly desire even for the space of a finger snap. For three months, do not lie down or depart even for the space of a finger snap. Do not suspend the three-month practice except to sit down for food and relieve yourself. Even when teaching scripture to others, do not use it to seek clothing or food. A verse gathers four points: draw near good spiritual friends, advance vigorously without indolence, make wisdom firm, and let the power of faith never waver.

〔科§01b-07〕 Ninety Days of Unbroken Chanting and Recollection

For speech, the body walks constantly for ninety days without rest, the mouth constantly chants the name of Amitābha Buddha for ninety days without rest, and the mind constantly recollects Amitābha Buddha for ninety days without rest. Chanting and recollection may proceed together, or recollection may precede chanting, or chanting may precede recollection. Whatever the order, both must continue without interruption. Chanting Amitābha Buddha praises the equal merit of the buddhas of the ten directions; Amitābha is simply taken as the principal buddha of this Dharma gate. In brief, every step, every voice, and every thought is solely Amitābha Buddha.

〔科§01b-08〕 Contemplating the Buddha’s Marks and Reaching the True Mark

For mental calming and contemplation, recollect Amitābha Buddha in the west, a hundred thousand million buddha lands away, seated on jeweled ground amid a jeweled pool, jeweled trees, jeweled halls, and a community of bodhisattvas, teaching the Dharma. Recollect the Buddha constantly for three months. How? First recollect the Buddha’s thirty-two marks. Begin with the thousand-spoked wheels beneath his feet and proceed upward through the marks in reverse order to the invisible crown. Then proceed downward from the crown to the thousand-spoked wheels, and vow that you too may obtain these marks and excellences.

Next ask: Do I attain the Buddha from mind or from body? The Buddha is attained neither through mind nor body. The Buddha’s form is not attained through mind, nor the Buddha’s mind through form. Why? The Buddha’s mind cannot be grasped and the Buddha’s form cannot be grasped, so unsurpassed awakening cannot be obtained through form or mind. The Buddha’s form is exhausted, and sensation, perception, formations, and consciousness are also exhausted. Fools do not know the meaning of exhaustion taught by the Buddha; the wise understand it. The Buddha cannot be attained by body or speech, or by some graspable wisdom, because when wisdom is sought it ultimately cannot be found, and when a self is sought it likewise cannot be found. Nothing fixed is seen. All dharmas originally have no possession; their supposed basis is completely broken and their graspable root severed. This is the first level of contemplation〔其一〕.

It is also like seeing the seven treasures and enjoying oneself with relatives in a dream. Upon waking and recollecting it, one does not know where those objects have gone. Recollection of the Buddha should be the same. It is also like a woman in Śrāvastī named Xumen, who heard something and became delighted, dreamed at night of being with another person, then awoke and reflected that the other had not come and she had not gone, though the joyful event had vividly appeared. Or it is like a person starving and thirsty in a vast wilderness who eats fine food in a dream, yet wakes with an empty belly and therefore understands that all existent dharmas resemble dreams. Recollect the Buddha repeatedly in this way without rest; through this recollection you will be born in Amitābha’s land. This is called recollecting according to the mark.

It is also like setting a treasure against crystal so that its image appears within, like a bhikṣu whose white-bone contemplation emits various lights although no one brings the light and no substantially existent skeleton is there—it is only made by mentation—or like a reflection in a mirror that neither comes from outside nor arises from within the mirror, but appears because the surface is clear. When the practitioner is pure and all supports are pure, wishing to see the Buddha brings the vision. Having seen the Buddha, the practitioner asks questions, receives answers, hears scripture, and rejoices greatly. This is the second level of contemplation〔其二〕.

Then ask yourself: From where did the Buddha come, and where did I go? What is recollected is simply what is seen. Mind makes the Buddha; mind itself sees mind, the mind that sees the Buddha. This is the Buddha-mind, and it is also my mind seeing the Buddha. Yet mind cannot know itself or see itself. When mind grasps conceptions it is delusion; when absence of conception is taken as ultimate, that becomes a fixation upon nirvāṇa. This Dharma has no concrete object that can be pointed out; whatever appears is made by recollection. Even when recollection is present, understand that it has no real possession and is only empty and quiescent. This is the third level of contemplation〔其三〕.

Two verses say: mind itself does not know mind; though there is mind, mind cannot be seen. When mind gives rise to grasping conception, that is delusion; taking absence of conception as ultimate is nirvāṇa. They also say that the buddhas attain liberation through mind; a mind without defilement is called pure. The five paths are bright and clean and do not grasp form; one who understands this meaning accomplishes the great path. This is called the Buddha seal: it has no greed, attachment, seeking, or conception. All possession and desire are exhausted. It does not substantially arise from somewhere, and no object within it can be extinguished or destroyed. It is the outline and root of the path. Even the Two Vehicles cannot destroy it, much less demonic deviations〔云云〕.

The Ten Stages Treatise says that a newly aroused bodhisattva first recollects the Buddha’s form and distinguishes the essence, action, result, and function of each mark, obtaining inferior power; next recollects the Buddha’s forty exclusive qualities and obtains middling power; and finally recollects the real Buddha and obtains superior power, without clinging to either form body or Dharma body. A verse says: do not greedily cling to the form body, nor cling to the Dharma body; skillfully know all dharmas, forever quiescent like space.

〔科§01b-09〕 The Merit of Constantly Walking and Two Similes of Squandered Treasure

Suppose someone wishes to attain ocean-like wisdom so that no one can still serve as their teacher; or, without rising from a seat or exercising supernormal power, to see all buddhas, hear everything they teach, and preserve it all. Among all merits, constantly walking samādhi is foremost. This samādhi is mother of the buddhas, the Buddha eye, and father of the buddhas; it is also the mother of non-arising and great compassion. All tathāgatas are born from these two dharmas.

Even if the earth, grasses, and trees of a trichiliocosm were ground into dust, each mote counted as one buddha land, and jewels filling that many worlds were given away, the resulting merit, although vast, would not equal hearing of this samādhi without alarm or fear. How much more would it not equal trusting, receiving, preserving, reading, reciting, and explaining it to others; gathering the mind to cultivate it for the short time needed to squeeze milk from a cow; or actually accomplishing the samādhi. Its merit is immeasurable upon immeasurable.

The treatise also says that kalpa fire, officials, thieves, enemies, poison, nāgas, wild beasts, and diseases cannot harm this person. The eight classes of devas and nāgas and the buddhas constantly protect and praise this person, and the noble ones wish to see them and come to their location. One who hears of this samādhi and rejoices in all four preceding kinds of merit is also rejoiced in by the buddhas and bodhisattvas of the three times; this surpasses the four preceding kinds once again.

Not cultivating such a Dharma is to lose immeasurable precious treasure, bringing grief to humans and devas. It resembles someone with a blocked nose who holds sandalwood but cannot smell it, or a farmer’s son who trades a maṇi jewel for one cow. The treasure is already in hand, but its value is unknown〔云云〕.

Half Walking and Half Sitting Samādhi

〔科§01b-10〕 The Seven-Day Vaipulya Ritual

The third is half walking and half sitting. Again, the method is explained before the encouragement to cultivate. The method is still divided into bodily permission and prohibition, verbal speech and silence, and mental calming and contemplation, and comes from the Vaipulya and Lotus scriptures. The Vaipulya practice circles one hundred and twenty times before withdrawing to sit in contemplation. The Lotus practice reads and recites while walking or standing and contemplates the scripture while sitting, whereupon Samantabhadra appears riding the white elephant with six tusks. Both therefore use half walking and half sitting, but the two ritual systems remain distinct.

The Vaipulya Dharma gate is honored and must not be approached carelessly. If you wish to cultivate it, seek spiritual confirmation. First pray for one of the dream kings. Seeing any one among the twenty-four dream kings gives permission to repent. Choose a quiet place and adorn the practice site. Smear the ground with scented clay, construct and paint circular altars inside and outside the room, hang five-colored banners, burn coastal incense, light lamps, and set out a high seat. Invite at least twenty-four images; more are acceptable. Prepare food offerings to the full extent of your ability.

Have fresh, clean clothes, shoes, and sandals. If they are not new, wash the old ones clean. Garments worn outside and inside the practice site must be put on and removed separately without being mixed. Keep a prolonged fast for seven days and bathe three times each day. On the first day, make offerings to as many monastics as your means allow. Separately invite one person who comprehends internal and external precepts to serve as teacher, and receive the twenty-four precepts and dhāraṇī formula from that person. Begin confessing offenses to the teacher on the eighth or fifteenth day of the lunar month. Seven days form one period and must never be shortened; if you have additional strength, extend it as you are able. No more than ten people may participate. Laypeople may also practice, but must prepare the three single-layer robes and fully observe the Buddhist forms.

For speech, memorize the complete dhāraṇī beforehand. During the first period, everyone in unison invites the Three Jewels, ten buddhas, the Vaipulya father and mother, and the ten Dharma-prince bodhisattvas three times. The method of invitation is detailed in the Guoqing Bailu. After inviting them, burn incense and direct the mind, making offerings with body, speech, and mind. After the offerings, bow to the Three Jewels just invited. Then, with complete sincerity, weep, state your offenses, and repent them.

After repentance, rise and circle one hundred and twenty times, reciting the dhāraṇī once per circuit at a pace neither fast nor slow and with a voice neither high nor low. When the circumambulation and recitation are complete, bow to the ten buddhas, the Vaipulya honored ones, and the ten Dharma princes; then withdraw to sit in contemplation. After contemplation, rise again to circle and recite, then withdraw again to sit. Repeat this cycle. The method remains the same throughout all seven days. From the second period onward, omit only the invitation; everything else remains unchanged.

〔科§01b-11〕 Vaipulya Mental Contemplation and the Symbolism of the Practice Site

The scripture instructs the practitioner to contemplate the Mohe Danchi dhāraṇī, translated as “the great secret essential that bars evil and preserves the wholesome.” The secret essential is the true mark, the Middle Way, and correct emptiness. The scripture’s meaning says: one comes from the real, and the real is the mark of quiescence and extinction. Within quiescence and extinction there is nothing sought, and the seeker is empty; the obtainer, clinger, real, comer, speaker, and questioner are all empty. Quiescence and extinction and nirvāṇa are empty, and every boundary separating space is empty〔其一〕. It also says that precisely because nothing is sought, one still seeks the Dharma; this real Dharma, empty even of emptiness, should be sought within the six perfections〔其二〕. This meaning is the same as the eighteen emptinesses in the Larger Prajñāpāramitā and no different from the emptiness of Kapilavastu, the Tathāgata, and great nirvāṇa taught in the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra. When this wisdom of emptiness traverses every ritual form, there is nothing that cannot become a gate of contemplation.

“Vaipulya” can also be interpreted as “method and equality.” Method refers to Dharma and means. Prajñā has four skillful gates, like four gates opening into a cool pool; this is method. The principle realized is the great wisdom of equality; this is equality. Seeking the dream kings first is a preparatory means for entering the two kinds of contemplation.

The practice site represents a pure object. Removing the chaff of the afflictions of the five abodes discloses the rice of the true mark; it also represents adorning the Dharma body with concentration and wisdom. Scented clay on the ground represents unsurpassed precepts. The five-colored canopy represents contemplating the five aggregates, escaping bondage, and arousing great compassion that covers and protects the Dharma realm. The circular altar represents the unmoving ground of the true mark. Moving silken banners represent turning deluded feeling upon the Dharma realm and bringing forth understanding that moves out from it. Banner and altar are inseparable, showing that moving emergence and unmoving emergence are inseparable. Incense and lamp represent morality and wisdom. The high seat represents the emptiness of all dharmas, in which every buddha abides.

The twenty-four images represent the awakened wisdom that contemplates the twelve links in reverse and forward order. The sour taste of the food represents impermanence and suffering as an auxiliary contemplation. Fresh, clean clothing represents the patience of quiescence and extinction: accumulated anger is called old; turning the angry mind around and giving rise to patience is called new. Seven days represent the seven factors of awakening, while one day represents the single real truth. Bathing three times daily represents contemplating the single real, cultivating the three contemplations, washing away the three obstructions, and purifying the three wisdoms. One teacher represents the single real truth. The twenty-four precepts represent the precepts that arise together with the path through forward and reverse contemplation of the twelve links. The dhāraṇī has the meaning of correspondence. The Pusa Yingluo Benye Jing says that dependent origination has ten kinds of contemplation, giving one hundred and twenty links; one recitation corresponds to one link. Gathered together, these are simply the path of suffering, the path of karma, and the path of afflictions.

〔科§01b-12〕 Repentance of the Three Obstructions and the Three Portions of Treasure

Reciting the dhāraṇī while contemplating the twelve links is repentance in relation to the three paths. Ritual repentance addresses the paths of suffering and karma; contemplation of principle addresses the path of afflictions. The scripture says that those who violate the novice precepts through the bhikṣu precepts and then repent necessarily regain the precepts: this repents the path of karma. It says that the eye, ear, and other faculties become pure: this repents the path of suffering. It says that on the seventh day one sees the buddhas of the ten directions, hears the Dharma, and does not retreat: this repents the path of afflictions. When the three obstructions are removed, the tree of the twelve links breaks down and the house of the five aggregates becomes empty. Contemplating the true mark is precisely for breaking these three obstructions and is therefore called the buddhas’ repentance through real Dharma.

As encouragement, all buddhas attain the path through this Dharma, so it is the father and mother of the buddhas and the unsurpassed great treasure of the world. Actual cultivation obtains the full portion of treasure; reading and reciting alone obtains the middle portion; offering flowers and incense alone obtains the lower portion. The Buddha and Mañjuśrī cannot exhaust the merit even of the lower portion, much less the middle and full portions. Piling precious treasures from the earth to the Brahmā heaven and offering them to the Buddha would not equal giving one meal to sustain someone who receives and preserves this scripture〔云云〕.

〔科§01b-13〕 The Ten Lotus Dharmas and Practice with Marks and without Marks

Cultivating half walking and half sitting according to the Lotus also divides into method and encouragement. The method is again explained through bodily permission and prohibition, verbal speech and silence, and mental calming and contemplation. Ten items are permitted for bodily practice: first, purify the practice site; second, purify the body; third, make offerings through body, speech, and mind; fourth, invite the buddhas; fifth, bow to the buddhas; sixth, repent offenses of the six faculties; seventh, circumambulate and walk the path; eighth, recite the scripture; ninth, sit in meditation; and tenth, verify the signs of practice. A separate one-fascicle work on the Lotus samādhi composed by the Tiantai Master already circulates in the world, and practitioners should follow it. These ten dharmas already include both voicing and silence, so speech is not separately divided.

