摩訶止觀 破法遍·從空入假

If all Dharmas are empty, who remains to be delivered, what illness remains to be treated, and what Dharma medicine could be given? Abiding in emptiness appears clean and free from bondage. Yet the Mohe Zhiguan’s path of calming-and-contemplation says that if one therefore never returns among beings, one can never benefit them.

Entering the provisional from emptiness does not mean picking up an attachment already broken. The bodhisattva enters emptiness to break his own bondage; he enters provisional existence to break the bondage of others. This step requires five powers: compassion that sees beings’ suffering as one’s own, the original vow that does not forget to remove suffering and give happiness, wisdom that sees the fault of abiding in emptiness, skillful means that enters the world without being stained by it, and diligence that does not weary or retreat before the length of the Buddha path and the countlessness of beings.

The treatise therefore portrays the bodhisattva as a great physician. A great physician cannot merely say, “Everything is empty.” He must know where an illness began, how long it has accumulated, and how environment and habit have shaped it. He must also know the names, doses, seasons, and uses of medicines. Some first need worldly wholesome Dharmas to stabilize human life. Some should cultivate ethical discipline, concentration, and wisdom. Some should enter through the four foundations of mindfulness or the Eightfold Path. Some can directly hear the single truth of reality. One rain falls, and plants and trees grow according to their faculties. The rain is not partial; what receives Dharma differs.

Nor must an old prescription be followed forever. Northern and southern regions differ; people differ in strength, foods in intensity, and illnesses in gravity. In later ages, Hua Tuo and Bian Que still had to examine the time and formulate new prescriptions from Shennong’s original ones. A bodhisattva’s transmission of scripture and composition of treatise are the same. This is not invention apart from scripture, but making Dharma truly curative for present faculties. Preserving an old prescription in a way that blocks transformation has already departed from the intent of entering the provisional.

How high a stage, then, qualifies someone to return? The treatise does not give everyone the same answer. Lower faculties may need long suppression and severance before irreversibility is certain. Middling faculties can emerge and function earlier. From the initial arousal of mind, higher faculties already study illness and medicine because they will not abandon beings. The initial mind must not be passed off as the ultimate; neither may benefiting others be postponed, because the road is long, to a future that never arrives.

Finally, “pervasive” does not mean knowing the greatest number of categories. If even one point among illness, medicine, and administration remains unpenetrated, knowledge is not yet pervasive. Breaking one layer only to proceed to the next is likewise not ultimate pervasiveness. The real question is whether this one mind can refrain from abiding in emptiness, remain unstained within the provisional, and illuminate immeasurable distinctions without departing from the true mark.

Emerging from emptiness is not turning back. It is the wisdom of emptiness finally growing wings that can bear beings.

Why Move from the Contemplation of Emptiness into the Contemplation of the Provisional

Second is the explanation of entering the provisional from emptiness and thereby accomplishing pervasive breaking through Dharmas. This part has four divisions: first, explaining the intent of entering the provisional; second, explaining the conditions that make entry possible; third, explaining the contemplation for entering the provisional; and fourth, determining its stages.

Entering the provisional has two forms. In one, a person simply proceeds from contemplation of emptiness into contemplation of the provisional. In the other, one knows that emptiness is itself not a real Dharma to which one can cling; one therefore breaks attachment to emptiness and enters contemplation of the provisional. The wisdom and severance of delusion attained by people of the Two Vehicles can likewise realize the truth, but because they lack great compassion they are not called bodhisattvas. The Avataṃsaka Sūtra says that people of the Two Vehicles can also realize the true nature and marks of all dharmas, yet cannot on that account be called buddhas. In terms of their own cultivation, the Two Vehicles have a share in entering emptiness; in terms of transforming beings, they lack the function of emerging from emptiness and entering the provisional.

A bodhisattva enters emptiness from the provisional and breaks his own bondage and attachment, thereby differing from ordinary beings. He then enters the provisional from emptiness and breaks the bondage and attachment of others, thereby differing from the Two Vehicles. Dwelling amid the myriad existents without being stained, he discerns Dharma medicine with the Dharma eye, matches compassion to beings’ illnesses, loves beings without boundary, helps all living beings without weariness, and employs his mind in complete freedom. Such skillful means resemble planting a tree in empty space. They also resemble lying back and shooting arrows into the sky, each later arrow’s nock catching the preceding arrow so that it does not fall to the ground. If one stops in emptiness, one can never benefit beings. Resolving to benefit others is precisely the intent of entering contemplation of the provisional.

Five Conditions Enabling Entry into the Provisional

There are, in outline, five conditions for entering the provisional.

First is profound compassion. When first breaking provisional existence, the bodhisattva sees beings bound by inversion as though imprisoned and unable to escape. He therefore arouses great compassion and cares for them as his own children. Now that he himself has severed delusion and entered emptiness, he sees their suffering as his own, and his grief becomes doubly grave. In every matter he thinks of others before himself, and his wish to remove suffering and bestow happiness becomes ever more earnest.

Second is recollection of the original vow. At the outset the bodhisattva made a vast vow to remove beings’ suffering, give them happiness, and establish them in security. Beings still suffer innumerable afflictions and have not yet been delivered. Were he alone to escape suffering, he would betray his earlier resolve. Since he does not forget his original intent, how could he abandon all sentient beings? He therefore enters provisional existence, lives among beings, and guides them from within. When people of the Two Vehicles first undertook cultivation, they too were not ignorant of the Buddha Dharma and had once made great vows. But across successive lives they forgot their original resolve, retreated from the Great Vehicle, and clung to the Small Vehicle; they were therefore reproached by the sages. A bodhisattva is not like this. He resembles a mother who, on obtaining food, always remembers her children.

Third is keen and sharp wisdom. When entering contemplation of emptiness, the bodhisattva immediately knows the fault in remaining there and abandoning others. Why? If he abides in emptiness, he cannot accomplish the purification of buddha-lands, the transformation of beings, or the completion of all Buddha Dharmas. Knowing this fault, he no longer treats emptiness as ultimate and enters the provisional from emptiness.

Fourth is skillful means. A bodhisattva can enter the world. Even while living amid birth-and-death and affliction, birth-and-death and affliction cannot harm his wisdom. Every obstruction, impediment, and difficulty instead further assists his path of transformation.

Fifth is the power of great diligence. Although the Buddha path is long, the bodhisattva does not regard it as impossibly distant. Although beings are innumerable, his resolve remains vigorous. His mind is firm and irreversible; he advances diligently and is never weary or lax. These are the five conditions.

These five meanings correspond to the Vimalakīrtinirdeśa Sūtra. That scripture gives three classes of similes for comforting a sick person. It first speaks of contemplating the body as impermanent and so forth, comfort through entering emptiness. It ends by saying one should become a king of physicians, comfort through entering the Middle. Between these is comfort through entering the provisional, also with five meanings. To pity others’ illness through one’s own illness is great compassion of the same body. Knowing the suffering one has undergone over innumerable past kalpas is recollection of the original vow. Thinking at every moment of benefiting all beings is knowing the fault of abiding in emptiness. Recollecting one’s cultivated merit and at every moment maintaining a pure livelihood is skillful means. Not giving rise to sorrow and distress, but constantly arousing diligence, is the fifth meaning. The meaning here corresponds to that scripture from afar, and so forth.

If compassion, vows, skillful means, and diligence—the four Dharmas other than wisdom—are lacking, one definitely cannot emerge from contemplation of emptiness. Sharp faculties, however, require separate analysis. A śrāvaka who abides in emptiness is not necessarily dull, and a bodhisattva who enters the provisional is not necessarily sharp. Śāriputra, for example, possessed keen wisdom yet did not emerge from contemplation of emptiness. Four alternatives must therefore be distinguished: sharp faculties while abiding in emptiness, dull faculties while abiding in emptiness, sharp faculties while entering the provisional, and dull faculties while entering the provisional.

It resembles a physically frail person without strength whose courage is nevertheless vigorous: he can still enter dangerous terrain and defeat the enemy, with not a single battle line able to stop him. Another person is physically strong and courageous; thrusting left and right, he is irresistible. Another has great strength but is timid and fearful; despite his strength, the moment he sees the enemy line he loses heart. Yet another has neither strength nor courage; lacking both, how could he establish any achievement? Those who abide in emptiness include the latter two types, while those who emerge into the provisional include the former two. Possessing the five conditions is like having kin to help, a compact to rely on, a strategy to use, strength to trust, and courage to act; one can therefore enter the provisional. Even when one’s wisdom is somewhat dull, possessing the other four conditions makes entry possible. A śrāvaka may possess sharp wisdom, but because all four are lacking, he cannot enter the provisional.

The Three Tasks of Contemplation in Entering the Provisional

Third is the explanation of contemplation in entering the provisional. It consists of three tasks: first, knowing illness; second, recognizing medicine; and third, administering medicine according to illness.

Knowing illness means knowing the two illnesses of views and thought. Regarding views, one must know their root, the conditions under which they arise, whether their arising is long-standing or recent, and the gravity and number of their grades.

Knowing the Illness of Views

How does one know the root of views? The view of self is the root of all views, and a single thought of deluded mind is the root of the view of self. From this deluded mind, immeasurable deviant views arise, crisscrossing and densely tangled beyond reckoning. Through these views, beings create fetters and karma of every kind, fall into the three evil destinations, and revolve in drowning without cease. This resembles the wheel of fire seen when a torch is whirled. To stop the wheel, stop the hand that whirls the torch. Know that mind originally contains no real mind; mind arises only because of deluded conception. The self originally contains no real self; a self is born only because of inversion. Once inversion and deluded conception cease, the root ceases, and its branches naturally disappear with it.

How does one know the conditions under which views arise? Because conditions differ, the views born from them also differ. How can this be known? It can be known from inner and outer characteristics. Outer characteristics include differences among the environments where beings live: seasons may be cold or hot, lands high or low, products and growth refined or coarse, and foods strong or mild. Because places differ, their resulting recompenses differ. Even within what a local region produces, there are accumulation and dispersal, abundance and scarcity, presence and absence, gain and loss, poverty and wealth, hunger and satiety, and so forth. Bodily forms likewise differ: short or tall, handsome or ugly, imposing or gaunt, healthy or ill, and so forth.

People’s faculties, preferences, and aversions also differ. One person suddenly gains honor yet casts aside office; another takes delight in gathering firewood or fishing. One strikes an ox horn while seeking ministerial rank; another carries a cooking vessel while seeking high office. Some excel in civil affairs and others in martial affairs. Some indulge in drink and others crave flavors. Some are greedy and others extravagant; some easily angry and others joyful; some foolish and others cunning. Such uneven intermixture has hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands of forms. Even within the human path every person already differs; how much more so the other kinds of beings, which cannot be exhaustively described. These differences in dependent and direct recompense necessarily reveal differences in the karma each has made. Different karma gives rise to different views. Seeing the tip, one thus knows the root; seeing the outer characteristics, one discerns the inner causes.

How does one know whether views arose long ago or recently? Some views accumulated and layered across many births, not merely one lifetime. Some arose only in the most recent lifetime; some have just arisen in this life; and some will gradually become powerful only in the future.

How does one know the number of grades of views? From the single view of existence, distinguish the three provisionalities—formation by causes, continuity, and relation. Within each, distinguish four alternatives: existence, nonexistence, both existence and nonexistence, and neither existence nor nonexistence. The three provisionalities therefore make twelve alternatives. Each fourfold set is further distinguished by the four siddhāntas—worldly, individual, counteractive, and ultimate—so the twelve alternatives make forty-eight siddhāntas. Each siddhānta is further divided into nature-emptiness and mark-emptiness, making ninety-six kinds of nature-emptiness and mark-emptiness. Each alternative has calming and contemplation, making 192 calming-and-contemplation alternatives. Counting the preceding roots as well yields 348.

That count concerns practitioners through faith. Practitioners through Dharma are the same; those who turn from faith to Dharma are the same, and those who turn from Dharma to faith are the same. The four kinds of people together yield 1,392 alternatives. This is the count for the view of existence. The views of nonexistence, both existence and nonexistence, and neither existence nor nonexistence are the same, so the four views yield 5,568. What is true of the simple four views is also true of the compound and complete four views. These three classes yield 16,704 inexpressible views. Add the initial 1,392 for the view of existence, and the total becomes 18,096.

The foregoing are the views to be broken. The calming-and-contemplation that breaks them has the same number. Breaker and broken together therefore yield 36,192 alternatives. One’s own practice is like this, and transforming others is the same; together they yield 72,384. If the sixty-two views and eighty-eight agents are further analyzed through three provisionalities, four alternatives, and so forth, the number is immeasurable, boundless, and inexhaustible.

Although the marks of illness are immeasurable, the bodhisattva can know them all. He knows how many alternatives together constitute one view and how many constitute another. He skillfully distinguishes their depth, shallowness, gravity, and lightness without deviation or error; this is called knowing origination. Knowing origination, he also knows suffering. He thoroughly understands how suffering and origination circulate, from root to branch.

Before entering emptiness, the bodhisattva had pervasively contemplated the delusions of views and thought and understood the marks of illness in outline. He made this a preparation for emerging into the provisional, and only then severed delusion and entered emptiness through one gate. When he later emerges into the provisional and again distinctly illuminates the two delusions, this is easy. With a little cultivation of calming-and-contemplation, the Dharma eye becomes clear. People of the Two Vehicles enter emptiness through only one gate and lack this prior guidance. Later, when teaching even two disciples, they administer the wrong medicine. They also lack the foregoing five intentions; how could they enter the provisional?

The bodhisattva possesses skillful means, great compassion, the original vow, and the power of great diligence. At times he stills every deluded conception, opens the Dharma eye, and recognizes the illness of views. At times he illuminates and penetrates the Dharmas of views, arousing wisdom of the varieties of the path and understanding all forms of delusion. If awakening has not yet occurred, he diligently investigates calming-and-contemplation through the power of diligence. When inner conditions mature and the buddhas provide outer support, he suddenly awakens, whether obscurely or openly. From then on, every alternative among the illnesses of views is perfectly clear, like all visible forms appearing in a mirror. Whether recognizing himself or others, he examines them clearly and without obstruction.

Knowing the Illness of Thought

Next, one must know the root of the illness of thought, the conditions under which it arises, whether its arising is long-standing or recent, and the gravity and number of its grades. The first three can be understood by analogy with the illness of views, except that the provisional marks of thought take delusion as their root, and so forth.

As for the grades of thought, the nine grounds of the three realms contain eighty-one grades. Consider first a single grade. This grade has three provisionalities, each with four alternatives of calming-and-contemplation, making twelve. Each alternative also has the two types of understanding through faith and attainment through seeing, and each type employs the four siddhāntas. Practice through faith and practice through Dharma thus each have eight rounds, sixteen together. Each can also turn into the other, producing another sixteen, for thirty-two altogether. Since one alternative expands to thirty-two, the twelve alternatives of the three provisionalities yield 384. Each also has the two emptinesses of nature and mark, making 768. Add the preceding number to make 1,152; include the roots themselves to make 1,164.

One grade is like this, so nine grades yield 10,476. The nine grades of the desire realm are like this; extending them through the nine grounds of the three realms yields 94,284. The number to be broken is like this, and the breaking contemplation is the same; together they yield 188,568. One’s own practice is like this, and transforming others is the same; together they yield 277,136 alternatives of calming-and-contemplation.

On closer analysis, every grade contains immeasurable grades and every dhyāna immeasurable dhyānas. The meditative concentrations of luminous insight, the eight liberations, and the rest are already beyond exhaustive description merely when their various states arise. How much more difficult would it be to count the three provisionalities, four kinds of contemplation, and other alternatives within every dhyāna and grade? If the delusions of views are compared to forty li of water, thought conditions only one truth and should be compared to ten li. Because it does not arise laterally, it is called a single drop. Yet its grades are truly numerous and can still be said to fill ten li of water.

People of the Two Vehicles enter emptiness directly and therefore make no such distinctions. When bodhisattvas first broke the provisionality of thought, they prepared the means in advance and already knew the whole in outline. Now, emerging from emptiness into the provisional, they again cultivate contemplation to assist the opening of the Dharma eye, using calming-and-contemplation throughout as the gate for knowing provisional existence. If cultivated separately, each has its method. Stilling every condition and thought is called calming. Taking the provisional marks of thought as conditions and illuminating them is called contemplation. Through great compassion, the original vow, the power of great diligence, and the empowering majesty of the buddhas, the bodhisattva suddenly understands and opens. He gains the vision of the Dharma eye and the knowledge of wisdom of the varieties of the path, clearly distinguishing the illness-marks of the provisionality of thought, and so forth.

Although the foregoing counts of the delusions of views and thought are elaborate, what obstruction is there in knowing them? The five divisions of the Vinaya do not stuff a person’s chest full. Only by acting according to concrete conditions can a student correct himself and others. The same is true of learning these counted alternatives: one learns and immediately applies them. Whether in one’s own practice or in transforming others, they can be employed at will and without obstruction.

Recognizing Worldly Dharma Medicine

Second is the explanation of how one entering the provisional recognizes Dharma medicine. The marks of illness are immeasurable, and medicines are likewise immeasurable. In outline, they fall into three classes: worldly Dharma medicine, supramundane Dharma medicine, and supramundane supreme Dharma medicine.

The Great Perfection of Wisdom Sūtra teaches three kinds of Dharma giving. The Three Refuges, Five Precepts, ten wholesome paths of action, four dhyānas, immeasurable minds, and the like are called worldly Dharma giving. The second is supramundane Dharma giving, and the third supramundane supreme Dharma giving. Their meanings can be known accordingly, and so forth.

The Great Treatise asks: what benefit is there in giving worldly Dharmas? It resembles a prince falling from a high place. The king, his loving father, piles silk and cotton on the ground to catch him and spare him pain. Beings are the same. They are about to fall into the three evil destinations, so sages take pity on them and provisionally receive and guide them with worldly wholesome Dharmas, preventing their fall into evil destinations.