Mental calming and contemplation require reading the Contemplation of Samantabhadra together with the “Peaceful Practice” chapter so that each completes the other. The former teaches exclusive recitation of the Great Vehicle and repentance of offenses of the six faculties six times by day and night even before entering samādhi. The latter teaches that there is nothing practiced in any dharma and that one neither separately practices nor discriminates. The two scriptures originally complete one another and must not be made to reject each other by clinging to only one side of their wording. Each emphasizes a different aspect in response to the conditions of practice, but there is no fundamental difference.

The “Peaceful Practice” chapter also teaches preservation, recitation, explanation, and deep-minded worship: are these not ritual practices? The Contemplation of Samantabhadra also says that mind is originally empty, offense and merit have no master, and the sun of wisdom disperses the frost of offenses: are these not contemplations of principle? Master Nanyue established peaceful practice with marks and peaceful practice without marks, naming them according to phenomena and principle. Entering ritual forms to perform repentance of the six faculties uses them as a guide into awakening and is therefore called “with marks.” Directly using contemplation of the emptiness of all dharmas as the means is called “without marks.” When wondrous realization is attained, both marks and absence of marks must be relinquished. Understand this and there is no doubt concerning the two scriptures.

〔科§01b-14〕 The White Elephant with Six Tusks and Encouragement to Cultivate the Lotus

When contemplation is cultivated according to the scripture, the white elephant with six tusks represents the bodhisattva’s six uncontaminated superknowledges. Tusks are sharp and effective like the speed of superknowledge. The elephant’s great strength represents the Dharma body bearing sentient beings. Because uncontaminated means undefiled, the elephant is white. Three people stand upon its head: one holds an adamantine pestle, one an adamantine wheel, and one a wish-fulfilling jewel, representing the three wisdoms abiding at the crown of the uncontaminated〔云云〕. The pestle drives the elephant forward, representing wisdom guiding practice; the wheel turns, representing emergence into provisionality from emptiness; and the jewel represents the Middle Way.

A pool on the elephant’s tusks represents the eight liberations, the essence of meditative concentration. Superknowledge is concentration’s function. Because essence and function are inseparable, the pool is at the tips of the tusks. A flower in the pool represents the wondrous cause: purifying buddha lands and benefiting sentient beings through supernormal power is the wondrous cause. The cause is born from superknowledge as the flower grows from the pool. A woman in the flower represents kindness. Without great kindness free of conditions, how could one contract a vast body through supernormal power and enter the Sahā world? Superknowledge is moved by kindness as the woman is borne by the flower. The woman holds musical instruments, representing the four means of gathering: giving, kind speech, beneficial action, and shared activity. Compassion causes body and speech to manifest many shared activities, beneficial actions, and gifts of wealth and Dharma, guiding sentient beings in many ways like five hundred instruments emitting immeasurable sounds.

Manifesting a body that sentient beings delight to see is the universally manifested form-body samādhi. It appears according to what sentient beings need and enjoy and need not always resemble white jade. Verbal dhāraṇī means that compassion permeates verbal action and teaches many Dharmas. These are different names of the Lotus samādhi. Understand this meaning and the Dharma gates represented by the white elephant’s many forms can be understood freely.

The encouragement unfolds seven wishes. First, members of the seven assemblies who violate precepts may wish to eliminate offenses of birth and death accumulated through hundreds, thousands, ten-thousands, millions, and incalculable kalpas in the space of a finger snap. Second, they may wish to arouse the mind of awakening, enter nirvāṇa without severing afflictions, purify the faculties without leaving the five desires, and see beyond obstructions. Third, they may wish to see Śākyamuni’s emanations, Prabhūtaratna Buddha, and Śākyamuni Buddha. Fourth, they may wish to attain the Lotus samādhi and every verbal dhāraṇī. Fifth, they may wish to enter the Tathāgata’s room, wear his robe, and sit on his seat. Sixth, they may wish to teach among the eight classes of devas and nāgas. Seventh, they may wish for great bodhisattvas such as Mañjuśrī and Bhaiṣajyarāja to stand in the sky with flowers and incense and attend upon them. All should cultivate the Lotus, read and recite the Great Vehicle, and recollect matters of the Great Vehicle.

Also cause the wisdom of emptiness to correspond with the mind, remembering that the mother of the bodhisattvas and unsurpassed, excellent skillful means are born from contemplating the true mark. The many offenses resemble frost and dew; the sun of wisdom can disperse them. Cultivated in this way, every matter described will be fulfilled. Preserving this scripture is to see Śākyamuni and Samantabhadra, make offerings to Prabhūtaratna and the emanated buddhas, and bring delight to the buddhas. Who could hear such a Dharma without arousing the mind of awakening? Only an unworthy, deluded, benighted person without wisdom fails to arouse it.

Neither Walking nor Sitting Samādhi

〔科§01b-15〕 Neither Walking nor Sitting, Following One’s Own Intention, and Awareness of Mentation: Three Names, One Practice

The fourth is neither walking nor sitting samādhi. The first two exclusively use sitting and walking respectively, while the third divides between the two. The fourth is named neither walking nor sitting to complete a fourfold relation with the first three. In fact, it includes walking and sitting as well as every matter of daily life. Master Nanyue called it “following one’s own intention”: whenever mentation arises, cultivate samādhi immediately. The Larger Prajñāpāramitā calls it the “awareness-of-mentation samādhi”: clearly illuminate every direction toward which mentation turns. Although the three names differ, they designate one practice.

In the scriptural explanation, awareness means illumination and mentation is one class of mental factor; samādhi means what was explained above. As soon as a practitioner’s mental factors arise, turn back and illuminate them. No actual movement, source, endpoint, place of arrival, or place of departure can be seen. Hence the name awareness of mentation.

Mental factors are immeasurable; why is awareness discussed only in relation to mentation? Trace every dharma to its source and all are created by mentation, so mentation begins the explanation. Awareness of an object, different from wood or stone, is called mind. The next thought’s deliberation and calculation is called mentation. Clear differentiation is called consciousness. If these distinctions are grasped as substantially existent, one falls into the inversions of conception and view and cannot be called aware.

True awareness knows that mind cannot be fixed as possessing or lacking mentation, or possessing or lacking consciousness. Mentation cannot be fixed as possessing or lacking mind, or possessing or lacking consciousness. Consciousness cannot be fixed as possessing or lacking mentation, or possessing or lacking mind. Mind, mentation, and consciousness are not completely identical, so three names are established; they are not three isolated entities, so they are said to be one nature.

Knowing that the name is not a fixed name reveals that the so-called nature is not a graspable nature. The name is not real, so no fixed three is formed; the nature is not real, so no fixed one is formed. Because they are not three, they do not scatter; because they are not one, they do not merge. Because they do not merge, they cannot be declared empty nothingness; because they do not scatter, they cannot be declared substantial existence. Not substantially existent, they are not permanent; not empty nothingness, they are not annihilated. When permanence and annihilation are not seen, ultimately neither identity nor difference is seen. In contemplating mentation, mind and consciousness are included within it, and so are all dharmas. If grasping at mentation is broken, ignorance breaks and the remaining afflictions are removed with it. Therefore, although dharmas are many, only mentation is raised in naming this samādhi. Illumination straightens the mind and is therefore called awareness-of-mentation samādhi. Following one’s own intention and neither walking nor sitting are understood in the same way.

This Dharma has four gates: first, practices drawn from the scriptures; second, traversing every wholesome dharma; third, traversing every unwholesome dharma; and fourth, traversing the indeterminate, neither wholesome nor unwholesome.

〔科§01b-16〕 Using the Avalokiteśvara Invocation to Illustrate the Scriptural Practices Embraced by Following One’s Own Intention

Every scriptural practice not included in the first three kinds of samādhi belongs to following one’s own intention. The method is first illustrated by the Scripture of the Dhāraṇī for Invoking Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva to Dispel and Subdue Poisonous Harm. Adorn a practice site in a quiet place with banners, canopies, incense, and lamps. Place images of Amitābha Buddha and Bodhisattvas Avalokiteśvara and Mahāsthāmaprāpta in the west, and prepare willow twigs and pure water. If you leave the seat to relieve yourself, return by scenting and bathing the body and changing into fresh, clean clothes.

Beginning on the fast day, face west and prostrate with all five limbs. Bow in order to the Three Jewels, the seven buddhas of the past, Śākyamuni Buddha, Amitābha Buddha, the three dhāraṇīs, Avalokiteśvara, Mahāsthāmaprāpta, and the entire noble assembly. Then kneel upright, burn incense, scatter flowers, and sincerely perform the customary visualization of offering. After the offering, straighten body and mind, sit cross-legged, bind mindfulness to counting breaths, and take ten breaths as one recollection. Having completed ten recollections, rise, burn incense, and invite the Three Jewels listed above three times on behalf of all sentient beings. Then recite the names of the Three Jewels three times and separately recite Avalokiteśvara’s name.

Next join the palms, recite a four-line verse, and then recite the three dhāraṇīs. Each may be recited once or seven times according to how early or late the hour is. After the recitations, state your repentance, recollect every offense you have committed, disclose it fully, and wash it away. Then bow to the invited noble assembly. One person ascends the high seat and chants or reads the scripture aloud while the others listen carefully. Follow this method before noon and during the first watch of night; follow the usual ritual in the other periods. If this brief account is insufficient, return to the scripture to complete it〔云云〕.

The scripture asks how one is gathered when eye corresponds with form, continuing through how one is gathered when mentation corresponds with its object. The Great Collection also says to abide according to mind. “According to” means emptiness. Each corresponding relation above enters the limit of things as they really are. “According to” and “empty” are merely different names.

Contemplate the earth element as lacking a solid nature. If earth is declared substantially existent, existence becomes reality and reality becomes solidity. If earth is declared substantially nonexistent, both existent and nonexistent, or neither existent nor nonexistent, grasping any one formulation as a real thing also makes it solid. Contemplating earth as ultimately unobtainable removes its solid nature.

Contemplate the nature of water as non-abiding. If water is declared substantially existent, this existence is abiding; through to grasping water as neither existent nor nonexistent, one still abides. Since one now abides neither in the four propositions of existence, the four propositions of nonexistence, nor the ineffable, the nature of water is said not to abide.

Contemplate the nature of wind as unobstructed. If wind is declared substantially existent, existence becomes obstruction; through to grasping wind as neither existent nor nonexistent, one still falls into verbal obstruction. Because all four propositions of wind’s existence and nonexistence are unobtainable, its nature is called unobstructed.

Contemplate the fire element as unreal. Fire does not arise from itself, another, both self and other, or no cause. Originally without intrinsic nature, it exists through many conditions and is therefore called unreal. As the form aggregate is so, sensation, perception, formations, and consciousness each enter the limit of things as they really are.

Contemplate the five aggregates in this way. Contemplate the twelve links as an echo in a valley, a plantain trunk without a solid core, dew, or a flash of lightning. Activate these contemplations together in one thought so that contemplation of emptiness is accomplished; cultivate diligently until correspondence is attained. Contemplative wisdom is the root of practice and cannot be omitted.

The dhāraṇī for dispelling and subduing poisonous harm breaks the obstruction of retribution and restored the people of Vaiśālī to their former condition. The dhāraṇī for breaking bad karma breaks karmic obstruction, washing away the filth of those who damaged pure conduct and restoring purity. The six-graph formula dhāraṇī breaks the obstruction of afflictions, purifies the roots of greed, anger, and delusion, and leaves no doubt about accomplishment of the Buddha path.

The six graphs also correspond to six Avalokiteśvaras that separately break the three obstructions of each of the six paths. First, Great-Compassion Avalokiteśvara breaks the three obstructions of the hell path; because hell has the gravest suffering, great compassion is appropriate. Second, Great-Kindness Avalokiteśvara breaks those of hungry ghosts; because hungry ghosts suffer hunger and thirst, great kindness is appropriate. Third, Lion-Fearlessness Avalokiteśvara breaks those of animals; because the king of beasts is mighty, fearlessness is appropriate. Fourth, Great-Light-Universal-Illumination Avalokiteśvara breaks those of asuras; because asuras are suspicious, jealous, and doubtful, universal illumination is especially appropriate. Fifth, Divine-and-Human-Hero Avalokiteśvara breaks those of humans; the human path includes both phenomena and principle. Phenomenally, pride is subdued, hence “divine and human”; in principle, buddha-nature is seen, hence “hero.” Sixth, Great-Brahmā-Profundity Avalokiteśvara breaks those of devas; Great Brahmā is lord of the devas, and naming the sovereign embraces the ministers.

Expanding the six Avalokiteśvaras gives the twenty-five samādhis. Great Compassion is the stainless samādhi; Great Kindness the mind-delight samādhi; Lion Fearlessness the non-retrogression samādhi; Great Light Universal Illumination the joy samādhi; Divine-and-Human Hero the four samādhis beginning with illusion-like; and Great Brahmā Profundity the seventeen beginning with unmoving. Contemplate accordingly and the relation becomes evident〔云云〕.

This scripture applies to repentance by practitioners of all three vehicles. One who only tames and liberates oneself and kills every enemy-thief of affliction becomes an arhat. One with deep merit and sharp faculties who contemplates the twelve links beginning with ignorance and formations completes the pratyekabuddha path. One who arouses great compassion, whose body resembles crystal, who sees buddhas in every pore, attains the Śūraṅgama samādhi, and abides in non-retrogression. Other Great Vehicle scriptures have cognate practices, such as the repentance of the seven buddhas and eight bodhisattvas or the eight hundred days spent cleaning latrines in the Ākāśagarbha practice. All are included in following one’s own intention〔云云〕.

〔科§01b-17〕 Distinguishing the Four Phases before Traversing Wholesome Dharmas

The second gate traverses every wholesome dharma in two steps: first distinguish the four phases, then traverse the many wholesome practices. Mental consciousness has no form and cannot be viewed directly, so it is distinguished through four temporal marks: before a thought, about to think, thinking, and after thinking. Before a thought, mind has not yet arisen; about to think, it is about to arise; thinking, it is engaging and abiding upon an object; after thinking, the object-engaging mind has ceased. Comprehending the four phases leads into the single signless mark.