Ordinary foolish people originally did not know how to give Dharma medicine. All wholesome worldly Dharmas were taught by sages who lodged traces in the world and manifested as ordinary people to induce and instruct beginners during ages without a buddha. The Great Nirvāṇa Sūtra says that all the scriptures of worldly non-Buddhists were taught by the Buddha, not by the non-Buddhists themselves. The Golden Light Sūtra says that every wholesome treatise in the world comes from that scripture. When worldly Dharmas are known deeply, worldly Dharmas are themselves Buddha Dharma. Why? Gather the ten wholesome actions, and they become the Five Precepts. A deep understanding of the five constant virtues and five phases likewise approaches the Five Precepts.

Benevolence means loving concern, pity, and nurturing beings without harming others; it is the precept against killing. Righteousness means yielding humbly, remaining incorrupt, and bestowing what one has on others; it is the precept against stealing. Ritual establishes standards, and men and women bind their hair in marriage; it is the precept against sexual misconduct. Wisdom illuminates keenly, acts uprightly, and accords with the principle of the Middle Way; it is the precept against intoxication. Trustworthiness keeps compacts, records matters as they are, remains honest and measured, and does not deceive; it is the precept against false speech. The Duke of Zhou and Confucius established these five constant virtues as worldly Dharma medicine to treat the illnesses of the people.

The five phases also resemble the Five Precepts: abstaining from killing protects wood, abstaining from stealing protects metal, abstaining from sexual misconduct protects water, abstaining from false speech protects earth, and abstaining from intoxication protects fire. The Five Classics likewise resemble the Five Precepts. The Book of Rites teaches restraint and prevents intoxication. The Book of Music harmonizes mind and prevents sexual misconduct. The Book of Odes uses airs and elegantiae to satirize faults and prevent killing. The Book of Documents clarifies righteousness and yielding and prevents stealing. The Book of Changes gauges yin and yang and prevents false speech.

A bodhisattva must master such forms of worldly wisdom to their utmost, so that no one can surpass or defeat him and everyone trusts him; only then can he guide them as a teacher. A bodhisattva emerging into the provisional must know these Dharmas and should cultivate them diligently and single-mindedly within the contemplation of luminous insight. Through compassionate vows, tireless diligence, and the empowering majesty of the buddhas, he suddenly understands and opens, never again doubting or becoming obstructed by worldly Dharma medicine.

Worldly Dharma medicine, however, is not the ultimate treatment. Even if one advances step by step and nearly reaches the end of the three existences, one eventually returns to the starting point. Thus, although ordinary beings cultivate contaminated meditative concentrations, their mental conduct still leaks and breaks like a cracked vessel. Even if they are born in the Heaven of Neither Perception nor Nonperception, they fall back again, like colored clothing soaked by rain until its hues mottle and peel away. A worldly physician may cure an illness, but after recovery it returns. This is precisely what is meant.

Recognizing Supramundane Dharma Medicine

Next is the explanation of how to know supramundane Dharma medicine. The Great Nirvāṇa Sūtra lists different teachings. At times it says faith is the path; at other times aspiration, heedfulness, diligence, mindfulness of the body, right concentration, cultivation of impermanence, dwelling in the quiet of an araṇya, teaching Dharma to others, keeping precepts, approaching good spiritual friends, or cultivating loving-kindness and the rest. Each can be a counteractive medicine.

The scriptures sometimes take one path as medicine, as with the samādhi of one practice. The Buddha also told the bhikṣus not to take what belongs to others. All Dharmas belong to others: by neither accepting nor grasping any Dharma, one becomes an arhat. None of the simple, compound, or other views discussed above is accepted. Two paths can also serve as medicine: the two wheels of concentration’s moistening and wisdom’s spur are balanced. Three Dharmas are medicine: ethical discipline, concentration, and wisdom. Four are medicine: the four foundations of mindfulness. Five are medicine: the five powers. Six are medicine: the six recollections. There are also the seven factors of awakening, Eightfold Path, nine perceptions, and ten knowledges. Thus the Dharmas of the path are taught in increasing numerical order, up to the 84,000 Dharma gates, too many to count.

There can be many single Dharmas, immeasurable single Dharmas, and inexpressibly many single Dharmas. There can likewise be many tenfold Dharmas, immeasurable tenfold Dharmas, and inexpressibly many tenfold Dharmas. Every Dharma has its various names, marks, and counteractive functions. A bodhisattva emerging into the provisional must clearly recognize all of them. He gathers every Dharma medicine for beings like a guide thoroughly familiar with the ocean; without such knowledge he cannot benefit beings. To know them all, the bodhisattva single-mindedly cultivates calming-and-contemplation throughout, possesses compassionate vows and the power of diligence, and receives the empowering majesty of the buddhas. The Dharma eye opens, and he can know everything as plainly as seeing a fruit in his palm.

Recognizing Supramundane Supreme Dharma Medicine

Next comes supramundane supreme Dharma medicine. When one Dharma of calming-and-contemplation serves as medicine, it is the single truth of reality. The mind of ignorance combines with Dharma-nature, and every mark of illness appears. Contemplate this Dharma-nature: even Dharma-nature itself contains no Dharma-nature to be grasped, much less ignorance and all other Dharmas.

When two Dharmas serve as medicine, they are calming and contemplation. Embodying and penetrating mind-nature, delusion ceases.

When three Dharmas serve as medicine, they are calming, contemplation, and the ethical discipline that follows the right path. This discipline functions naturally and protects the practitioner. There are also the three samādhis. Entering emptiness from the provisional is the samādhi of emptiness. Seeing no mark of emptiness even within emptiness is the signless samādhi. The cessation of the karma of birth-and-death is the wishless samādhi.

When four Dharmas serve as medicine, they are the four foundations of mindfulness. Every view relies on form, yet this form is neither impure nor not impure. Feeling produced by the delusions of views and thought is neither suffering nor pleasure. The perceptions and formations within every view are neither self nor no-self. Since the mind of views and thought is not even mind, how could it be called permanent or impermanent?

When five Dharmas serve as medicine, they are the five faculties. Having no doubt while cultivating calming-and-contemplation is the faculty of faith. Constantly remembering calming-and-contemplation and not thinking of other matters is the faculty of mindfulness. Calming-and-contemplation never ceasing is the faculty of diligence. Abiding one-pointedly in concentration is the faculty of concentration. Embodying and penetrating through four alternatives that all Dharmas lack self-nature is the faculty of wisdom. When the five faculties grow, they are called the five powers.

When six Dharmas serve as medicine, they are the six recollections. Using calming-and-contemplation to awaken to the fact that views and thought are immediately the Buddha Dharma realm and do not damage the Dharma body is recollection of the Buddha. Constantly retaining calming-and-contemplation without distinguishing calming and contemplation as identical or different is recollection of Dharma. The principle of calming-and-contemplation harmoniously revealing the mark of the unconditioned is recollection of the Saṅgha. Calming-and-contemplation possessing ethical discipline that follows the right path is recollection of ethical discipline. Calming-and-contemplation being immediately the ultimate is recollection of deities. Calming-and-contemplation abandoning views and thought is recollection of relinquishment.

When seven Dharmas serve as medicine, calming comprises the factors of tranquility, equanimity, and concentration; contemplation comprises the factors of investigation of Dharmas, joy, and diligence; and the factor of mindfulness extends through both calming and contemplation.

When eight Dharmas serve as medicine, breaking provisionality through four alternatives is right view. The arousal produced by this right view is right intention. Practicing according to this calming-and-contemplation is right action. Teaching this calming-and-contemplation is right speech. Sustaining one’s life without crooked flattery is right livelihood. Neither leaving nor forgetting calming-and-contemplation is right mindfulness. Calming is right concentration. Continuity from thought to thought without interruption is right effort.

When nine Dharmas serve as medicine, the four views are the impure five aggregates. The deterioration of the aggregates is the perception of a discolored corpse, from which the sequence unfolds through the ninth perception, and so forth.

When ten Dharmas serve as medicine, they are the ten knowledges. The two provisionalities of views and thought are knowledge of origination and knowledge of suffering. Calming-and-contemplation is knowledge of the path. The nonarising of the twenty-five existences is knowledge of cessation. Knowing that every place in the three realms is like this is inferential knowledge. Speaking according to worldly names is worldly knowledge. Knowing that other beings are likewise is knowledge of others’ minds. Knowing the distinctions among all Dharmas is differentiated knowledge. Knowing that suffering and origination have been exhausted is knowledge of exhaustion. Uncontaminated wisdom is knowledge of nonarising.

Know that calming-and-contemplation can be increased or decreased according to faculties for the benefit of beings. It can be unfolded as ten or as Buddha Dharmas as numerous as the sands of the Ganges. This resembles Shennong tasting medicinal plants and establishing prescriptions: sometimes one ingredient is used, sometimes two, up to ten, while other formulas combine many medicines. Prescriptions are established according to illness, never without conditions. Bodhisattvas entering the provisional are the same. They know one Dharma, two Dharmas, up to immeasurable Dharma gates, sometimes treating one illness and sometimes a mixed illness.

Medicinal substances likewise have bark, flesh, sap, fruit, roots, stems, branches, and leaves, each with a different function. Mountains, seas, water, land, and the soils of the four directions each produce their own substances. Gathering, digging, taking them dry or moist—all have suitable seasons. Each medicine also has the illnesses it can treat. A bodhisattva entering the provisional knows beings’ faculties and recognizes the Dharma suited to each in just this way. He examines and knows that one or many Dharmas accord with this being’s aspirations, while another one or two do not; that one or two are suitable means for him, while another one or two are not; that this is counteractive and that is not; that this can bring him into the ultimate and that cannot.

To treat one illness, one medicine is enough. To become a great king of physicians, one must pervasively know every medicine. People of the Two Vehicles need only treat their own delusion, so one Dharma is enough. Bodhisattvas make great vows and therefore must know all. The earth may produce medicinal substances, yet a physician must still determine their quantities and combine them into prescriptions. A great river contains water, yet it must still be measured in sheng and ge, neither excessive nor deficient. Dharma medicine is the same. One concentration of quiescence unfolds as immeasurable calming practices, and one great wisdom unfolds as immeasurable contemplations, all true and without falsity.

The conditions that make beings ill differ in every way; the pains of their illnesses, their prescriptions and treatments, and the conditions of their recovery all differ. Medicines may be drunk as decoctions, induce vomiting or purging, or take the form of needles, cautery, pills, or powders. The conditions of recovery are not confined to one method. Bodhisattvas entering the provisional are the same. Knowing all the different accumulations of beings’ afflictions of views and thought is knowing origination. Knowing all the different painful results caused by their wholesome and unwholesome conduct is knowing suffering. Knowing every Dharma gate is knowing the path. Knowing all the different ways beings realize quiescent cessation is knowing cessation. There is no form of the Four Truths that bodhisattvas entering the provisional do not know.

Transition between the First and Second Halves of Fascicle Six

Mohe Zhiguan, Fascicle Six 〔First Half〕

Mohe Zhiguan, Fascicle Six 〔Second Half〕

Taught by the Great Master Zhizhe of Tiantai in the Sui dynasty

Recorded by his disciple Guanding

Shennong’s original prescriptions do not necessarily cure every person of later ages. Hua Tuo and Bian Que examined the times and the properties of medicines and established new prescriptions. Why? Northern and southern regions differ; people’s constitutions are frail or robust; foods are salty or mild; medicines are strong or weak; and illnesses are light or grave. Following only an old prescription fails to produce results, while remaking prescriptions according to the time can bring recovery.

When the Buddha first appeared in the world, beings’ faculties were mature. He taught according to their faculties, and none failed to awaken and enter. In later ages, people’s minds grew increasingly shallow, and their emotional attachments and delusive obstructions gradually changed. Applying only the Buddha’s scriptural words directly to them would bring no benefit. Bodhisattvas examine faculties, open the meaning of scripture, and compose treatises so that beings awaken. Causing others to awaken, enter, and gain benefit is the true intent of entering the provisional. How could rigidly keeping an old prescription be allowed to block the path of transformation? The Great Treatise says that to establish and explain many names in accordance with the Dharma and meaning in the scriptures is Dharma giving. To cultivate this wisdom, the bodhisattva thoroughly cultivates calming-and-contemplation through compassionate vows and diligent effort. With the empowering majesty of the buddhas, illumination suddenly becomes clear, and he gains freedom in the wisdom of entering the provisional.

Administering Worldly Dharma Medicine According to Illness

Third is the explanation of administering medicine according to illness. The bodhisattva knows the illness revealed by the truths of suffering and origination and recognizes the medicine revealed by the truths of path and cessation. If beings lack supramundane faculties and are too weak to bear the profound Dharma, the bodhisattva administers only worldly Dharma medicine.

Confucius and the Duke of Zhou, for example, established the duties of ruler and minister and fixed the ethics of parent and child, so that those above were respected, those below cherished, and the world brought into good order. Rites and laws established measured standards and proper ranks, thereby assisting ethical discipline. Music harmonized minds, transformed customs, and improved habits, thereby assisting concentration. The highest virtue and essential path of the ancient kings assisted wisdom. In remote antiquity, when the world had just emerged from primal confusion, beings were not yet suited to receive supramundane Dharma. The faculties of distant lands were not mature enough to call forth a buddha’s appearance. The Buddha therefore dispatched three sages to China, first guiding people through ritual and righteousness so that they might later accept the Great- and Small-Vehicle scriptures. As in China, so throughout the worlds of the ten directions: worldly Dharmas are first given to beings, and so forth.

Administering Supramundane Dharma Medicine to Four Kinds of Faculties

Next comes the administration of supramundane Dharma medicine. Beings’ faculties, formed through ten conditions, differ; that is, their illnesses differ. Because illnesses differ, the medicines administered also differ, for lower, middling, higher, and supreme faculties.

Lower faculties have four characteristics. First, their aims and aspirations are narrow and inferior. Second, the power of their practice is weak. Third, the five turbidities obstruct them heavily. Fourth, their wisdom is extremely dull. Because they delight in lesser Dharmas, the bodhisattva teaches them arising and cessation. Because their power of practice is weak, he teaches the six perfections at the level of concrete practices. Because the five turbidities heavily obstruct them, he teaches arduous counteraction. Because their wisdom is dull, he calls the severance of sexual desire, anger, and delusion liberation. This is administering the medicine of Dharmas arisen through conditions to treat the illness of people with lower faculties.

Even among lower faculties, aspirations differ. The sages therefore composed treatises and unfolded four gates. For those who delight in hearing existence, they taught the Abhidharma, enabling them to produce Small-Vehicle wholesome roots, break the five turbidities, and through this skillful means see the truth. For those who delight in hearing nonexistence, they taught the Satyasiddhi Treatise, enabling them to produce lesser wholesome roots, break evil, and enter the true. For those who delight in hearing both existence and nonexistence, they taught the Kunle Treatise, likewise enabling them to produce wholesomeness, break evil, and enter the true. For those who delight in hearing neither existence nor nonexistence, they taught the Scripture Apart from Existence and Nonexistence, likewise enabling them to produce wholesomeness, break evil, and enter the true. Bodhisattvas entering the provisional thus composed four kinds of treatises, clarified four gates, and administered four medicines to treat each kind of illness, and so forth.

Next comes medicine for middling faculties. Their resolve is somewhat stronger and their power of practice somewhat greater, so they are suited to produce principial wholesomeness. The obstructions of the five turbidities are lighter, and their wisdom somewhat sharper. In accordance with their aspirations, the bodhisattva teaches that Dharmas arisen through conditions are immediately empty. On hearing this, they produce principial wholesomeness, break evil causes, and see the ultimate. This is administering the medicine of immediate emptiness to treat the illness of middling faculties. Middling faculties are again divided into lower, middling, higher, and supreme, just as four gates lead into the same pool; this can be understood by comparison with the foregoing, and so forth.

Next, the bodhisattva examines people with higher faculties and administers medicine. Their aspirations are vast, their wholesome roots developed, the five turbidities already removed, and their wisdom great. He administers the immeasurable Four Truths, causing them to produce wholesome roots beyond the realms, sequentially sever the afflictions of the five abodes, and enter the Middle Way. This is administering the medicine of immediate provisionality to treat the illness of higher faculties. These too have four grades, corresponding to medicine administered through the four gates, as can be known by analogy with the foregoing.

Next, he examines supreme faculties and administers medicine. Such people are unsurpassed in aspiration through wisdom and are therefore called supreme. In accordance with real principle, the bodhisattva teaches them directly. Wholesomeness arises like empty space, obstruction ceases like empty space, and they enter the ultimate path. This is administering the medicine of the immediate Middle to treat the illness of supreme faculties. It too has four gates through which medicine is administered and illness treated, and so forth.

Within contemplation for entering emptiness, not even one Dharma is obtainable; how could there be so many Dharmas? The sixteen truths of path and cessation are now taught precisely to counteract sixteen truths of suffering and origination. This therefore belongs directly to entering the provisional from emptiness. The bodhisattva follows the voices of every kind of being and universally informs them through wondrous sound. Their auditory consciousness is activated, the sound of Dharma enters their minds, they take up the Dharma medicine, and each gains benefit. This resembles one cloud releasing one rain, while the various plants and trees each grow according to their own faculties, and so forth.

Stages of Entering the Provisional: First Distinguishing Three Faculties across the Four Teachings

Fourth is the explanation of the stages of entering the provisional. It has three parts: first, determining stages across the four teachings; second, explaining the benefits attained; and third, concluding pervasive breaking through Dharmas in entering the provisional from emptiness.

People commonly assume that views must be removed first and thought afterward. Since even the fruits attained by entering emptiness seem distant, they regard emerging into the provisional to transform beings as still further beyond their capacity. On seeing such a high cliff, they cut off their own path. It must now be distinguished that the stages of entering the provisional are not limited to one pattern.

At first, practitioners of all three vehicles were not ignorant of the Buddha Dharma and all sought buddhahood. Yet while weary of birth-and-death, they often retreated. It resembles many people hearing together of a mountain of seven treasures in a distant land. They crane their heads toward it and bind their feet in readiness, but when they think of the difficult and dangerous road, they retreat and do not advance. Practitioners are the same. Fearing birth-and-death, they fall away from the Great Vehicle and sink into emptiness. Later, hearing of the bodhisattvas’ superior and wondrous merit, they see themselves as ruined seeds and weep until the great-thousand world shakes. No outer cause need appear; their minds are already filled with grief and remorse. If only this account were accepted, cultivation would entail entry into emptiness but never another entry into the provisional.