Question: Before a thought it has not arisen, and after thinking it has already ceased. No mind is active in either period. Without mind there is no mark, so what can be contemplated?

Answer: Although the thought has not yet arisen, this is not absolute nothingness. It resembles someone who has not yet performed an act but later will perform it. Because the act has not yet occurred, one cannot say no person exists. If no person definitely existed, who would later perform it? Because the person who has not yet acted exists, there can be one about to act. Mind is the same: about-to-think depends upon before-a-thought. If before-a-thought were wholly absent, how could about-to-think occur? Thus, although no thought is presently active before a thought, it cannot be called absolute absence of thought.

After thinking can also be contemplated even though the thought has ceased. Someone who has completed an act cannot therefore be declared nonexistent. If no person definitely existed, who performed it before? Although the mind after thinking has ceased, it cannot be declared eternally annihilated. Eternal annihilation would become the annihilationist view and destroy cause and result. Therefore, although the after-thinking mind has ceased, it can still be contemplated.

Question: The past is gone, the future has not arrived, and the present does not remain. Apart from the three times there is no other mind. Which mind is actually contemplated?

Answer: The question is mistaken. If the past were eternally extinguished, it would be utterly unknowable; if the future has not arisen, it too would be unknowable; and if the present does not remain, it would likewise be unknowable. How, then, could noble ones know minds of the three times? Even spirits can know their own and others’ three times. How could practitioners of Buddha-Dharma instead give rise to an annihilationist view and regard mind as entirely absent like a turtle’s hair or a hare’s horn? Know that although minds of the three times have no fixed substance, they can still be known. The Dharma taught by the buddhas is empty yet not annihilated, continuous yet not permanent, and neither offense nor merit is lost. To give rise to annihilationism is to be a blind person before form, without the eye of correct contemplation in Buddha-Dharma, and ultimately to attain nothing. Once the four phases of mind are known, turn non-abiding wisdom back upon every wholesome or unwholesome thought that arises.

〔科§01b-18〕 The Six Receptions, Six Actions, and Giving

Wholesome practices are numerous, so begin with the six perfections. In relation to the six objects of form, sound, scent, taste, touch, and dharmas, relinquish the six modes of reception from the eye receiving form through mentation engaging dharmas. When there are no possessions to relinquish, direct the mind within the six actions of walking, standing, sitting, lying down, speaking, and silence. Six receptions and six actions together make twelve matters.

First contemplate the eye receiving form. From before seeing and about to see through seeing and after seeing, none of the four phases of mind can be seen; neither may one separately grasp a complete non-seeing. Then turn back to contemplate the mind aware of form. It does not come from outside, for then it would be unrelated to oneself; nor emerge from inside, for then it would not require conditions. It is neither inside nor outside, is not between them, and does not exist eternally without cause. Thus the mind aware of form is ultimately empty and quiescent. The contemplated form equals emptiness, and the one contemplating form equals a blind person.

Through to the faculty of mentation engaging a dharma-object, none of the four minds—before engaging, about to engage, engaging, and after engaging—can be obtained. Turn back to contemplate the mind aware of the dharma-object: it neither comes from outside nor emerges from within. Since there is no fixed dharma-object, everything equals emptiness. This is contemplation of the six receptions〔云云〕. The eye faculty, form object, space, and light can neither see nor discriminate on their own.

Eye-consciousness arises only through the convergence of conditions; mentation-consciousness arises through eye-consciousness as a condition. Once mentation-consciousness arises, it can discriminate. Eye-consciousness depends on mentation-consciousness; eye-consciousness sees, then greed arises. Greedily staining the form object and breaking precepts is the four phases of hell. Internally delighting in form while outwardly concealing and denying it is the four phases of hungry ghosts. Clinging to form and calculating self and what belongs to self is the four phases of animals. Discriminating my form and another’s, and my superiority and the other’s inferiority, is the four phases of asuras. Receiving an object of form when another gives it and not taking it when it is not given, and giving rise upon form to humanity, propriety, deference, rectitude, trustworthiness, and discernment within the five precepts and ten wholesome actions, is the four phases of humans and devas. Contemplating each thought in the four phases as arising and ceasing without abiding, receiving pleasant, painful, or neutral sensation in every thought, and lacking autonomy because it belongs to conditions, is the four phases of the Two Vehicles.

Seeing these defects in one’s own four phases and then contemplating the same in others brings forth compassion and practice of the six perfections. The nature and marks of the objects engaged by the six receptions have always been so, but for immeasurable kalpas sentient beings have stubbornly and foolishly protected and clung to them, unable to relinquish them or forget what is relinquished. Now contemplate the object as no fixed object and do not receive it; contemplate the faculty as no fixed faculty and do not cling to the body; contemplate the person as unobtainable and see no fixed recipient. Gift, recipient, and act of giving are all empty: this is the perfection of giving.

The Diamond Prajñāpāramitā says that giving while abiding in form, sound, scent, taste, touch, or dharmas is giving that abides in marks, like a person entering darkness and seeing nothing. Giving without abiding in form and the others is signless giving, like a sighted person seeing many forms under sunlight. Merely saying “do not see marks” remains too abbreviated to understand easily. True non-seeing does not fix form as having marks, lacking marks, both having and lacking marks, or neither having nor lacking marks. Wherever someone clings to a mark, guide them out from it so that none of the sixty-two views arises. This is signless giving that reaches the other shore. All dharmas tend toward giving and accomplish the Great Vehicle: this is the bodhisattva’s four phases.

Contemplating the four phases as equal to space is permanence; not being pressed by them is ease; not creating karma because of them is self; and not being defiled by them is purity. This is the four phases of the Buddha Dharma realm. Although the four phases are empty, within emptiness the many four phases through to Buddha-Dharmas as numerous as the sands of the Ganges can still be seen, accomplishing the Great Vehicle. This is the provisionally named four phases.

If they were only sheer emptiness, they could not possess the ten Dharma realms. Yet Dharma realms arise through conditions and have no substantially existent nature. Because they are not existent, they are empty; because they are not empty, they exist. Neither grasping emptiness or existence, simultaneously illuminate both. Emptiness, provisionality, and the Middle—the three truths—are distinctly complete, and the Buddha’s knowing and seeing fully appears. All this is clearly present in the four phases of mind. Contemplate the four phases of the remaining five receptions—sound, scent, taste, touch, and dharmas—in the same way, perfectly illuminating the three truths and the inconceivable without recording the repetitions at length.

Next contemplate giving in the action of walking. Contemplate the four phases of before intending to walk, about to walk, walking, and after walking. Whether slow or fast, none can be obtained, nor may one separately grasp an unobtainability. Turn back to contemplate the aware mind: it neither comes from outside, emerges from inside, abides in between, nor exists eternally. There is no fixed walking or walker; all is ultimately empty and quiescent.

Yet coming and going occur only through the mind’s direction. Walking may be for breaking precepts, deceiving another, one’s family, surpassing another, propriety and deference, wholesome meditation, or nirvāṇa. It may also come from compassion and relinquish the six objects while directing the six actions. In skillfully coming and going, lifting and lowering the foot are illusion-like, vague and insubstantial, and both walker and walking are forgotten. A thousand miles do not seem far, and a few steps are not grasped as near. Whatever is done, do not let the effort be wasted and do not seek repayment. Abiding in giving in this way embraces Buddha-Dharmas as numerous as the Ganges sands, possesses the Great Vehicle, and reaches the other shore.

Again contemplate one direction of mind as possessing the ten Dharma realms. One is not fixed as one and therefore can become ten; ten is not fixed as ten and therefore can become one. It is neither one nor ten, yet illuminates one and ten simultaneously. The three truths are complete in one thought of mind. Standing, sitting, lying down, speaking, and silence are all the same. The Lotus passage in which children of the Buddha give fine garments and superior clothing in quest of the Buddha path has this meaning.

Giving was first explained jointly through the twelve matters; now each matter is used to explain all six perfections. While walking, a practitioner views sentient beings with the eye of great compassion without obtaining their marks, so that they feel no fear toward the bodhisattva: this is giving within walking. Causing sentient beings no harm and not grasping marks of offense or merit is morality. During walking, thoughts do not arise; there is no movement or abode, and the five aggregates, twelve sense fields, and eighteen elements do not move: this is patience. While walking, no substantially existent lifting or lowering of the foot is obtained, mind has no thought before or awareness after, and no fixed arising, abiding, or ceasing exists in any dharma: this is vigor. No fixed body or mind, birth and death or nirvāṇa, is obtained; within any dharma there is no reception, recollection, or grasping, no savoring and no distraction: this is meditative concentration. During walking, the six parts—head, hands, and feet—are like clouds, shadow, dream, illusion, echo, and transformation, without arising, ceasing, annihilation, or permanence; aggregates, elements, and sense fields are empty and quiescent, with neither bondage nor liberation: this is prajñā.

Quiescence during walking may disclose a mark of concentration. Without examination, one could become defiled by that object and greedily savor meditation. Now turn back and contemplate the concentrated mind: mind itself has no fixed mind, so where could concentration be? Know that this mark of concentration arises from inversion. Contemplating in this way, neither an emptiness nor a non-emptiness is seen; the mark of concentration breaks and attachment does not arise. Only what arises through skillful means is the bodhisattva’s understanding.

Before awakening, practitioners may also cling to “I can contemplate mind,” treat the contemplator as wondrous wisdom, and become arrogant through attachment to wisdom. This is an obstruction of knowledge equal to that of non-Buddhists, and liberation is impossible. Therefore turn illumination back upon the contemplating mind: no abode, fixed arising, or ceasing can be seen. Ultimately there is neither a contemplator nor a non-contemplator. Since a contemplator cannot be obtained, who contemplates dharmas? When the person who contemplates mind cannot be obtained, conception of contemplation is left behind. The treatise says that recollection, conception, and contemplation are removed, the mind of conceptual proliferation entirely ceases, immeasurable karmic offenses are removed, and the pure mind is constantly one; only such a noble and wondrous person sees prajñā. Contemplating mind within mind in the Great Collection has the same meaning.

Walking in this way possesses the three samādhis. The first contemplation breaks all kinds of existent marks and sees neither inside nor outside: this is emptiness samādhi. Next contemplate the emptiness that breaks marks: this is signlessness samādhi. Last, see no agent: this is wishlessness samādhi. It also breaks the three inversions and three poisons, passes beyond the currents of desire existence, form existence, and formless existence, subdues the four enemies of afflictions, aggregates, death, and the devas’ māra, fulfills the perfections, embraces the Dharma realm, and increases and completes all Dharma gates—not merely the six perfections and three samādhis. If walking, one matter, possesses all dharmas, the remaining eleven matters do likewise.

〔科§01b-19〕 Cultivating Morality within the Twelve Matters

Next comes morality. Some people compete to remain cautious and pure amid the six objects, like holding a bowl of oil without spilling one drop. They maintain exact deportment and ordered advance and retreat during walking, standing, sitting, lying down, speech, and silence. Yet this is still only called keeping precepts. Its result makes one ascend and enjoy pleasure, but this is neither samādhi nor perfection. When contemplative wisdom is attained, morality within the twelve matters is naturally fulfilled.

For example, while contemplating form, investigate the four phases of before seeing, about to see, seeing, and after seeing in many ways. Neither the arising mind nor the contemplating mind can be obtained. It is neither inside nor outside, neither comes nor goes, and is quiescent, neither arising nor ceasing〔其一〕. Contemplating in this way purifies the seven branches of body and speech like space and successively accomplishes ten kinds of morality. First, morality without deficiency; second, unbroken morality; third, morality without puncture: these three moral disciplines all arise from purification of the seven branches. Fourth, breaking the many unwholesome mental activities of the four phases is unmingled morality. Fifth, not being disturbed by the four phases is morality shared with concentration. Sixth, non-arising of the four-phase mind is morality shared with the path. Seventh, distinguishing the many four phases without obstruction is unattached morality. Eighth, distinguishing them without error is morality praised by the wise. Ninth, knowing that the four phases embrace every Dharma is the Great Vehicle’s sovereign morality. Tenth, discerning permanence, ease, self, and purity within the four phases is ultimate morality〔其二〕.

Once mind is bright and pure, it simultaneously blocks the extremes of emptiness and existence and correctly enters the Middle Way; at the same time it illuminates the conventional and true realities. The inconceivable Buddha object is complete and undiminished〔其三〕.

With respect to form, form, the dharma of form, and a recipient cannot be obtained; gift, recipient, and giving all vanish: this is giving. Settling the mind without movement toward form or its recipient is patience. Cultivating without interruption and without defilement by form or recipient is vigor. Not being disturbed by form or recipient is meditative concentration. Seeing both as illusion and transformation is prajñā. Seeing them as space is emptiness samādhi; even that emptiness being unobtainable is signlessness samādhi; absence of agent and act is wishlessness samādhi. Not only the three truths, six perfections, and three samādhis, but Buddha-Dharmas as numerous as the Ganges sands can all be understood accordingly. Contemplation of form is so, and so are sound, scent, taste, touch, and dharmas; all six receptions and six actions are the same. The Lotus passage in which children of the Buddha seek the Buddha path with complete deportment expresses this meaning.

〔科§01b-20〕 Patience, Vigor, Meditative Concentration, Wisdom, and the Mutual Completion of the Six Perfections

Next traverse the wholesome practice of patience, still through the six receptions and six actions, each of which contains agreeable and adverse objects. Agreeable objects accord with the mind and adverse ones do not. Do not become angry with the adverse or attached to the agreeable. What is seen, the seer, the act, and the agent are all unobtainable; the remaining contemplations follow the foregoing.

Next traverse the wholesome practice of vigor. An older explanation says that vigor has no separate essence and only urges every practice onward. Examining the meaning, vigor should have its own essence: ignorance pervades every affliction yet can still be separately established. Take scripture recitation as an example. Urge the mind onward to disclose vigor, never omitting it by day or night until the wording becomes fluent and familiar. Diligent recitation alone, however, is not yet samādhi or wisdom.