Three Faculties in the Tripiṭaka Teaching

During the first incalculable eon of cultivating emptiness, a Tripiṭaka-Teaching bodhisattva resembles a wolf subduing the sheep of affliction: he suppresses affliction but does not sever the fetters. If he exhausted the fetters, the body nourished through the merits of the six perfections could no longer remain. This is the stage of the first incalculable eon. During the second incalculable eon, the fat of affliction gradually diminishes while the body of merit becomes more robust. Only in the third incalculable eon does he formally enter the stage of the provisional and benefit beings. This is the person of lower faculties.

A person of middling faculties has already suppressed affliction and nourished a robust body of merit through the six perfections during the second incalculable eon. He can transform beings then; why wait for the third? A person of higher faculties vows at the first arousal of mind to seek buddhahood for the deliverance of all beings. Through hearing others teach, he already understands inwardly and deeply recognizes true principle. To deliver people, he does not seek first to sever delusion and obtain realization. His mind advances another step: I should deliver them and should not fail to do so; I must therefore diligently distinguish every medicine and illness. Why? Because the five—compassion, vows, wisdom, skillful means, and diligence—are profound. It resembles carrying a child across a dangerous place. Once secure oneself, how could one abandon the child? Although the bodhisattva knows emptiness for himself, he does not abandon beings. He can therefore enter the provisional at the first arousal of mind without waiting for the second incalculable eon.

Three Faculties in the Shared Teaching

In determining the stages of the Shared Teaching, many people cling to a scriptural statement that the provisional is cultivated only at the eighth ground. Others say the fetters are severed at the sixth or seventh ground, making one equal to an arhat, and only then is the provisional cultivated. This is merely one path of explanation and cannot cover everything. The Buddha distinguishes his teaching according to three faculties.

People of lower faculties must exhaust affliction before emerging into the provisional. In the Lotus Sūtra, the Buddha breaks the Two Vehicles’ attachment to nirvāṇa and exhorts them to arouse the mind of the unsurpassed path and produce the wisdom of skillful means. Since even the Two Vehicles require this, the dullest bodhisattvas should be addressed in the same manner; here it is judged only as the lower faculty. After people of middling faculties sever the delusions of views, the pressure of birth-and-death relaxes somewhat and the delusions of thought naturally diminish. The second ground is called the ground of a bodhisattva’s superknowledges; from then on, they can enter the provisional. At the first arousal of mind, people of higher faculties can embody the immediate emptiness of views and thought through wisdom born of hearing. They have already become a refuge for beings; why would they need to wait until the seventh ground to emerge into the provisional?

If one insists on waiting until the seventh ground, one falls under the rebuke in the Great Perfection of Wisdom Sūtra. That scripture gives the simile of a great bird three hundred yojanas long, without two wings, falling from heaven and suffering death or pain equal to death. Bodhisattvas are the same. From the first arousal of mind, they cultivate only emptiness. By the sixth ground they have nourished the body of the three emptinesses—emptiness, signlessness, and wishlessness—until it is enormous, yet the wings of entering the provisional have not grown. Falling into the preparatory path of the Two Vehicles is pain equal to death; falling into the first fruit is death. Exhausting the delusions of views is equal to death; realizing the state beyond training is actual death. Could that bird still return to heaven? Once someone has fallen into the ground beyond training, seeking to arouse the bodhisattva mind again is forever impossible, like a castrated person unable to enjoy the five desires.

Neither the Avataṃsaka Sūtra nor the Great Perfection of Wisdom Sūtra can treat this condition. Only the Lotus Sūtra can cause those beyond training to produce wholesome roots again and accomplish the Buddha path; it is therefore called wondrous. Moreover, an icchantika still has mind and can become a buddha, while people of the Two Vehicles have extinguished the mind of wisdom, which cannot arise again. The Lotus Sūtra can treat this illness and is therefore called wondrous a second time, and so forth.

Three Faculties in the Distinct Teaching

After the mind of the ten abodes, a person of the Distinct Teaching reaches the ten practices and only then cultivates the preparatory means for entering the provisional. Why? Prajñā that enters true principle is called abode. Abiding in this principle and producing merit is called practice. This is the person of lower faculties, and so forth.

A person of middling faculties can enter the provisional at the first arousal of mind in the ten abodes. Having attained the uncontaminated, once he receives it he does not retreat; he can immediately emerge and function. Why wait until the ten practices to arouse great compassion? This is the person of middling faculties, and so forth.

A person of higher faculties in the Distinct Teaching is not ignorant of the Buddha Dharma at the first arousal of mind. He thoroughly understands that every merit is like an illusion, is not obstructed by names or words, yet still cultivates skillful means of every kind. He also possesses the five foregoing conditions and can therefore benefit beings.

The Perfect Teaching Enters the Provisional from the Initial Mind

When practitioners of the Perfect Teaching reach the purification of the six faculties within the ten faiths, they can pervasively see and hear everything in the ten Dharma realms. Were this merely entry into emptiness, not one thing would remain. Since the six faculties are said to function interchangeably, this must already be a stage of entering the provisional. Furthermore, disciples at the five grades directly practice the six perfections and can teach Dharma extensively; that too is a stage of entering the provisional, so why wait for purification of the six faculties? Again, a person at the first arousal of mind can know the Tathāgata’s secret treasury and perfectly contemplate the three truths. Since he can already be immediately the Middle, how could he not be immediately provisional? The Great Perfection of Wisdom Sūtra says that on first sitting at the site of awakening, one has already accomplished correct awakening, turned the Dharma wheel, and delivered beings. Distinguishing this through the six identities likewise reveals the meaning of emerging into the provisional; why wait for the five grades?

Each of the four teachings therefore has lower, middling, and higher stages for entering the provisional. If a single representative stage must be fixed, it should be that of lower faculties for two reasons. First, this accords with the teaching’s sequential structure. Second, on reaching this stage one is definitely irreversible. People of middling and higher faculties may accomplish the practice of entering the provisional earlier, but sometimes advance and sometimes retreat; their stages are therefore not used to fix the representative stage in each teaching.

Three Kinds of Entry into Emptiness and Movement among the Three Truths

Since three faculties emerge into the provisional, by analogy three faculties should also enter emptiness. These are conceptual entry, approximate entry, and true entry. Conceptual entry means that such people all enter emptiness through conceptual understanding; it does not mean the scattered emotions of ordinary beings. Through contemplation taking the truth as its object, they first correspond to the Dharma-object of emptiness before approximate and true realization.

Someone asks: If this is only conceptual entry, what benefit does it have?

Answer: It has the benefit of correspondence through conceptual understanding.

Another question: Since it has benefit, does that mean it is never lost?

Answer: It is not universally lost. Even if some lose it, they can still recall the contemplation of emptiness and cultivate it repeatedly, eventually gaining great benefit.

Another question: People of higher faculties in the Shared and Distinct teachings can both enter emptiness and emerge into the provisional. How do they differ from the Perfect Teaching?

Answer: People of the Shared Teaching can emerge from emptiness and enter the provisional, but cannot immediately be the Middle. People of the Distinct Teaching enter and emerge sequentially and cannot possess all within one mind. People of the Perfect Teaching can enter and emerge within one mind and can also enter and emerge distinctly. Distinct entering and emerging means that at times they enter the Middle more and the truths of emptiness and provisionality less; at times they enter the truths of emptiness and provisionality more and the Middle less. At times they enter emptiness and the Middle more and provisionality less; at times they enter provisionality more and emptiness and the Middle less. At times they enter provisionality and the Middle more and emptiness less; at times they enter emptiness more and provisionality and the Middle less. Although the proportions of the three truths increase and decrease, none of the three is ever absent.

Another question: Does this not make them sequentially distinct?

Answer: The Perfect Teaching can manifest even the superior distinct marks of sequence; how could it be unable to manifest the inferior? Perfect interfusion does not obstruct differentiated function.

Benefits of Entering the Provisional

Second is the explanation of the benefits of entering the provisional. The bodhisattva did not originally cultivate emptiness because he prized emptiness, but for the sake of beings. Precisely because he does not prize emptiness, he does not abide in it. Precisely because he seeks to benefit beings, he must emerge from emptiness. He can therefore arise in response from true principle, with the Dharma eye according with faculties.

For those who should be delivered through a buddha-body, the bodhisattva manifests a buddha-body, teaches them Dharma, and administers medicine. For those who should be delivered through the forms of a bodhisattva, the Two Vehicles, gods, nāgas, the eight classes, and so forth, he manifests the corresponding forms. Only accomplishing beings and purifying buddha-lands in this way are called benefit.

Although bodhisattvas of the Tripiṭaka Teaching also emerge into the provisional, they attain only contaminated superknowledges, not a response arising from true principle. They distinguish through worldly wisdom, not the illumination of the Dharma eye. Although they can benefit beings, they cannot yet truly accomplish them. Although they perform Buddha work, they do not yet purify buddha-lands. This is only limited transformation, yielding very slight benefit, and so forth.

When bodhisattvas of the Shared Teaching enter the provisional, they can distinguish medicine from illness, but rely only on the two truths of true and conventional. Their diagnosis does not reach deeply enough, nor does their knowledge of Dharma medicine reach far enough. Their superknowledges still arise through intentional effort rather than naturally emerging in response from true principle.

A true response has beginning and end. The bodhisattva first manifests as beings’ parents and teachers, forming Dharma affinities with them lifetime after lifetime and regulating them everywhere, often over immeasurable incalculable eons. When their wholesome roots mature, he manifests birth in a royal palace, becomes a buddha beneath the tree of awakening, delivers beings through gradual and sudden teachings, and finally manifests entry into nirvāṇa while relics remain in the world. Such long benefit, with beginning and end, is called response. Suddenly appearing from nowhere and vanishing after a moment is not true response. A fragmentary benefit for one brief time cannot be called accomplishment. Finally reducing the body to ash and entering quiescent cessation cannot be called purification of a buddha-land.

The meaning of the benefit attained by entering the provisional at the ten practices of the Distinct Teaching is the same as in the Shared Teaching. On entering the grounds, however, one can obtain the Tathāgata’s single body and immeasurable bodies, serenely quiescent yet responding to everything. At that point, knowing illness reaches the very source of illnesses. Recognizing medicine exhausts the treasury of Dharma medicine. Administering medicine according to illness fits as one seal to another, without the slightest error. True wisdom of the varieties of the path and the most excellent Dharma eye make every response naturally pervade beings.

The bodhisattva harmonizing his light and mingling with the dust is the beginning of forming affinities. Manifesting the eight marks of awakening is the conclusion of one period of transformation. This is called both transformation and response. None who see or hear him fail to gain benefit. Everything he does occurs within the purification of buddha-lands, and the benefit of entering the provisional is real and unfailing. Since this is so at the first ground, later grounds can be known by analogy. From the first abode of the Perfect Teaching, entering the provisional already gives true benefit, and so it continues through the final mind.

Distinguishing True Response from Deviant Transformation

Understanding this meaning makes it possible to distinguish true from false among transformations. Why? Māra too can use a contaminated mind to assume an uncontaminated appearance and manifest a buddha image. Laozi traveled westward, and some say he became a buddha to transform the Hu peoples. Non-Buddhists can transform Śakra into a ram and hold a river in an ear. Nothing lies beyond the five superknowledges gained through worldly wisdom. Such deviant transformations are immeasurable and boundless, yet do not even equal the transformations of the Tripiṭaka Teaching’s five superknowledges. How could they count as the naturally functioning true responses of the Distinct and Perfect teachings?

There are many accounts of transformation, and people without the Dharma eye easily believe them in error. Careful and subtle examination shows that they cannot be conflated. Know, therefore, that extending a response-body from the ground of the Dharma body to deliver beings throughout the ten Dharma realms is the stage of the true benefit of entering the provisional.

Pervasive Breaking through Dharmas in Entering the Provisional from Emptiness

Before true wisdom arises, beings produce hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands of views according to what they themselves conceive and cling to. All are called delusions of views. It resembles a blind person asking the color of milk: the answers are not milk’s true color. It also resembles people touching an elephant and saying the elephant is like a rope or pestle: how could either touch the reality of the whole animal? It is also like delirious speech during illness. Since these views are themselves provisional, one passes through the simple, compound, and complete four views and breaks each through contemplation. If the breaking is not pervasive, one cannot enter emptiness. Only when the delusions of views and thought are exhausted is it called pervasive breaking through Dharmas.

According only to textual sequence, it appears that the layers must be broken one after another. The true intent is not limited to this. The delusions of views and thought are immediately ignorance; ignorance is immediately Dharma-nature. Breaking views and thought is itself breaking ignorance. Breaking ignorance is itself seeing Dharma-nature. Only entry into the emptiness of the true mark is called pervasive breaking through Dharmas.

Pervasive breaking through Dharmas in entering the provisional from emptiness is the same. Within provisional existence are immeasurable illness-Dharmas, medicine-Dharmas, and administration-of-medicine Dharmas. When distinguishing these three classes, as long as even one point remains unpenetrated, it cannot be called pervasive breaking through Dharmas. Before the Dharma eye arises, although distinctions can be made, what one sees is still only partial and cannot be called pervasive breaking.

At purification of the six faculties, distinguishing one illness reveals how many kinds it contains; understanding one sentence of Dharma penetrates immeasurable sentences. Even if the buddhas of the ten directions all teach at once, one can receive and retain everything in that single moment. This is one share of the breath attained at the approximate stage. When ignorance obstructing the superknowledges of the inconceivable path of transformation is also broken and one can illuminate the true and conventional truths simultaneously, only then is it truly called pervasive breaking through Dharmas.

In summary, sequential breaking layer by layer still cannot be called pervasive. Only nonsequential breaking that is immediately pervasive is called pervasive. The foregoing contemplations are layered and numerous and might cause people to lose their way. Pervasive breaking through Dharmas is therefore used as the conclusion only after the two contemplations of entering emptiness and entering the provisional.

After entering emptiness, is there still a road? If all Dharmas are empty and beings, afflictions, buddha-lands, and transformation cannot be obtained, why should the bodhisattva return to the human world of ten thousand distinctions? If he again distinguishes the illnesses of beings and the medicines of Dharma gates, does he not reestablish as real the provisional existence already broken?

The Mohe Zhiguan does not rush past the problem with a single formula such as “empty yet not empty.” It first asks why one must enter the provisional, then what enables one to enter. It next unfolds transformation into three tasks—knowing illness, recognizing medicine, and administering medicine according to illness—and finally asks at what stage this capacity begins, when its benefit becomes true, and what makes it worthy of the name pervasive breaking through Dharmas. Entering the provisional from emptiness is therefore not a departure from contemplating mind in order to discuss transformation elsewhere. It tests whether the wisdom of emptiness can function freely within every distinction.

1. If Emptiness Cannot Benefit Others, It Is Not the Bodhisattva’s Dwelling Place

People of the Two Vehicles can also realize the true. Why are they not called bodhisattvas? The boundary lies not in whether one has entered emptiness, but whether one has great compassion. In terms of one’s own liberation, entry into emptiness can sever bondage. In terms of rescuing others, remaining in emptiness has no function. The bodhisattva enters emptiness from the provisional to break his own attachment; he enters the provisional from emptiness to break the attachments of others. The first step distinguishes him from ordinary beings; the second distinguishes him from the Two Vehicles.

Entering the provisional is therefore not renewed contamination by existence. Its form is to dwell amid the myriad existents without being stained, recognize the properties of medicines with the Dharma eye, match compassion to illness, and help beings without weariness. The wisdom of emptiness has not been abandoned. Precisely because provisional existence cannot bind it, it can enter provisional existence.

The treatise then uses two nearly impossible images. The first is planting a tree in empty space: without earth, how could the tree take root, flower, and bear fruit? The second is continuously shooting arrows into the air: the nock of each later arrow supports the preceding one so that none falls to earth. Both similes drive the difficulty to its extreme. With no ground to rely on, the tree must still produce branches, leaves, flowers, and fruit. Without falling to earth, each arrow must still be supported by the next. The bodhisattva does not abide in emptiness, yet retains the function of benefiting others. If he abides in emptiness and never emerges, beings can never gain benefit. The resolve to benefit others is therefore not a benevolent addition made after entering the provisional; it is the fundamental intent of entry itself.

2. Is Wisdom What Carries a Person Out of Emptiness?

If sharp wisdom by itself enabled entry into the provisional, why did Śāriputra still abide in emptiness? The treatise lists five conditions precisely to dismantle this misunderstanding.

The first is compassion. When the bodhisattva first sees beings imprisoned by inversion, he already cherishes them as his only child. After severing delusion and entering emptiness himself, his grief of the same body becomes still deeper. The second is the original vow. Were he alone to escape suffering, he would betray his former vast vow to remove suffering and give happiness. He must therefore enter beings’ lives, share their affairs, and guide them. The third is sharp wisdom. Its true sharpness consists in seeing the fault of abiding in emptiness the moment one enters it: one cannot purify buddha-lands, transform beings, or complete Buddha Dharma. The fourth is skillful means. One enters birth-and-death and affliction without damaging wisdom; obstructions and difficulties instead become supporting conditions for transformation. The fifth is diligence. Though the Buddha path is distant and beings innumerable, the mind remains firm and does not weary or retreat because the road is long.

These five are not five attractive virtues displayed for admiration. They resemble five concrete resources needed to enter a dangerous battle: kin who can help, a compact one must keep, a strategy one can follow, strength one can employ, and courage with which to advance. Four kinds of warriors further separate bodily strength from courage. A weak body can possess courage, and a strong body can possess courage; a person with strength may still be timid, while another may lack both strength and courage. Conversely, someone with somewhat dull faculties can still enter provisional existence if the other four conditions are profound. There are therefore four alternatives: sharp faculties abiding in emptiness, dull faculties abiding in emptiness, sharp faculties entering the provisional, and dull faculties entering the provisional. A single scale from sharp to dull cannot decide who is a bodhisattva.