Go on to contemplate breath touching seven places in the body and converging to emit echo-like sound. Sound is neither inside nor outside, with no fixed reciter or recited text. Investigate each of the four phases. In relation to objects, no recipient arises; in relation to conditions, no agent arises. Afflictions do not interrupt the work of recitation, and thought after thought flows into the ocean of great nirvāṇa. Only this is vigor〔云云〕.

Next traverse the meditations. The fundamental meditations, nine perceptions, eight liberations, and the rest, when only objects of concentration, are meditation and not yet perfection. Contemplate the four phases of entering concentration: even a fixed mind cannot be seen, so where could a separate concentration be? One thereby penetrates the true mark of meditation and embraces every Dharma through meditation. After explaining the eight perceptions in its fifth fascicle, the Dazhidu Lun proceeds to explain the ten powers, four fearlessnesses, and all dharmas. Some commentators fail to understand its profound intent and suppose the treatise’s order to be mistaken. In fact, its author discloses the eight perceptions as marks of the Great Vehicle and therefore explains all dharmas extensively〔云云〕.

Next traverse wisdom. The treatise explains prajñā in eight ways. Here, take worldly wisdom provisionally and contemplate the six receptions and six actions, investigating worldly wisdom through the four phases until it ultimately cannot be obtained. Contemplate every other wholesome Dharma in the same way.

Question: If one Dharma already embraces all dharmas, would contemplation alone not suffice? Why is calming also needed? If one perfection already embraces all, why are the other five necessary?

Answer: The six perfections complete one another in turn, like entering battle in armor, where protection cannot fail to be comprehensive〔云云〕. Contemplation resembles a lamp and calming a sealed room without drafts; washing clothes, cutting grass, and similar tasks each require their appropriate supports〔云云〕. From one side, prajñā is the Dharma realm and universally embraces everything, so the other dharmas may seem unnecessary. Yet every other Dharma is also the Dharma realm and also embraces everything, so prajñā could equally seem unnecessary. Ultimately, prajñā is the dharmas and the dharmas are prajñā, neither two nor different. Thus prajñā cannot be omitted, the other five perfections cannot be discarded, and calming and contemplation must assist one another〔云云〕.

〔科§01b-21〕 Cultivating Contemplation while Traversing Unwholesome Dharmas

The third gate uses following one’s own intention to traverse unwholesome matters. Wholesome and unwholesome are not fixed names at every level. The six coverings are commonly called unwholesome, and the phenomenal six perfections that counteract them wholesome. Yet when pleasant human or divine results end, one still falls into the three unwholesome paths. From the standpoint of escape, they again become unwholesome, because neither the coverings nor phenomenal perfections genuinely shake or transcend birth and death. The Two Vehicles escape suffering and are relatively called wholesome, but they liberate only themselves and lack the marks of good people of the Great Vehicle. The treatise even rebukes their lack of great compassion by preferring the mind of a foul, leprous jackal to the intention of a śrāvaka or pratyekabuddha. From this level, both birth and death and the Two Vehicles’ nirvāṇa retain unexhausted unwholesomeness.

Bodhisattvas of the six perfections possess compassion and benefit sentient beings, and so may be called wholesome. Yet if the principle they see remains partial, it resembles fine food served in a poisoned vessel, killing whoever eats; it becomes unwholesome again. The three vehicles’ common elimination of delusion is better, but without seeing a distinct principle beyond the two extremes, they remain within those extremes and have not removed ignorance; their goodness is not ultimate. Although the Separate Teaching sees a distinct principle, it still carries skillful means and does not fully correspond with principle. The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra says that before the perfect view all are still called people of wrong views, and wrong views are certainly unwholesome. Only the perfect Dharma is ultimately called wholesome. What accords with the true mark is called the path, and what turns away is called the non-path. If one penetrates the absence of fixed unwholesome nature in all evils and sees each as the true mark in its identity, one can proceed through the non-path and penetrate the Buddha path. Conversely, if attachment arises toward the Buddha path and its ambrosia cannot be digested, even the path becomes the non-path. In this sense, the meanings of wholesome and unwholesome extend through every level.

Here, provisionally distinguish them phenomenally: phenomenal perfections are wholesome and the six coverings unwholesome. Contemplation of the wholesome has been explained; now contemplation within the unwholesome is clarified. Contemplating the wholesome does not end the six coverings forever. Afflictions are vast and may arise at any time; contemplating others, one sees immeasurable unwholesome conduct. When cultivating the perception that everything worldly is undesirable, one may see no good person or land, only sentient beings wrapped in many unwholesome coverings. Even if all six are not present, some unwholesome tendency predominates: one person is stingy and greedy, another breaks precepts, another is angry, another indolent, another addicted to alcohol. Ordinary faculties are easily seized by objects; who is wholly faultless? Those who leave the world for monastic life cannot yet perfect every practice. Laypeople experience desire and are not exclusively practitioners, so unwholesomeness is part of daily life. Even arhats retain residual habits, much more ordinary beings.

If ordinary beings indulge the unwholesome coverings, they are crushed, fall downward, and never escape. Contemplative wisdom must therefore be cultivated precisely when an unwholesome thought appears. In the Buddha’s time, householders with spouses and children who handled official and worldly affairs still attained the path through them. Aṅgulimāla turned from killing to kindness; Prince Jeta and Queen Mallikā respectively drank alcohol and kept precepts; Hexumiduo manifested desire and accomplished pure conduct; and Devadatta’s wrong views were used to disclose the correct. If evil had a fixed evil nature and practice of the path within it were wholly impossible, these people could only remain ordinary forever. Precisely because practice is possible amid unwholesome objects, one can still become noble despite the six coverings. Thus an unwholesome object need not sever the path.

Nor does attainment of the path immediately consume every residual habit. A stream-enterer’s desire may even grow stronger, Pilindavatsa still retained a habit of arrogance, and Śāriputra still manifested a habit of anger, without damaging their uncontaminated realization. Like brightness and darkness in space, which cannot eliminate one another, this can disclose the Buddha’s awakening.

If someone has an especially strong habit of desire, burning and impure, coarse counteraction may only intensify it. Instead of continuing to fight it head-on, follow it immediately with contemplation whenever it appears. When fishing, if the fish is strong and the line weak, do not pull violently. Let the hook and bait enter its mouth and follow as it goes near or far, sinks or rises, without letting go; before long it can be gathered in. The unwholesome covering is the fish and calming-and-contemplation the hook and bait. Without fish, the hook has nothing upon which to work. The more and larger the fish, the more closely the hook must follow without abandonment. Before long the covering can be governed by contemplative wisdom. This means illuminating it at the place where it appears; it does not mean creating evil at will.

How is desire contemplated? When it arises, carefully view the four marks of not yet desiring, about to desire, desiring, and after desiring. First ask how about-to-desire arises from not-yet-desiring: does it arise after not-yet-desiring has ceased, while it has not ceased, from both ceasing and not ceasing, or from neither ceasing nor not ceasing?

First, if not-yet-desiring ceases and about-to-desire arises, do arising and ceasing occupy one place or remain separate? If it arises precisely where ceasing occurs, arising and ceasing are opposites and cannot be simultaneous. If it arises apart from ceasing, it has no cause.

Second, if not-yet-desiring has not ceased when about-to-desire arises, ask likewise whether they are identical or separate. If arising occurs within non-ceasing, two arisings stand simultaneously and generate further arisings without end. If it arises apart from non-ceasing, it is likewise causeless.

Third, if it arises from both ceasing and not ceasing, then if it really arises from ceasing there is no need also to say non-ceasing; if it arises from non-ceasing there is no need also to say ceasing. How could an indeterminate cause produce a determinate result? If ceasing and non-ceasing are one in essence, their natures and marks contradict each other; if they are two, they are originally unrelated.

Fourth, if it arises from neither ceasing nor not ceasing, is this doubly negated location existent or nonexistent? If existent, it is not truly a double negation; if nonexistent, how could empty nothingness produce desire?

Since the arising of about-to-desire cannot be found through these four propositions, reverse the propositions and the ceasing of not-yet-desiring likewise cannot be found. Ask of about-to-desire itself whether it arises, does not arise, both arises and does not arise, or neither arises nor does not arise, and investigate as above. Thus contemplate the covering of desire as ultimately empty and quiescent, while simultaneously and clearly illuminating its conditions. This is the hook and bait. If the covering constantly arises, contemplation constantly follows. Ultimately no substantial arising or substantial illumination is seen, while conditional arising and illumination remain distinct. This is the first level〔其一〕.

At the second level, contemplate from which object the covering arises: form or one of the other five; from which action: walking, standing, sitting, lying down, speaking, or silence; and for what matter: breaking precepts, family, deception, jealousy, humanity and deference, wholesome meditation, nirvāṇa, the four virtues of permanence, ease, self, and purity, the six perfections, the three samādhis of emptiness, signlessness, and wishlessness, or Buddha-Dharmas as numerous as the sands of the Ganges? Each condition must be distinguished where it actually arises〔其二〕.

Contemplating in this way, no fixed recipient is present in the object and no fixed agent in the conditions, while object, reception, faculty, and condition are distinctly illuminated. Illusion, emptiness, and Dharma-nature do not obstruct one another. If the unwholesome covering obstructed Dharma-nature, Dharma-nature should be destroyed; if Dharma-nature obstructed the covering, the covering should not arise. Know that the covering does not depart from Dharma-nature: when it arises, it arises without departing from Dharma-nature; when it ceases, it ceases without departing from Dharma-nature.

Scriptures therefore separately say that greed and desire, anger, and delusion can become the path of contemplation and that the three contain all Buddha-Dharmas. Seeking a separate awakening apart from desire would instead place them as far apart as heaven and earth. They also say that a bodhisattva proceeds through the non-path and penetrates the Buddha path; that all sentient beings are themselves the mark of awakening, with no separate awakening to attain, and themselves the mark of nirvāṇa, with no separate extinction to realize; that for people of overweening pride the Buddha calls separation from lust, anger, and delusion liberation, while for those without such pride he calls the nature of lust, anger, and delusion itself liberation; and that all defilement is the lineage of the Tathāgata. As the colors and flavors of mountains and seas are neither two nor different within the true mark, this is the third level, contemplating the inconceivable principle of unwholesome dharmas〔其三〕.

Constant cultivation of contemplative wisdom gradually makes contemplation and the principle of the covering correspond like form and shadow; this is identity in contemplative practice. Making every unwholesome dharma and worldly livelihood accord with real contemplation is identity in resemblance. Entering the copper-wheel stage of the first abode breaks the root ignorance of the covering; when the root falls, branches break, and buddha-nature appears. This is identity in partial realization. When buddhas exhaust the source of every covering, this is ultimate identity. Thus the covering of desire vertically possesses the six identities—principle, name, contemplative practice, resemblance, partial realization, and the ultimate—and horizontally possesses the six perfections and all Buddha-Dharmas〔云云〕.

Contemplate anger in the same way. If a person has much anger, resentment surges continually in the mind and can neither be cut off nor suppressed. Immediately illuminate the angry thought with calming-and-contemplation at the moment it appears. Contemplate the four marks of not yet angry, about to become angry, angry, and after anger, asking where anger arises. Neither arising nor ceasing can be obtained. Then traverse the twelve matters of six receptions and six actions: from whom does anger arise, who is angry, and at whom is it directed? In such contemplation, anger itself, its tracks of coming and going, and its appearance are all empty and quiescent. Contemplate anger as possessing the ten Dharma realms and the four virtues of permanence, ease, self, and purity, as above〔云云〕. This is penetration of the Buddha path within anger as non-path. Contemplate breaking precepts, indolence, distraction, wrong views, delusion, and every other unwholesome matter in the same way.

〔科§01b-22〕 Contemplating the Indeterminate, Neither Wholesome nor Unwholesome

The fourth gate contemplates what is neither wholesome nor unwholesome: the dim and hazy indeterminate. Why contemplate it? Some people are naturally inclined toward neither wholesome nor unwholesome action and seem to lack conditions for leaving the world through following one’s own intention. Such people cannot be abandoned. Thus the treatise says that prajñā and contemplation can be applied even within the indeterminate.

Is the indeterminate ultimately identical with or different from wholesome and unwholesome? If wholly identical, it would not be called indeterminate. If different, ask again: does the indeterminate arise when the determinable mind has ceased, while it has not ceased, while it both has and has not ceased, or while it neither has nor has not ceased? Even the determinable mind cannot be found, much less a fixed identity or difference between determinate and indeterminate. They are not fixed as identical and therefore do not merge; not fixed as different and therefore do not scatter. Because they do not merge, they do not arise; because they do not scatter, they do not cease.

Then examine each of the twelve matters of six receptions and six actions: within which matter does the indeterminate arise, for whom, and who is the indeterminate person? In such contemplation it is equal to space. Also know that one indeterminate dharma can produce the ten Dharma realms and all dharmas. The indeterminate does not depart from Dharma-nature. Dharma-nature’s constant quiescence is calming; quiescent yet constantly illuminating is contemplation. In this way one penetrates the Buddha path within the indeterminate as non-path. The indeterminate becomes the Dharma realm, horizontally embracing every Dharma and vertically embracing the six identities, complete in height and breadth as in the preceding model.

The three kinds of calming-and-contemplation are also embraced here. Explaining following one’s own intention only through the final class of wholesome practices expresses the gradual; explaining it through wholesome and unwholesome together expresses the perfect and sudden; and explaining it through wholesome practices that alternate, interpenetrate, and overlap before and after expresses the indeterminate〔云云〕.

〔科§01b-23〕 The Four Practices Differ in Method but Share the Same Contemplation of Principle

The four kinds of samādhi have distinct methods but the same contemplation of principle. Because the first three have many procedures, they often activate Dharma gates that assist the path and may also stir obstructive events. Following one’s own intention has few fixed procedures and therefore produces fewer such events. If only the method is understood, the assisting events that arise cannot be integrated. If contemplation of principle is understood, every event can be penetrated. Conversely, without the intent of contemplation of principle, the phenomenal aids to the path cannot be established; once that intent is attained, phenomenal samādhi is naturally accomplished.

Those who practice only through fixed forms apply the mind when entering a practice site but cannot apply it after leaving. Following one’s own intention has no gap between inside and outside. Fixed methods are chiefly restricted to the first three kinds, but contemplation of principle extends through all four〔云云〕.