The sickroom of the Vimalakīrtinirdeśa Sūtra gives the five conditions a concrete voice. Pitying another’s illness through one’s own is great compassion of the same body. Remembering immeasurable suffering undergone in former lives is not forgetting the original vow. Benefiting beings from thought to thought is recognizing the fault of abiding in emptiness. Recalling cultivated merit while maintaining pure livelihood is skillful means. Not giving rise to sorrow but constantly arousing diligence is vigor. Comforting the sick is not only exhorting them to contemplate the body’s impermanence and enter emptiness, nor is it immediately proclaiming the highest Middle Way. Between the two, they must also be taught to move through illness toward beings.

3. Why Does Knowing One Illness Require Immeasurable Alternatives?

Contemplation in entering the provisional first undertakes three tasks: knowing illness, recognizing medicine, and administering medicine according to illness. Illness includes the delusions of views and thought. Medicine includes the worldly, supramundane, and supramundane supreme. Administration must also be distinguished according to faculties. These three together form the discipline of the great physician.

Knowing illness begins with the delusions of views and thought. Views take the view of self as their root, and the view of self in turn takes one thought of deluded mind as its root. A thought of mind arises through deluded conception, and a self arises through inversion. From here immeasurable deviant views unfold; deviant views produce fetters and karma, and beings fall and revolve as a torch in the hand becomes a wheel of fire. To stop the wheel, one does not chase and extinguish every streak of fire around its rim. One stops the hand that turns the torch. When deluded conception and inversion cease, the root ceases and the branches naturally depart.

If the root is only one thought of deluded mind, why still distinguish dwelling place, season, land, food, poverty and wealth, bodily form, and temperament? Because the same inversion, situated within different dependent recompenses, direct recompenses, and karmic conditions, forms different views. One person renounces honor and office, another delights in gathering wood and fishing; one strikes an ox horn seeking ministerial rank, another carries a cooking vessel seeking high office; one favors civil arts, another martial affairs; one craves flavors, another drink; one is irascible, another joyful. Outer marks reveal inner karma; the tip discloses the root. If one merely says that everything is deluded conception but cannot see how deluded conception differs by place, time, and person, one still cannot administer medicine according to illness.

Duration is likewise a case history. Some views have accumulated across many lives; some arose only recently; some have just appeared in this life; others will flourish in the future. The same view takes different depths and degrees of gravity within different habits. The same dose of medicine cannot be administered without first asking how the illness has developed.

The counts of grades are the most daunting. One view of existence unfolds as three provisionalities; each provisionality as four alternatives; the four alternatives as four siddhāntas; each again as nature-emptiness, mark-emptiness, calming, and contemplation. Multiply these by practice through faith and Dharma and their mutual transitions, by the four views and their simple, compound, and complete forms, by breaker and broken, and by one’s own practice and transforming others: the result is 72,384 alternatives. Further unfold the sixty-two views and eighty-eight agents, and their number becomes immeasurable.

The point of these calculations is not to turn affliction into an enormous catalog, as though memorizing another number removed another portion of delusion. A “view” is never one isolated opinion. It has a manner of arising, a form of expression, an occasion for teaching, a treatment and what is treated, one’s own cultivation and cultivation taught to others. Only by knowing how many conditions together constitute this view and how many constitute another can the bodhisattva avoid error regarding their depth and gravity. This is called knowing origination; through knowing how origination circulates, he knows suffering.

The delusion of thought likewise requires knowledge of its root, conditions, duration, and grades, except that it takes delusion as its root. The eighty-one grades of the nine grounds each unfold through understanding by faith, attainment by seeing, the four siddhāntas, mutual transition between faith and Dharma, the three provisionalities, four alternatives, and the two emptinesses of nature and mark. Layer by layer, one’s own practice and transforming others yield 277,136 alternatives. If every meditative concentration and grade is further subdivided, the count cannot be exhausted. Views resemble forty li of water. Though thought does not arise laterally and conditions only one truth, it can still resemble ten li of water; calling it one drop certainly does not mean that its quantity is small.

People of the Two Vehicles enter emptiness directly through one gate and therefore make no prior distinctions. Before entering emptiness, bodhisattvas have already known the marks of illness in outline. When emerging into the provisional, they again use the calming that stills conditioned thoughts and the contemplation that takes the provisionality of thought as its object, thereby assisting the opening of the Dharma eye. It resembles the study of Vinaya. One need not stuff the five divisions into one’s chest, but must be able to correct oneself and others when conditions arise. If the numbered alternatives cannot be put immediately into practice, they are only a burden. When they can be used amid the conditions of illness, their abundance does not obstruct clarity.

4. Why Can Worldly Wholesome Dharmas Also Be Called Medicine?

Illnesses are immeasurable, and medicines are likewise immeasurable. The treatise divides medicines into worldly, supramundane, and supramundane supreme. This sequence first acknowledges something easily overlooked: if beings do not yet possess supramundane faculties, directly giving them profound Dharma may exceed what they can receive. Worldly wholesomeness that first keeps them from evil destinations and stabilizes human relationships is a genuine provisional rescue.

Benevolence, righteousness, ritual, wisdom, and trustworthiness can correspond to not killing, not stealing, not committing sexual misconduct, not becoming intoxicated, and not speaking falsely. Wood, metal, water, earth, and fire can likewise be integrated with the Five Precepts. The Book of Rites, Book of Music, Book of Odes, Book of Documents, and Book of Changes protect against corresponding faults through restraint, harmonizing mind, moral satire, righteousness and yielding, and gauging yin and yang. The five constant virtues established by the Duke of Zhou and Confucius can thus become Dharma medicine for governing the world. The bodhisattva cannot enter the world merely by knowing their names. He must penetrate worldly wisdom until people trust and follow him; only then can he guide them as a teacher.

Worldly medicine does not, however, treat the ultimate illness. Contaminated meditative concentration resembles water poured into a leaking vessel: though filled, it will empty. Worldly wholesomeness resembles colored clothing caught in rain: its hues eventually mottle and peel away. An illness temporarily cured later returns. Acknowledging the usefulness of worldly medicine does not elevate it into supramundane liberation. Seeing that it is not ultimate does not justify refusing rescue when beings cannot yet receive profound Dharma.

Supramundane Dharma medicine can consist of one path, two paths, or three Dharmas, up to 84,000 Dharma gates. The samādhi of one practice is one path. Concentration and wisdom are two wheels. Ethical discipline, concentration, and wisdom are three trainings. There are also the four foundations of mindfulness, five powers, six recollections, seven factors of awakening, Eightfold Path, nine perceptions, and ten knowledges. Every Dharma again has various names, marks, and treatments. If a maritime guide knows only one route, he cannot lead others when winds and currents change. A bodhisattva gathering Dharma medicine for beings must likewise pervasively know these unfoldings and contractions.

Supramundane supreme Dharma medicine also unfolds from one through ten. One Dharma is the single truth of reality. Two are calming and contemplation. Three are calming, contemplation, and ethical discipline following the path, as well as the three samādhis of emptiness, signlessness, and wishlessness. Four are the foundations of mindfulness contemplating form as neither pure nor impure, feeling as neither suffering nor pleasure, perception and formations as neither self nor no-self, and mind as neither permanent nor impermanent. Five unfold calming-and-contemplation as the five faculties and powers. Six recollect Buddha, Dharma, Saṅgha, ethical discipline, deities, and relinquishment within calming-and-contemplation. Seven gather tranquility, equanimity, and concentration under calming; investigation, joy, and diligence under contemplation; and mindfulness under both. Eight unfold the four alternatives that break provisionality as the Eightfold Path. Nine unfold the nine perceptions from the impure aggregates. Ten employ the ten knowledges to know suffering, origination, path, cessation, and the differences among beings.

How can one calming-and-contemplation unfold into so many medicines? Because a prescription is determined not by a number but by an illness. Shennong tasted plants: one, two, ten, or many ingredients could form a prescription. Medicinal substances have bark, flesh, sap, fruit, roots, stems, branches, and leaves; come from mountain, sea, water, land, and soils in the four directions; and must be harvested and dug, dry or moist, in season. The bodhisattva must likewise know which Dharma accords with a being’s aspirations and which does not; which is suitable as skillful means and which is not; which directly counteracts and which cannot; which leads into the ultimate and which does not.

One medicine may suffice to treat one illness in oneself. To become a great physician, one must pervasively know all medicines. From one concentration of quiescence, calming-and-contemplation unfolds immeasurable calming practices; from one great wisdom, immeasurable contemplations. Yet it still resembles measuring river water into sheng and ge, neither increasing nor decreasing the dose. Causes of illness, pain, prescription, treatment, and recovery all differ; therefore there are decoctions, emetics, purgatives, needles, cautery, pills, and powders. Knowing the origination of the afflictions of views and thought, the suffering caused by wholesome and unwholesome conduct, the path of every Dharma gate, and the cessations realized by beings, all medicine and illness remain within the various Four Truths.

5. Why Can an Old Prescription Not Be Followed Forever?

Shennong left original prescriptions. Why did Hua Tuo and Bian Que still examine the time and the medicines and establish new prescriptions? Because northern and southern regions differ; bodies differ in strength; foods and medicines differ in intensity; and illnesses differ in gravity. Rigidly preserving an original prescription may fail to treat later people. Formulating one according to the time can instead bring recovery.