Question: Each of the first three samādhis includes encouragement to cultivate. Why is this one not separately encouraged?

Answer: The non-path of the six coverings can become the path of liberation within correct contemplation. People of dull faculties and heavy obstruction might hear this and immediately sink into misunderstanding. Strongly encouraging them to practice would carry them still farther from the purport. The text therefore does not explicitly encourage it and instead turns at once to a long warning against abuse.

〔科§01b-24〕 A Stern Warning against Abusing False Emptiness

North of the Huai River there was once a school that claimed to cultivate Great Vehicle emptiness but resembled someone grasping a snake without knowing the method. It must now be explained. Its founding teacher contemplated wholesome dharmas for a long time without penetrating them, then let the mind turn freely toward contemplating evil. He attained a little concentration and a shallow understanding of emptiness. Knowing neither sentient beings’ faculties nor the Buddha’s intent, he taught this method indiscriminately. After a long time, one or two people happened to gain a small benefit, like a worm accidentally boring the shape of a written graph into wood. This was treated as real evidence, while every other teaching was called false.

The school mocked those who kept precepts and cultivated goodness, saying wholesome conduct was not the path, and specifically instructed people to commit every evil. People blind to right and wrong, with dull spiritual faculties and heavy afflictions, heard a teaching that accorded with their desires, believed and followed it, abandoned prohibitions, committed every evil, and piled offenses like a mountain. Ordinary people therefore treated Buddha-Dharma as straw, and rulers and ministers used it to eradicate Buddhism. The poison penetrated deeply and had not changed by the author’s time.

The treatise also cites a historical simile of ritual collapse and disorder at the end of the Zhou, then mentions the gifted Ruan Ji wearing loose hair and an unfastened sash, which later descendants of nobles competed to imitate. People insulted one another as slaves, dogs, and horses and called this penetrating naturalness, while cautious people of integrity were called rustics. This became a sign of the Sima house’s decline. Emperor Wu of Northern Zhou’s destruction of Buddhism was likewise traced to the evil karma of Wei Yuansong. Such figures are monsters within Buddha-Dharma and monsters of their age. What do they have to do with genuine following of one’s own intention?

These people have no wisdom or understanding. They trust only their own teacher, revere predecessors, and decide that this is the path. Following desire is easy, so they indulge themselves and never correct the delusion. It is like the beautiful Xishi, whose illness of the heart caused her to frown and groan, making every gesture more beautiful; an ugly neighbor imitated the frown and only became more repellent. Poor people who saw her fled, rich people shut their gates and hid, cave dwellers hid more deeply, and birds flew high. Deviant practitioners imitating a noble one’s skillful means resemble the ugly woman imitating the frown, or a mad dog chasing thunder. They create the karma of hell and are truly pitiable. Unable to stop their appetite for desire, they also resemble flies trapped in spit. Such, in outline, are the faults of abusive practice.

The teacher’s error lies in not knowing faculties or understanding the Buddha’s intent. The Buddha said that greed and desire can become the path because he saw particular sentient beings of scant merit and inferior faculties who could never cultivate the path in a wholesome object. If left to revolve in offense, they would never escape; therefore he instructed them to cultivate calming-and-contemplation precisely where desire was active. This was a teaching of last resort. It resembles parents whose sick child responds to no other medicine and must be given yellow-dragon decoction, even having the teeth pried open so it can be poured in; after taking it, the child recovers. The Buddha likewise teaches in exact accordance with that capacity. A swift horse sees only the whip’s shadow and immediately enters the correct road. This is the Buddha’s intent in saying desire can become the path.

If a sentient being is not suited to cultivating calming-and-contemplation within an unwholesome object, the Buddha teaches that wholesome dharmas are the path. The Buddha teaches both sides. Why does the deviant teacher denounce the wholesome and insist only on evil? If he considers himself right, he elevates himself above the Buddha and openly contradicts the Buddha’s teaching in the Buddha’s presence.

At other times, an age may be disordered and people bound by royal service, unable freely to cultivate goodness. Only then does the Buddha instruct them to cultivate calming-and-contemplation within unavoidable unwholesome objects. When there is neither calamity nor constraint, why use poisonous milk-medicine to harm others’ wisdom-life? The cattle tender in the Āgama knew the good ford and brought the herd safely across. Only if the good ford became dangerous and the need was desperate would he use the bad ford. It has so many dangers that scarcely one cow in a hundred survives. When nothing is wrong and a good ford is available, drive the cattle along the wholesome path. Why insist on the evil one and drown oneself with others? Destroying Buddha-Dharma, diminishing its radiance, and harming sentient beings—the fault of the bad spiritual friend lies in not understanding the Buddha’s intent.

Again, both level and dangerous roads may arrive; why abandon the easy for the difficult? Wholesome and unwholesome objects may both open the path, but faculties must be examined before entering an unwholesome covering. If the deviant teacher can truly penetrate through the non-path, why can he not walk through water and fire or pass through a mountain wall? If he cannot penetrate even a worldly dangerous road, how much less create evil and enter the correct path. He cannot necessarily know even when one person delights in wholesome or unwholesome practice, much less immeasurable sentient beings. How could he teach all through desire indiscriminately?

Even the śrāvaka in the Vimalakīrtinirdeśa rebuked himself for failing to contemplate faculties and teaching when he should not. Failure to contemplate faculties causes error even in the Two Vehicles; how much more for someone blind, sightless, and governed only by his own teacher-mind. This contradicts scripture, capacity, and principle, and is delusion at its extreme. Someone who teaches in this way without knowing appropriate capacity is a corpse in the ocean of precepts. Discipline requires expelling him so that a poisonous tree does not remain in the pure garden〔云云〕.

Examine his evil conduct further and it is both partial and deviant. If he says desire is the path, he violates only women but will not say anger is also the path. He may harm men and delight only in smooth touch while fearing the bitter touch of a beating; there he says there is no path. Practicing one but not another, finding the path in one place and not another, he is dark as lacquer and his practice partially defiled. He resembles a corpse polluting a beautiful garden〔云云〕. If questioned in the same way about non-paths such as water, fire, blades, and clubs, he becomes silent, or answers against his own mind that although others cannot see it, he constantly enters the path. This is shameless speech and also shows no understanding of the six identities.

This long passage is necessary because the first three practices are arduous and their procedures difficult, and so they require encouragement. Following one’s own intention accords with daily life and can easily appear to license entry into evil, so it requires a severe warning. It resembles taking the violent medicine rhubarb: one must prepare a plain rice drink to regulate and prevent excess〔云云〕.

〔科§01b-25〕 If One Contemplation Suffices, Why Are Four Kinds of Samādhi Needed?

Question: Correct contemplation of the Middle Way can concentrate the mind. Would this one practice not suffice? Why list four kinds of samādhi and traverse wholesome and unwholesome dharmas and the twelve matters? The more water is stirred, the muddier it becomes and the dimmer the luminous pearl; the more wind, the greater the waves. How does that assist clarity and quiet?

Answer: This resembles a poor person who obtains a little and is satisfied, no longer seeking what is better. If there were only one method of contemplating mind, what would happen when many different minds arose? This already fails one’s own practice. When used to transform others, sentient beings’ faculties differ from one another. Even one person has immeasurable afflictions, much more many people. A physician gathers every medicine in order to treat every illness. Someone with one illness needs only one medicine but asks why the doctor possesses so many; this question is the same. The illnesses of afflicted mind are boundless, for one person and even more for many.

Even for one person, all four may need to be taught. If the person wishes to hear the four kinds of samādhi and delights upon hearing them, teach all four: this is the worldly siddhānta. If hearing and practicing all four in sequence produces wholesome dharmas, teach all four: this is the individually adapted siddhānta. The person may need to counteract evil in constantly sitting, constantly walking, half walking and half sitting, or following one’s own intention: this is the counteractive siddhānta. The person may require all four dharmas to break open and enter: this is the ultimate-meaning siddhānta. If all four must be taught even to one person, how could they be unnecessary?

For many people, one delights in constantly sitting and not the other three; another wants constantly walking and not the other three. Responding universally to their different delights is the worldly siddhānta. The other three—the individually adapted, counteractive, and ultimate-meaning siddhāntas—are likewise established according to different faculties.

Even within one samādhi all four siddhāntas are present. If one delights in walking, walk; if in sitting, sit. Walk when wholesome roots unfold and entry into Dharma gates occurs; sit when the mind-ground is cool, joyful, and stable. This is suitability and the production of goodness. If sitting brings torpor, rise and walk; if walking brings distraction and fatigue, stop and sit. This is counteraction. If walking suddenly becomes empty and quiescent, continue walking; if sitting becomes clear and sharp, continue sitting. This is entry. Each of the other three samādhis likewise possesses the meaning of all four siddhāntas〔云云〕.

〔科§01b-26〕 Four Alternatives of Sharp and Dull Faculties, with and without Obstruction

Question: Wholesome dharmas support correct principle, so calming-and-contemplation can be cultivated within them. Unwholesome dharmas oppose correct principle. How can it be cultivated there?

Answer: The Dazhidu Lun distinguishes four classes by faculties and obstructions: first, sharp faculties without obstruction; second, sharp faculties with obstruction; third, dull faculties without obstruction; and fourth, dull faculties with obstruction.

The first is the highest class, represented by Śāriputra and others in the Buddha’s time. A practitioner cultivates calming-and-contemplation within wholesome dharmas. Diligently cultivating the wholesome creates absence of obstruction in the future; constantly cultivating calming-and-contemplation creates sharp future faculties. If the two past causes of unobstructed and sharp faculties are already present, a little cultivation in this life brings correspondence and movement from identity in contemplative practice into resemblance and real realization. Failure to enter in this life means those two causes were not previously complete. Cultivating through the wholesome now prepares rapid entry in the future.

The second class has sharp faculties for attaining the path but has accumulated grave karmic obstructions in the past. King Ajātaśatru and Aṅgulimāla in the Buddha’s time are examples. Their heinous offenses were heavy obstructions that should have led to hell, yet seeing the Buddha and hearing the Dharma made them suddenly noble. Because their faculties were sharp, obstruction could not block the path. This is the meaning of practitioners today cultivating calming-and-contemplation when unwholesome dharmas appear: creating evil produces future obstruction, while cultivating contemplation produces sharp faculties in a later life. Encountering a good spiritual friend whose goad turns them to the correct road, they can still attain the path. How could contemplation be refused merely because evil contradicts principle?

The third class has dull faculties without obstruction, represented by Cūḍapanthaka in the Buddha’s time. His body, speech, and mind had no faults, but his faculties were extremely slow. Even in ninety days he struggled to memorize one Kumāra verse: the wise commit no evil with body, speech, or mind, constantly keep right mindfulness present, neither cling greedily to desires nor undertake useless worldly ascetic practice. Some people today keep precepts and practice goodness but do not study calming-and-contemplation. Although they will have no future obstruction, awakening to the path will remain very difficult.

The fourth class includes everyone who both creates evil and does not cultivate calming-and-contemplation. Because they do not cultivate it, they cannot attain the path. Their faculties are dull, so even a thousand explanations leave them wooden and uncomprehending. They also commit many offenses, producing countless obstructions. Like a leper whose body is numb and feels nothing even when pierced to the bone, they wrap themselves in many kinds of bad karma.

〔科§01b-27〕 Urgency and Laxity in Vehicle and Precepts, and the Chapter’s Conclusion

Thus, although the wholesome supports principle, attaining the path still requires calming-and-contemplation. Although the unwholesome opposes principle, sharp faculties joined with cultivated contemplation may still break obstruction. The path alone is most honored. How could committing evil become a reason to abandon calming-and-contemplation? The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra says that laxity in keeping precepts is not yet the most fundamental laxity; laxity in cultivating the vehicle of contemplative wisdom is what is truly called lax. The four alternatives—urgency in both vehicle and precepts, urgency in the vehicle with laxity in precepts, laxity in the vehicle with urgency in precepts, and laxity in both—must be fully explained and correlated with the preceding four alternatives of faculties and obstruction〔云云〕.

The treatise also cites the statement that one would rather be Devadatta than Udraka Rāmaputra, taking its meaning to be that the contemplative vehicle matters deeply and contaminated concentration must not be treated as ultimate. From the very beginning, practitioners should diligently cultivate hearing, reflection, and actual practice without ever stopping, like the drunken brahman whose head was shaved or the actress who donned a kāṣāya〔云云〕.

Must practice mean sitting without moving? If one walks continually, alternates walking and sitting, or practices amid every thought of seeing, hearing, awareness, knowing, the wholesome, the unwholesome, and the indeterminate, how can all of these bear the same name, samādhi? The Mohe Zhiguan does not arrange the four kinds of samādhi into four higher and lower ranks. It first gives their common measure: the Dharma realm is the single locus, and correct contemplation abides there unmoving. Constantly sitting, constantly walking, half walking and half sitting, and neither walking nor sitting then become four conditions for straightening contemplation of mind.

The issue, therefore, is not whether the body ultimately sits or walks, but how the mind does not leave calming-and-contemplation within each bodily deportment. Constantly sitting reduces external conditions to a minimum and faces the Dharma realm in one thought. Constantly walking joins every step, voice, and thought without interruption. Half walking and half sitting lets worship, recitation, circling, sitting, and contemplation of the true mark complete one another. Neither walking nor sitting carries illumination into every daily activity. Because the fourth gate includes unwholesome objects, it must especially be read with the warning against abuse. To replace “evil can be an object of contemplation” with “evil conduct itself is practice” turns following one’s own intention into following desire at will. The long warning in the latter half of this chapter is therefore no digression. It is the indispensable guardrail of the fourth gate.

Why Does One Dharma Realm Require Four Practices?

〔科§一〕 Samādhi as the Common Name, Four Conditions as the Distinctions

Question: If the Dharma realm is a single locus and correct contemplation simply abides there unmoving, why not establish only one practice?

Answer: The principle in which one abides may be nondual, while the approaches through which sentient beings apply the mind are not identical. Milk must be churned before it becomes clarified butter; arousing the mind must likewise become a practicable discipline of body, speech, and mind before there are steps for ascending the stages. The four kinds of samādhi do not divide the Dharma realm into four pieces. They allow different bodily deportments, periods, and faculties to have conditions upon which they can rely.

“Straightening” is especially important. Ordinarily the mind bends along with its objects: it sinks while sitting, scatters while walking, turns outward while speaking, and may fall into the indeterminate while silent. Samādhi is not accomplished merely by fixing the body in one posture. It uses posture, sound, duration, practice site, and contemplation to return the mind to the single locus of the Dharma realm. If only the outer form is guarded, mind can be lost in all four practices. If mind is genuinely regulated, the difference between walking and sitting does not prevent return to one principle.

Constantly Sitting: When Every Activity Is Reduced to a Minimum

〔科§二〕 One Rope Bed for Ninety Days

Question: Why does constantly sitting contract life so severely?

Answer: It reduces external options to a minimum so that practitioners have nowhere to flee their own minds. One room, one bed, one direction of one buddha, and ninety days: apart from walking meditation, eating, and relieving oneself, walking, standing, or lying down never replaces upright sitting. Neck and back remain straight, the body unmoving, unswaying, unslumped, and unleaning; not even a second seat is placed nearby. This does not worship a painful posture. It uses an explicit vow and duration to cut off bargaining: do not deceive the Buddha, betray your own mind, or deceive sentient beings with a public vow.

The bodily permissions and prohibitions are therefore clear. Exclusive sitting is permitted and what is prohibited is not violated. One may live with a community, though solitude more easily leaves noise behind. Whether alone or with others, the point is not to construct an atmosphere of mystery, but to continue moment after moment without letting the mind run outward even briefly.

〔科§三〕 Silence as the Norm, Reciting a Name as Rescue

Question: If constantly sitting values quiet, why recite the Buddha’s name aloud when obstructions arise?

Answer: Silence is not the goal; protecting right mindfulness is. When extreme exhaustion, illness, the covering of sleep, or internal and external obstacles seize the mind and weak mental strength cannot dispel them, body and speech assist mentation. When grief, joy, or depression becomes knotted, crying or laughing aloud can release the body’s breath. Reciting a name likewise joins breath, sound, and vow into one force. It resembles someone dragging a heavy object and borrowing another’s hands. The original road is not abandoned; help is sought to prevent collapse halfway.

Reciting one buddha’s name equals reciting the merit of the buddhas of the ten directions. One name is used exclusively to gather the mind. When the Dharma gate is unclear, draw near someone who understands prajñā and practice according to what is heard. Even scripture and dhāraṇī recitation disturbs the quiet under ordinary conditions, so idle worldly speech should certainly cease. Silence when unobstructed and recitation for rescue when an obstruction seizes right mindfulness are both judged only by whether they protect the single-practice samādhi.

〔科§四〕 From Tathāgata and Sentient Beings to Afflictions and Grave Karma, Nothing Leaves the Dharma Realm

Question: Once seated upright, what does the mind contemplate?

Answer: First relinquish unwholesome mental activity and scattered thought, grasp no appearance, exclusively bind the mind to the Dharma realm, and contemplate the Dharma realm in a single thought. Binding conditions prevents scattering and is calming; clear comprehension in one thought is contemplation. Calming does not shut down awareness, and contemplation does not pursue images. Together in one thought they leave the extremes of existence and nonexistence, knowing and not knowing, and abide in non-abiding.

The Dharma realm may be called awakening, prajñā, neither arising nor ceasing, or the inconceivable object. Although names are many, they do not indicate two objects. When contemplating the Tathāgata, do not split Tathāgata and Tathāgata-wisdom into knower and known or place the Tathāgata in a direction, time, or defiled or purified form. This contemplation resembles space. Seeing the Buddha does not require spiritual travel outward. A form appearing on water or in a mirror, and the passage from seeing one buddha to the buddhas of the ten directions, are established without grasping a buddha’s marks. If one Dharma realm separately realized another Dharma realm, contention would arise. Hence neither realization nor attainment.

Contemplate sentient beings in the same way. The measure of their realm is like that of the buddhas and is inconceivable. Since no fixed ordinary dharma is seen, there is nothing ordinary to abandon; since no fixed noble Dharma is seen, there is nothing noble to grasp. Birth and death and nirvāṇa, defilement and purity, do not become confused because they are not grasped, or two entities because they are distinguished. One simply abides in the ultimate limit.

Next contemplate greed, anger, and delusion. This does not call their effects harmless. It traces them to the true mark that cannot be fixed as birth and death or nirvāṇa. Only by neither separately abandoning a view-affliction nor embracing an unconditioned object can the path be cultivated where the affliction appears. Extend this to the gravest five heinous offenses: even they do not lie outside the ultimate limit. Karmic conditions neither come nor go and cause and result have no fixed intrinsic nature, so they can be illuminated. The seal of the Dharma realm cannot be destroyed by the four māras because even māras cannot escape the Dharma realm. This path of contemplation travels from the purest names to the gravest karma, leaving no dharma as a black hole outside the Dharma realm.

〔科§五〕 A Jewel Does Not Shine Completely after One Stroke of the Polisher

Question: How can a beginner trust such a profound Dharma?

Answer: The treatise does not encourage with an easy promise. It makes “hearing without alarm” the threshold. Only after an elder’s lost maṇi jewel is recovered does he know the joy of return. Sentient beings have long lost the true Dharma of the Dharma realm; hearing, trusting, and understanding it resembles recognizing one’s own treasure again. As the jewel emits light in proportion to the polishing, merit appears in proportion to practice. Understanding one sentence does not license a claim to realization.

The encouragement extends throughout the fourfold assembly. Bodhisattvas thereby approach awakening; monastic men and women genuinely leave home in the Buddha’s following by hearing without alarm; laymen and laywomen genuinely take refuge in the same way. Marks and excellences, voice, ten powers, fearlessnesses, and every Buddha-Dharma do not depart from diligent, unrelenting practice. The encouragement to constantly sit therefore returns to its first sentence: no stage is ascended without practice.

Constantly Walking: Binding Every Step, Voice, and Thought Together

〔科§六〕 Not a Solitary Forced March, but the Convergence of Three Powers

Question: Why is constantly walking called Buddha standing?

Answer: In samādhi the practitioner sees the presently abiding buddhas of the ten directions standing in front, like someone with clear eyes seeing stars on a lucid night. This vision does not rely on willpower alone. The Buddha’s majestic power, samādhi power, and the power of the practitioner’s own past merit accomplish it together. Abiding in the first through fourth or intermediate meditation, the length of abiding, and the number of worlds and buddhas seen may differ as few, middling, and many. The shared name does not mean everyone’s concentration has an identical appearance.

The bodily requirements resemble an expedition even more than constantly sitting. Leave bad spiritual friends, relatives and hometown, and the mind that seeks acquisitions. Remain alone, receive alms, decline private invitations, adorn the practice site, bathe, and change clothes. Rely upon three assisting conditions—a discerning teacher, external protector, and fellow practitioners—for a period of ninety days. Honor the teacher as the Buddha, let the protector resemble a mother raising a child, and let companions resemble people crossing danger together. Then vow not to stop even if sinews and bones wither. This is not heroic isolation. It openly recognizes that long constant walking requires a teacher, protection, and companions.

For three months there is not a finger snap of worldly desire or a finger snap of lying down and leaving, and teaching Dharma is not exchanged for clothing or food. If great faith, vigor, and wisdom do not correspond, ninety outward days leave only exhaustion. Drawing near a good spiritual friend, unflagging vigor, firm wisdom, and unwavering faith are the four genuine pillars within the period.

〔科§七〕 Why Must Chanting and Recollection Remain Unbroken?

Question: If the body already walks constantly, why must the mouth chant for ninety days and the mind recollect the Buddha for ninety days as well?

Answer: If body, speech, and mind go separate ways, walking meditation quickly becomes habit. Chanting and recollection may occur together or continue one after the other. The Dharma gate does not impose one mechanical order, but it does not permit the three activities to lose contact. Taking Amitābha exclusively as principal does not deny the buddhas of the ten directions; one name gathers the merit of all ten directions. Step, voice, and thought become three lines joined as one, leaving no gap through which the body remains at the practice site while the mind returns to the world.

〔科§八〕 Seeing the Buddha Like Dream, Shadow, and Mirror

Question: Will constantly recollecting the Buddha’s marks turn the Buddha into an external object?

Answer: The treatise first teaches reverse contemplation from the thousand-spoked wheels beneath the feet to the invisible crown, then forward contemplation from crown to feet, together with a vow to obtain the marks and excellences. It immediately asks: can the Buddha be attained from mind or body? Body, mind, form, and wisdom are each investigated, but no entity capable of obtaining the Buddha is found. Even the “I” cannot be obtained.

The seven treasures and family delight in a dream cannot be found upon waking. A starving person dreams of eating but wakes with an empty belly. A man and woman meet in a dream; the other did not come and I did not go, yet delight vividly appeared. These similes do not deny that dream objects appeared; they dismantle coming, going, and substantial existence. A treasure leaning against crystal displays an image; light in white-bone contemplation is made by mentation; a mirror image neither enters from outside nor arises within. When the mirror is clear, the form appears. When practitioner and supporting objects are pure, seeing the Buddha, asking questions, receiving answers, and rejoicing are established in the same way.

Finally ask: from where did the Buddha come, and where did I go? What is recollected is seen; mind makes the Buddha and sees the Buddha. Yet mind cannot make itself into a visible object. A substantially grasped conception is delusion, while fixation on total absence of conception remains a fixation upon nirvāṇa. To understand a present thought as empty while seeing the Buddha without greed or attachment is the Buddha seal. It does not destroy appearances; it prevents possessions, desires, arisings, and cessations from becoming a solid grip.

Recollection of the Buddha deepens from form. It may traverse the essence, action, result, and function of the marks, proceed to the exclusive qualities, and then to the real Buddha. Power has inferior, middling, and superior degrees, but finally neither form body nor Dharma body is grasped. Moving from form into the real does not first cherish an image and later despise it. The form body becomes a gate into the unattached Dharma body.

〔科§九〕 Hearing of Treasure and Not Using It Is the Real Loss

Question: Why is the merit of constantly walking praised through such vast comparisons?

Answer: The treatise calls it mother of the buddhas, Buddha eye, father of the buddhas, and mother of non-arising and great compassion. Giving jewels throughout countless worlds does not equal hearing of this samādhi without alarm. Hearing leads to trust; trust to receiving, preserving, reciting, and explaining; those lead to even a brief gathering of the mind in practice and to actual accomplishment. Each exceeds the last. Kalpa fire, officials, thieves, enemies, poison, nāgas, beasts, and illness cannot harm the practitioner, and devas, nāgas, and buddhas protect them because their whole body and mind abide in this Dharma.

The two reverse similes are sharper. Someone with a blocked nose holds sandalwood but cannot smell it; a farmer’s son trades a maṇi jewel for one cow. The problem is not failure to encounter treasure, but encountering it without recognition and hearing the Dharma without cultivation. Ninety days of constantly walking appears to emphasize never resting, but its deepest encouragement is not to let a Dharma already heard lose its value in one’s own hand.

Half Walking and Half Sitting: Ritual Forms Are Not the Opposite of Contemplating Principle

〔科§十〕 Why Does Vaipulya Arrange Seven Days in Such Detail?

Question: If the true mark is empty and quiescent, why require scented clay, circular altar, banners and canopy, images, clothing and shoes, bathing, and one hundred and twenty circuits?

Answer: Wisdom of emptiness does not flee bodily and verbal ritual practice. Vaipulya establishes seven days as a period that cannot be shortened, first seeks permission through a dream sign, separately invites a discerning teacher, limits the assembly to ten people, and transmits the twenty-four precepts and dhāraṇī. Clothing for inside and outside the practice site is kept separate, bathing occurs three times daily, and offerings are made to monastics on the first day. Every detail trains a mind that does nothing carelessly or in confusion.

Speech also has a complete cycle. Memorize the dhāraṇī, invite the noble ones three times, make offerings, bow, and weep while confessing offenses. Then walk one hundred and twenty circuits while reciting once per circuit; afterward bow and withdraw to contemplate, then rise to circle and recite again, repeating the sequence. Walking and sitting are not “half walking and half sitting” merely because each occupies half the time. Repeated movement between recitation while circling and contemplation while sitting prevents bodily practice from losing contemplation and contemplation from leaving repentance.

〔科§十一〕 How Does One Practice Site Become a Diagram of Contemplating Mind?

Question: How do these implements enter calming-and-contemplation?

Answer: The secret essential indicated by the Mohe Danchi dhāraṇī is the true mark, the Middle Way, and correct emptiness. One comes from the real without grasping a comer. Something is sought, yet the seeker is empty; obtaining, clinging, reality, coming, speaking, questioning, quiescence and extinction, nirvāṇa, and the boundary of space are all empty. Precisely because nothing is sought, seeking within the six perfections does not become possession. As this wisdom of emptiness traverses ritual forms, the practice site ceases to be mere decoration.

A pure practice site is a pure object. Removing chaff to reveal rice is counteracting the five abodes and disclosing the true mark. Scented clay is morality; incense and lamp are morality and wisdom; the high seat is the emptiness of all dharmas. The five-colored canopy uses contemplation of the five aggregates to arouse compassion that covers the Dharma realm. The circular altar is the unmoving true mark, and the moving banner turns delusion into understanding. The altar remains still while the banner moves, revealing that moving emergence and unmoving emergence are inseparable.

The twenty-four images are forward and reverse contemplation of the twelve links. Sour and bitter foods turn impermanence and suffering into aids to the path. Fresh clothing becomes new by turning anger into patience. Seven days correspond to the seven factors of awakening, one day to the single real, three baths to the single real and three contemplations, the three obstructions and three wisdoms. One teacher corresponds to the single real, and the twenty-four precepts transform forward and reverse dependent origination into precepts shared with the path. The one hundred and twenty dhāraṇī recitations finally return to the three paths of suffering, karma, and afflictions. If objects and numbers do not return to repentance of these three paths, only a display remains.

〔科§十二〕 What Distinguishes Full, Middle, and Lower Portions?

Question: How does repentance address suffering, karma, and afflictions at once?

Answer: Phenomenal repentance addresses the paths of suffering and karma; repentance through principle addresses the path of afflictions. Regaining precepts transforms karmic obstruction, purity of the eye, ear, and other faculties transforms the obstruction of suffering, and seeing buddhas, hearing the Dharma, and not retreating transforms the obstruction of afflictions. When the three obstructions go, the tree of the twelve links collapses and the house of the five aggregates empties. Contemplating the true mark attacks their root.

Cultivation obtains the full portion of treasure, reading and recitation the middle portion, and offerings of flowers and incense the lower portion. The treatise distinguishes cultivation, recitation, and offering so that different depths of reception each obtain something while their sequence remains clear. Piling treasure from the earth to Brahmā heaven as an offering to the Buddha does not equal one meal offered to a preserver of scripture. Abstract reverence is thereby returned to supporting living practice.

〔科§十三〕 Why Do Practice with Marks and Practice without Marks Not Reject Each Other?

Question: The Lotus gate has a practice site, worship, circumambulation, and recitation, yet also says that no dharma is practiced. Are these opposites?

Answer: The ten dharmas—from purifying the site and body, threefold offering, invitation and worship of the buddhas, repentance of the six faculties, circumambulation and recitation through meditation and signs of realization—are plainly ritual practice. Mind being empty in itself, offense and merit having no master, and the wisdom-sun dispersing offenses are plainly contemplation of principle. Preservation and recitation do not mean clinging to marks, and contemplating emptiness does not mean abolishing worship and repentance.

Practice with marks uses repentance of the six faculties and other phenomenal practices as a guide into awakening; practice without marks directly contemplates every dharma as empty. Both are skillful means and are relinquished together at wondrous realization. Using absence of marks to attack marks turns emptiness into a new attachment. Using marks to reject their absence makes ritual self-sufficient. The two scriptures each bring forth phenomena and principle precisely to correct one another.

〔科§十四〕 The White Elephant Is Not a Catalog of Mysteries

Question: How should the white elephant with six tusks and its many adornments be read?

Answer: The six tusks are the six uncontaminated superknowledges. Their sharpness represents the speed of those knowledges, the elephant’s strength the Dharma body bearing beings, and its whiteness uncontaminated purity. The pestle, wheel, and jewel held by the three figures on its head make visible wisdom guiding practice, turning the Dharma wheel by emerging into provisionality, and the wish-fulfilling Middle Way. The pool on the tusks is the concentrated essence of the eight liberations, while the tusks are the function of superknowledge; essence and function do not separate. A flower in the pool is the wondrous cause born through superknowledge, purifying lands and benefiting beings. The woman within it is kindness, which moves superknowledge to enter the Sahā world. Her instruments are the four means of gathering: gifts of wealth and Dharma, kind speech, beneficial action, and shared activity guide beings like immeasurable sounds.

The universally manifested form body appears according to what beings delight in and need not be fixed as a white-jade image. Verbal dhāraṇī means compassion permeating speech to teach many Dharmas. The whole image therefore proceeds from the essence of concentration and function of superknowledge through the wondrous cause and movement of kindness to the four means of gathering, finally arriving at benefiting beings. It is not an extraordinary sign to be pursued for its own sake.

The wishes in the encouragement likewise unfold step by step from removing karmic obstruction to teaching Dharma: eliminate offenses of many kalpas; arouse the mind of awakening and purify the faculties; see Śākyamuni, Prabhūtaratna, and emanated buddhas; attain samādhi and verbal dhāraṇī; enter the Tathāgata’s room, wear his robe, and sit on his seat; teach among devas and nāgas; and receive the attendance of Mañjuśrī, Bhaiṣajyarāja, and others. Frost and dew vanish under the wisdom-sun, but wisdom of emptiness must still correspond with mind. Pursuing signs without contemplating the true mark loses the axis of all these wishes.

Neither Walking nor Sitting: Extending the Practice Site into Every Activity

〔科§十五〕 Not Excluding Walking and Sitting, but Not Exhausted by One Posture

Question: Does neither walking nor sitting exclude walking and sitting?

Answer: Exactly the opposite. It includes both and every activity. It is called neither walking nor sitting to complete the fourfold relation with the first three; following one’s own intention because practice begins as soon as mentation arises; and awareness of mentation because when the mind turns anywhere, illumination immediately seeks its source, endpoint, arrival, and departure, finding none. Three perspectives name one Dharma.

Mind, mentation, and consciousness are not three tiny subjects hidden within the body. Awareness of an object is mind, subsequent deliberation is mentation, and clear differentiation is consciousness. They are not one, so three names are established; not three, so one nature is taught. Grasping three shatters mental dharmas; grasping one congeals nature into an entity. Through neither one nor three, one avoids merging and scattering, emptiness and existence, permanence and annihilation, identity and difference. Taking mentation as the object includes mind, consciousness, and all dharmas. The “awareness” in awareness of mentation lies in not being deceived by names into making entities.

〔科§十六〕 How Does One Avalokiteśvara Invocation Open into All Scriptural Practices?

Question: If it follows one’s own intention, why begin by displaying a strict ritual?

Answer: Following one’s own intention is not casual. Inviting and installing images, willow twigs and pure water, bathing and clean clothes, worshiping the Three Jewels, seven buddhas, and honored ones, counting ten breaths, inviting the noble ones, reciting names, verses, and dhāraṇīs, disclosing repentance, and chanting scripture from the seat give body, speech, and mind an ordered sequence. Follow the form before noon and at the first watch, returning to the scripture wherever the account is abbreviated. “Following” does not pare the Dharma down to a single feeling.

Contemplation of principle enters the limit of things as they really are where the six faculties correspond with the six objects. Earth is not solid, water does not abide, wind is unobstructed, and fire is unreal; each intrinsic nature is broken through the four propositions. Form is so, and so are sensation, perception, formations, and consciousness; the twelve links resemble a valley echo, plantain trunk, dew, and lightning. Three dhāraṇīs separately break the obstructions of retribution, karma, and afflictions. Six Avalokiteśvaras separately break the three obstructions of the six paths and further open into twenty-five samādhis. The result may become the śrāvaka, pratyekabuddha, or bodhisattva path according to faculties, and the practice also includes the repentance of the seven buddhas and eight bodhisattvas, the Ākāśagarbha practice, and other scriptural methods. One ritual serves as an illustration, not as the only permitted form; it teaches how contemplative mind penetrates phenomenal dharmas.

The Four Phases and Twelve Matters: Where Exactly Is One Thought?

〔科§十七〕 Why Can What Has Not Arisen and What Has Ceased Still Be Contemplated?

Question: Before a thought, it has not arisen; after thinking, it has ceased. How can absence of mind be contemplated?

Answer: Not yet performing an act does not mean no person exists, or who would later act? Completing an act does not mean the person is eternally annihilated, or who acted before? The four phases—before a thought, about to think, thinking, and after thinking—keep practitioners from staring only at a supposedly stationary present. The past is gone, the future has not arrived, and the present does not abide. Minds of the three times have no fixed reality but are not annihilated; if they were, cause, result, offense, and merit would vanish with them.

The four phases do not cut one thought into four mental particles. They resemble slowing a lens: mind has not arisen, is about to arise, abides upon an object, and has ceased. No fixed entity can be found anywhere, yet conditional continuity remains clearly knowable. Because it is empty without annihilation and continuous without permanence, an arising wholesome or unwholesome thought presents a place for illumination.

〔科§十八〕 How Do the Six Receptions and Six Actions Make Giving More Than Possessions?

Question: How can giving be cultivated without possessions?

Answer: Where there are six objects, relinquish the six receptions; where there is no wealth, direct the six actions. The eye receiving form through mentation engaging dharmas are the six receptions. Walking, standing, sitting, lying down, speaking, and silence are the six actions. Together they make twelve matters. In each, pursue mind through the four phases, then pursue the aware mind as neither coming from outside, emerging within, abiding between, nor existing causelessly and forever. Faculty, object, and recipient cannot be obtained; when all three matters are empty, giving is no longer bound by giver, receiver, and gift.

Emptiness does not erase cause and result. The continuity of eye-consciousness, mentation-consciousness, and greedy defilement can produce, upon the same form, hell’s broken precepts, the hungry ghost’s concealment, the animal’s possession, and the asura’s superiority and inferiority. It can also produce the five precepts and ten wholesome actions of humans and devas, contemplation of fault in the Two Vehicles, and the bodhisattva’s compassion. Then illuminate the ten Dharma realms within emptiness. One thought is empty while conditions remain vivid. Because it is not existent, it is empty; because it is not empty, it exists. Simultaneously illuminating emptiness and existence, all three truths are complete.

Walking can also be giving. Coming and going may serve broken precepts, deception, family, and competition, or propriety, meditation, nirvāṇa, and compassion. Lifting and lowering the foot are illusion-like. Forget agent and object, do not calculate far and near, do not waste the work, and do not expect repayment. Then open the six perfections within walking: great compassion that makes beings fearless is giving; not harming is morality; unmoving mind is patience; absence of arising, abiding, and ceasing is vigor; not savoring and not scattering is meditation; and a body like cloud, shadow, dream, and illusion, neither bound nor liberated, is wisdom.

If the object of concentration becomes an attachment, contemplate the concentrated mind as born from inversion. If the contemplator is grasped as wondrous wisdom, it becomes an obstruction of knowledge; illuminate the unobtainability of the contemplator. Emptiness samādhi breaks existent marks, signlessness samādhi breaks the mark of emptiness, and wishlessness samādhi breaks the agent. The three inversions, three poisons, three realms of existence, and four māras thereby enter contemplation. Each of the twelve matters can possess every Dharma in this way. “Daily life is the path” is not left as a slogan.

〔科§十九〕 Why Does Keeping Precepts Still Require Contemplative Wisdom?

Question: Is careful deportment, like carrying a bowl of oil without spilling a drop, still insufficient?

Answer: It can be called keeping precepts and bring the result of heavenly pleasure, but does not automatically become samādhi or perfection. When the four phases are contemplated and neither arising mind nor contemplating mind is obtained, the seven bodily and verbal branches become pure like space. This opens the ten moralities: without deficiency, unbroken, without puncture, unmingled, shared with concentration, shared with the path, unattached, praised by the wise, sovereign in the Great Vehicle, and ultimate. Morality not only prevents one act. It prevents the four phases from disturbing mind, keeps discrimination free from error, and embraces every Dharma and the four virtues.

The same object of form also contains the other five perfections and three samādhis. The disappearance of giver, recipient, and gift is giving; settling the mind without movement is patience; undefiled and uninterrupted cultivation is vigor; non-distraction is concentration; and illusion-like appearance is wisdom. Equality with space, the unobtainability even of that emptiness, and absence of agent and act are respectively emptiness, signlessness, and wishlessness. The same applies to sound, scent, taste, touch, dharmas, and the six actions. Complete deportment is therefore not an orderly surface; contemplative wisdom penetrates every advance and retreat.

〔科§二十〕 If One Perfection Embraces All, Why Can the Others Not Be Discarded?

Question: If patience, vigor, meditation, and wisdom can each embrace everything, can one alone be cultivated?

Answer: Patience neither loves the agreeable nor hates the adverse. Vigor is not only diligent recitation; it contemplates sound as echo and neither reciter nor text as obtainable, letting each thought flow into the ocean of nirvāṇa. Meditation is not only fundamental concentration, nine perceptions, and liberations; it contemplates the four phases of entering concentration and penetrates meditation’s true mark. Wisdom also turns back upon worldly knowledge and the six receptions and actions as unobtainable. Each perfection can open the whole Dharma realm, but each addresses a different deficiency.

The six perfections resemble armor worn into battle: protection must be close. Contemplation is a lamp and calming a sealed room. Prajñā universally embraces the dharmas, and each dharma is the Dharma realm and embraces prajñā. “Identity” does not cancel distinctions; it lets them complete one another. Abolishing five perfections because one embraces all mistakes perfect integration for convenience.

Evil Can Be an Object: Why Does That Never Mean Indulging Evil?

〔科§二十一〕 The Hook Must Follow the Unwholesome Fish, but It Does Not Raise Fish

Question: If the wholesome supports correct principle and can contain calming-and-contemplation, why say that evil, which opposes principle, can also be contemplated?

Answer: The names wholesome and unwholesome change relative to each level. Pleasant human and divine results still end in a fall. The Two Vehicles’ goodness lacks universal benefit. If the view in the six perfections is partial, even fine food is served in a poisoned vessel. Only accordance with the true mark is ultimately called the path. Conversely, attachment to the Buddha path makes its ambrosia indigestible, and the path becomes non-path. This analysis does not abolish good and evil. It refuses to enthrone the goodness of any one stage as the endpoint.

Ordinary afflictions arise repeatedly. If contemplation waits until every affliction disappears, it never begins. The unwholesome covering resembles a strong fish and calming-and-contemplation the hook and bait. When the line is weak, do not pull violently, but never let the hook lose contact. When desire arises, contemplate not yet desiring, about to desire, desiring, and after desiring. Investigate its arising through ceasing, non-ceasing, both, and neither, then reverse the inquiry upon its ceasing. Neither arising nor ceasing can be obtained, while conditional appearance and disappearance remain illuminated.

Then ask from which object and action it arises, and whether for broken precepts or family, deception or jealousy, humanity or meditation, nirvāṇa or the four virtues, the six perfections, three samādhis, or every Buddha-Dharma. Traversing evil places an unwholesome thought under examination more exacting than usual; it does not exempt it from examination. If the covering obstructed Dharma-nature, that nature could be destroyed. If Dharma-nature obstructed the covering, the covering could not arise. The covering not departing from Dharma-nature means it can be illuminated completely, not that its painful result disappears.

Contemplative practice that follows like form and shadow must vertically traverse the six identities: correspondence in contemplative practice, worldly livelihood not opposing real contemplation, partial breaking of ignorance, and finally exhaustion of the covering’s source. It must also horizontally possess the six perfections. Anger, broken precepts, indolence, distraction, wrong views, and delusion are each pursued through the four phases and twelve matters: who is angry, at whom, and from where does it come and go? If one has only the sentence “afflictions are the path” without this entire hook and bait, it is not the contemplation taught in this treatise.

〔科§二十二〕 The Indeterminate Is Not Empty Space

Question: What can be contemplated in a hazy mind that acts neither wholesomely nor unwholesomely?

Answer: Leaving the indeterminate outside calming-and-contemplation would leave people whose faculties do not visibly incline to good or evil without conditions for leaving the world. Contemplate whether the indeterminate is identical with or different from determinate mind. If identical, it is not indeterminate; if different, investigate its arising through ceasing, non-ceasing, both, and neither. Even determinate mind cannot be obtained, much less identity or difference. Traverse the twelve matters and pursue where it arises, for whom, and who is indeterminate; then know it as space.

One indeterminate dharma can also give rise to the ten Dharma realms. It does not depart from Dharma-nature: constant quiescence is calming and constant illumination contemplation. It still horizontally embraces all dharmas and vertically all six stages. Explaining it through the final wholesome Dharma alone is gradual; traversing wholesome and unwholesome together is sudden; and alternation and interpenetration before and after is indeterminate. The indeterminate is not an interval without content. It is the mind-ground most easily passed without awareness and therefore most in need of illumination.

〔科§二十三〕 Method Is Restricted to Three; Contemplation of Principle Extends through Four

Question: Since the four methods differ, does each possess a different truth?

Answer: The first three have many ritual methods and more often activate helpful or obstructive signs. The fourth has fewer fixed forms and produces fewer such events. If only method is understood, a helpful event cannot be integrated when it appears. If contemplation of principle is understood, every event can be penetrated. Without it, phenomenal forms fail; with it, they are naturally accomplished. Some people apply the mind upon entering a practice site and lose it upon leaving. Following one’s own intention opens a passage between inside and outside. Method is therefore chiefly restricted to the first three; contemplation of principle extends through all four practices.

〔科§二十四〕 Why Does the Fourth Gate Warn Instead of Encourage?

Question: The first three gates encourage practice. Why does the fourth not?

Answer: People of dull faculties and heavy obstructions can easily sink into the surface wording that the non-path of the six coverings can become the path of liberation. A deviant teacher north of the Huai failed to penetrate contemplation of the wholesome, turned to evil, gained slight concentration and shallow understanding, and treated the accidental benefit of one or two people as universal proof, like a worm accidentally boring a written graph into wood. He mocked precepts and taught people to commit every evil. Those inclined toward desire answered at once, finally harming both Buddha-Dharma and sentient beings.

The ugly woman copying Xishi’s frown, the mad dog chasing thunder, and the fly stuck in spit all show that imitating a skillful means without wisdom only amplifies ugliness and bondage. Violent medicine is given only to a sick child whom no other medicine can cure, and a swift horse turns at the shadow of the whip. According to faculties, the Buddha sometimes calls the wholesome the path and sometimes instructs contemplation in an unavoidable evil object. The latter cannot be excerpted to denounce goodness and approach evil.

If the good ford is available, why drive cattle through the bad ford where scarcely one in a hundred survives? If a level road reaches the destination, why insist on water, fire, and mountain walls? A person’s mind may delight in goodness at one time and evil at another. A deviant teacher does not know even one person’s faculties but uses desire to teach immeasurable people. If smooth touch contains the path but painful touch does not, desire may be practiced but anger and harm may not, the practice is already partial; it is not contemplation of every evil in its identity.

The treatise therefore requires expulsion according to discipline and concludes that violent rhubarb medicine needs a plain rice drink. The first three practices are difficult and require encouragement. The fourth initially appears easy and requires warning. Warning against abuse is part of following one’s own intention; deleting it is what turns the Dharma gate into following desire.

Four Medicines, Four Capacities, and the Conclusion through Vehicle and Precepts

〔科§二十五〕 Why Might One Person Need All Four Kinds of Samādhi?

Question: If one correct contemplation of the Middle Way concentrates mind, do four practices, wholesome and unwholesome objects, and twelve matters instead muddy the water and dim the pearl?

Answer: One contemplative method may not suffice when many minds arise. A physician gathers many medicines for many illnesses; someone with one illness cannot blame the physician for having more than one medicine. Even one person may delight upon hearing all four dharmas, produce goodness through them, counteract an illness through one, or realize the ultimate meaning through all four. Many people require even more adaptation to different desires for constantly sitting, constantly walking, and the rest.

One samādhi also contains many adjustments. Walk when wholesome roots unfold in walking and sit when sitting brings coolness and joy. Rise and walk when sitting produces torpor; sit when walking produces distraction and fatigue. Continue walking when walking becomes empty and quiescent; remain sitting when sitting becomes bright and sharp. The four dharmas are not four dead prescriptions, but a complete capacity for observing the patient, selecting medicine, and testing the result.

〔科§二十六〕 Four Combinations of Faculties and Obstruction

Question: If an unwholesome object can be contemplated, does creating evil cause no obstruction?

Answer: The four alternatives—sharp faculties without obstruction, sharp with obstruction, dull without obstruction, and dull with obstruction—show precisely that faculties and karmic obstruction cannot be merged into one thing. Those sharp and unobstructed cultivated both goodness and contemplation in the past and enter with little cultivation now. Those sharp yet obstructed may still break grave offenses upon seeing the Buddha and hearing the Dharma because their faculties are sharp; but creating evil produces future obstruction and is never harmless.

Those dull yet unobstructed have no fault in the three activities, but without studying calming-and-contemplation they remain like Panthaka, who long recited one verse and struggled to awaken. Those dull and obstructed neither cultivate contemplation nor refrain from evil; like a numb person who does not feel a needle pierce the bone. Wholesome conduct cannot replace contemplative wisdom, and contemplative wisdom cannot erase obstruction. Both axes must remain.

〔科§二十七〕 Hearing, Reflection, and Cultivation Must Never Stop

Question: Why does the chapter turn from faculties and obstruction to vehicle and precepts at the end?

Answer: The treatise turns from the four alternatives of faculties and obstruction to urgency and laxity in vehicle and precepts and requires the two sets to be read together. Keeping precepts without learning calming-and-contemplation may leave one unobstructed but dull. Cultivating contemplation where an unwholesome dharma appears may make faculties sharp through contemplation and produce obstruction through the evil. Urgency and laxity in both have corresponding results. Honoring the vehicle does not mean abolishing precepts. It warns that although goodness supports principle, attaining the path remains difficult without calming-and-contemplation; although evil can be contemplated, it really creates obstruction.

The treatise closes with the drunken brahman whose head was shaved and the actress who donned a kāṣāya, urging practitioners to hear diligently, reflect according to principle, and put it into cultivation without stopping from beginning to end.

Through the Eye of the Fuxing

Zhanran first fixes the common and distinct levels of the four kinds of samādhi. Samādhi is the common name and sitting and the others are distinct forms. According to bodily deportment, they are constantly sitting, constantly walking, half walking and half sitting, and neither walking nor sitting. According to Dharma gates, they are single practice, Buddha standing, Vaipulya and Lotus, and following one’s own intention. All four rely upon the single locus of the Dharma realm; different bodily deportments do not create separate principles. “Different practices, identical principle” does not erase method. It preserves the differences in method before confirming that the contemplated is nondual.

Zhanran explicitly judges that constantly sitting is named single practice because bodily deportment is pruned back and no other matter is combined with it, not because only one truth is contemplated. For speech, smooth progress means silence and removing obstruction means voicing. Reciting a name is a means for removing obstruction and does not turn constantly sitting into a practice ordinarily governed by sound. In mental contemplation, binding conditions and one thought are judged to make quiescence and illumination, calming and contemplation, operate together. Yet this chapter gives only a broad indication of the contemplative gate and does not fully present the later ten modes of contemplation. The Zhiguan Yili statement that ritual procedures are extensive here while the ten dharmas are abbreviated prevents treating this chapter as the complete later sequence.

Zhanran also distinguishes the three powers of constantly walking one by one: the Buddha’s majestic power, samādhi power, and the power of the practitioner’s own past merit converge as conditions, and none can be omitted. Contemplating the Buddha’s form does not stop with marks and excellences. Dream, shadow, water, and mirror progressively deepen the vision so that recollection of the form body reaches the body of the true mark without clinging to form or Dharma body. The sandalwood and maṇi similes are restored to full scenes, rebuking someone who has already met great treasure but refuses to smell it or does not recognize its value, rather than serving as general advice about valuing time.

The Vaipulya gate contains an important compositional layer. The treatise says that the method of invitation is in the Guoqing Bailu, while Zhanran says that no work bearing this title existed during Zhiyi’s life and that Guanding and others collected records after Zhiyi’s death. The treatise need not be rewritten; the levels of oral teaching, transcription, and later compilation must be seen. Nor are the full, middle, and lower portions of treasure ranks within the true mark. Zhanran states explicitly that the difference lies only in the superiority or inferiority of practitioners’ conduct of mind.

In the Lotus gate, the ten dharmas gather the ritual procedures in full. Practice with marks is named for entering through phenomenal practice, and practice without marks for directly contemplating the emptiness of dharmas; both are relinquished at realization. The many marks of the white elephant with six tusks are explained individually through the six superknowledges, eight liberations, three wisdoms, and four means of gathering. Zhanran follows the treatise phrase by phrase, with the emphasis still on kindness moving supernormal power and benefiting beings according to need. Reading the elephant only as an extraordinary response reverses the direction of its symbolism.

Zhanran explains that neither walking nor sitting has three names for one Dharma and that all designate cultivation in the four deportments. The four phases embrace the three natures of wholesome, unwholesome, and indeterminate. The twelve matters extend contemplation from the inner before-a-thought through the six receptions and six actions. “Cultivating contemplation from what has not yet occurred and from phenomena” particularly indicates that constantly sitting may incline toward contemplating principle, whereas following one’s own intention investigates from before a thought arises throughout daily phenomenal objects. This does not split phenomena and principle; it identifies different points of entry.

The four kinds of samādhi differ in method and share the same contemplation of principle. Zhanran states the sameness precisely: the contemplator is nothing other than a single mind, and the contemplated principle nothing other than the three truths. The first three have many methods and more readily activate assisting and obstructive signs; the fourth has few and has no gap between entering and leaving the practice site. Because traversing evil in the fourth is easiest for dull faculties to distort, the treatise deliberately gives it no separate explicit encouragement and replaces encouragement with a long warning. Zhanran judges the school north of the Huai as false emptiness that abusively claims the Great Vehicle and enters evil without contemplation. What it lacks is precisely investigation through the four phases, discernment of faculties, and precepts—not one more sentence praising evil.

Why one person may need four Dharmas is concluded through the four siddhāntas: accord with desire and bring delight, adapt suitably and produce goodness, counteract the illness, and bring entry into ultimate meaning. Each of the four kinds possesses all four siddhāntas; “four” cannot be treated as four fixed prescriptions for four fixed types of person. Finally, the four alternatives of faculties and obstruction become the four of vehicle and precepts. Sharp faculties are the result of urgency in the vehicle; absence of obstruction the result of urgency in precepts. Dull faculties correspond to laxity in the vehicle and obstruction to laxity in precepts. This correlation makes the chapter’s final warning transparent: contemplative wisdom and moral discipline govern separate axes, and neither can be canceled by the other.

There is another easily overlooked level in constantly sitting’s mental contemplation. Zhanran judges the passage traversing Tathāgata, sentient beings, afflictions, and the five heinous offenses within the Dharma realm as a broad indication of quiescent illumination as contemplator through its objects. “Broad” does not mean unimportant. It means the outline has not yet unfolded each of the later ten modes of contemplation. Filling every later name back into the first sentence about the Dharma realm erases the chapter’s own movement; dismissing the passage because its sequence is not complete cuts the common root by which all four kinds rely upon the Dharma realm.

Within the three-month period of constantly walking, Zhanran also distinguishes three conditions: the discerning teacher, external protector, and fellow practitioners. The teacher resolves doubt and removes obstructions, the protector supplies necessities, and companions mutually urge one another onward. Strong language about offering one’s flesh to the teacher aims at breaking the pride that scrutinizes a teacher’s strengths and faults; it does not sanctify a teacher’s personal desires. Chanting and mental recollection may occur in either order, permitting differences of faculty; the unbroken continuity of step, voice, and thought is the common covenant.

The symbolism of the Vaipulya practice site does not arbitrarily mystify numbers. Zhanran first calibrates the meaning of emptiness through the scripture’s exchange about reality, then connects altar, banner, incense and lamps, high seat, images, bathing, precepts, and dhāraṇī back to the true mark, concentration and wisdom, dependent origination, and the three obstructions. The order runs from scriptural meaning into symbolism and cannot be reversed. Free association from implements alone loses the treatise’s explicit axis of carrying wisdom of emptiness through every phenomenon.

In the Avalokiteśvara section, Zhanran first judges this only the initial example within the gate of scriptural practices and explains that its meaning can extend through all three vehicles. The six-graph formula corresponds to six Avalokiteśvaras and further unfolds into twenty-five samādhis, creating a network of counteractions from the three obstructions of the six paths. Self-regulation by the śrāvaka, contemplation of conditions by the pratyekabuddha, and the bodhisattva’s great compassion are listed together, showing that one repentance practice may issue in different destinations according to faculties. No result of one vehicle can define the entire passage.

The core of the four phases is not only asking “at which moment is the thought?” Zhanran explains that the three natures are omitted nowhere: wholesome, unwholesome, and indeterminate all fall under the four phases, which are then placed within the twelve matters. Greedy defilement while receiving form, intention while walking, subject and object while reciting, and attachment while entering concentration can no longer hide behind “this is a wholesome activity.” Wholesome dharmas also require contemplation precisely because the phenomenal result of goodness is not yet perfection.

After traversing evil, the vertical establishment of the six identities preserves a sequence from correspondence in contemplative practice to ultimate exhaustion of the covering. An unwholesome object can be contemplated in its identity, but this does not mean an ordinary being has presently realized the true mark. Erasing the six identities passes off identity in principle as realization in practice and falls directly into the error of the deviant teacher rebuked by the treatise. Nor does the lack of explicit encouragement in the fourth gate make it lower. It makes its risk higher: if encouragement reaches people who know neither faculties nor precepts and lack contemplative wisdom, desire will seize it. Silence itself is therefore teaching according to capacity.

At the conclusion, Zhanran positively identifies the sentence about Devadatta and Udraka Rāmaputra as Emperor Wu of Liang’s vow text. The drunken brahman appears in a treatise, while the actress who donned a robe supplies a distant cause through a past-life story. Together, these three layers show that the final sentence only urges continuity of the contemplative vehicle; it does not call grave offense, drunken confusion, or wearing robes in play exemplary practice. Through the mirror, source levels and ethical direction must remain clear at once: any subtle aspiration can become a seed, and no actual harmful result is thereby canceled.