When the Buddha appeared, beings’ faculties were mature. He taught according to their faculties, and none failed to awaken. In later ages, emotional attachments and delusions changed. Simply handing scriptural words directly to beings might not benefit them. Bodhisattvas therefore transmit scripture and compose treatises, establishing names and explaining meanings in accordance with scriptural Dharma. The criterion is not newness or antiquity but whether beings thereby awaken and enter. Preserving the old in a way that blocks transformation betrays the intent of entering the provisional. Establishing new terms apart from scripture and principle ceases to be Dharma giving. The wisdom of emptiness prevents the bodhisattva from clinging to an old prescription; compassion prevents him from amusing himself with novelty; the Dharma eye judges what is truly suitable amid differences of time, place, person, and medicine.

Administering medicine also begins from what beings can actually receive. If they lack supramundane faculties, the bodhisattva first stabilizes the world through the relations of ruler and minister, parent and child, ritual, music, virtue, and wisdom. Ritual assists ethical discipline; music assists concentration; the highest virtue and essential path assist wisdom. Remote antiquity was not suited to the supramundane, and distant lands had not called forth a buddha’s appearance. Ritual and righteousness were therefore opened first so that Great- and Small-Vehicle scriptures could later be trusted and received. Worldly medicine is not the destination, but it can be the indispensable bridge preceding profound Dharma.

Once supramundane faculties are present, medicine is administered according to lower, middling, higher, and supreme faculties. Those with lower faculties have narrow aspirations, weak practice, heavy five turbidities, and dull wisdom; they are treated through arising and cessation, the six perfections as concrete practices, strenuous counteraction, and severance of sexual desire, anger, and delusion. Four treatises and gates further accord with their aspirations toward existence, nonexistence, both, or neither. Middling faculties are somewhat stronger and receive the medicine that conditioned arising is immediately empty. Higher faculties have broad minds, lighter obstructions, and great wisdom; they receive the immeasurable Four Truths and sequential entry into the Middle. Supreme faculties have no equal; they are directly taught that wholesomeness arises like empty space, obstruction ceases like empty space, and the ultimate path is entered. Each of the four faculties has four gates, making sixteen truths of path and cessation that counteract sixteen truths of suffering and origination.

One cloud releases rain, yet every plant and tree grows according to its own nature. The bodhisattva likewise emits wondrous sounds according to beings’ kinds, causing Dharma sound to enter their minds so they take the corresponding medicine and each gains benefit. If one refuses to teach sixteen gates because there are no Dharmas in emptiness, there is no entry into the provisional. If one abandons the wisdom of emptiness while teaching the sixteen gates, one loses what was gained by entry into emptiness.

6. Must One Reach a Very High Stage before Returning to Deliver Others?

Practitioners often think: the delusions of views are not yet exhausted, and the delusions of thought are more distant still; how could I have the capacity to emerge into the provisional? This thought resembles hearing of a distant mountain of seven treasures and binding one’s feet for the journey, only to retreat immediately because the road is dangerous. It also resembles a ruined seed already sunk into emptiness that later hears of bodhisattva merit and can only weep in remorse. If entry into the provisional is always postponed to a distant fruit, there will never be a first step today.

The treatise distinguishes three faculties within each of the four teachings. A person of lower faculties in the Tripiṭaka Teaching formally enters the provisional only in the third incalculable eon; one of middling faculties can transform beings in the second; one of higher faculties seeks from the first arousal of mind to deliver everyone and, although knowing emptiness, does not abandon beings. A person of lower faculties in the Shared Teaching must exhaust delusion; one of middling faculties can enter the provisional after severing views; through wisdom born of hearing, one of higher faculties embodies the immediate emptiness of views and thought at the initial mind and can at once become a refuge for beings. A person of lower faculties in the Distinct Teaching cultivates the provisional in the ten practices after the ten abodes; one of middling faculties obtains the uncontaminated and irreversible at the initial mind of the ten abodes and can immediately emerge and function; one of higher faculties already knows at the first arousal of mind that merit is illusory while still cultivating skillful means. In the Perfect Teaching, purification of the six faculties certainly sees all ten realms, yet disciples of the five grades who practice the six perfections and teach Dharma extensively have already entered the provisional. Since the initial mind perfectly contemplates the three truths, it can be immediately the Middle and immediately provisional.

Why, then, do scriptures also say that one cultivates emergence into the provisional only at the eighth, sixth, or seventh ground? Those are single paths explained according to particular faculties and do not encompass every kind. Cultivating only emptiness through the sixth ground resembles a great bird three hundred yojanas long whose body is enormous but whose two wings are absent, falling from heaven. The more the body of emptiness, signlessness, and wishlessness is fattened while the wings of contemplating the provisional fail to grow, the more one risks falling into the ground of the Two Vehicles. The wondrous Dharma that can treat such a ruined seed does not deny the emptiness previously cultivated. It causes the mind whose wisdom was extinguished to produce Great-Vehicle wholesome roots anew.

All four teachings have three faculties. If one fixed stage of entering the provisional must be designated, the treatise uses lower faculties as the standard. First, this follows the sequence of a teaching. Second, on reaching this point one is definitely irreversible. People of middling or higher faculties may enter earlier but can still advance or retreat, so their stages do not define the teaching’s representative stage. This judgment preserves two things at once. One may not say that everyone is complete at the initial mind merely because higher faculties can enter early. Nor may one deny the possibility of benefiting others from the initial mind merely because lower faculties enter later.

Entry into emptiness itself also has conceptual, approximate, and true entry. Conceptual entry is not scattered emotion or imagination. Before approximate and true realization, contemplation taking truth as its object first corresponds to the Dharma of emptiness. Even if one retreats, repeated recollection and cultivation later yield great benefit. The Shared Teaching can enter and emerge but cannot immediately be the Middle. The Distinct Teaching enters and emerges sequentially but cannot do so in one mind. The Perfect Teaching enters and emerges in one mind and, according to faculties, can enter one truth more and the other two less. Although their proportions increase and decrease, none of the three truths is absent. The ability to be perfect does not obstruct the manifestation of distinctions.

7. What Is True Benefit?

The bodhisattva originally cultivates emptiness for beings. Because he does not prize emptiness, he does not abide in it. Because he seeks to benefit beings, he arises in response from the true, with the Dharma eye according with faculties. For those to be delivered through a buddha-body, he manifests a buddha-body. For those to be delivered through bodhisattvas, the Two Vehicles, gods, nāgas, and the eight classes, he manifests the corresponding bodies. Accomplishing beings and purifying buddha-lands together form the complete shape of benefit.

Although Tripiṭaka-Teaching bodhisattvas emerge into the provisional, they still rely on contaminated superknowledges and worldly discrimination and can provide only limited benefit. Although Shared-Teaching bodhisattvas know medicine and illness, their diagnosis and recognition of medicine are not yet deep or far-reaching, and their superknowledges still arise through intentional effort. True response-transformation has beginning and end. One first becomes parent or teacher, forms affinities life after life, and regulates beings everywhere; when their faculties mature, one is born in a royal palace, sits beneath the tree of awakening, turns the Dharma wheel, enters nirvāṇa, and leaves relics. A sudden appearance followed by disappearance provides only a fragmentary moment of benefit and cannot yet be called accomplishment.

After entry into the grounds in the Distinct Teaching, one body can manifest immeasurable bodies; knowing illness exhausts its sources, recognizing medicine exhausts its treasury, and administering medicine fits as one seal to another without error. Harmonizing one’s light and mingling with the dust begins the formation of affinities; the eight marks of awakening conclude a period of transformation. All who see or hear gain benefit, and everything done purifies buddha-lands. True benefit is likewise present from the first abode onward in the Perfect Teaching.

Transformation by itself is therefore not proof. Māra can transform into a buddha image, non-Buddhists can display strange arts, and the five worldly superknowledges can produce immeasurable forms. If the mere sight of something extraordinary were enough to establish true response, deviant transformation would be confused with response descending from the Dharma body. The criterion is not how astonishing an appearance may be, but whether it arises naturally in response from the ground of the Dharma body throughout the ten realms and truly accomplishes beings and purifies buddha-lands.

8. Why Must the Text Conclude by Speaking of Pervasiveness Again?

Before true wisdom arises, the hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands of objects of clinging are all called views. Blind people asked the color of milk and mistook the colors of other objects for milk’s color. Blind people touched an elephant and said it resembled a rope or pestle. A sick person spoke deliriously and took deluded perception as true. If even one point among the simple, compound, and complete four views remains unbroken, one cannot enter emptiness. According to textual sequence, pervasive breaking through Dharmas occurs only when views and thought are exhausted.

The treatise immediately moves one level deeper. Views and thought are ignorance; ignorance is Dharma-nature. Breaking views and thought is breaking ignorance; breaking ignorance is seeing Dharma-nature. Only entry into the emptiness of the true mark is true pervasiveness. The same applies to entering the provisional from emptiness. Illness-Dharmas, medicine-Dharmas, and administration-of-medicine Dharmas are immeasurable. As long as even one point among them remains unpenetrated, breaking is not yet pervasive. Before the Dharma eye arises, one may distinguish, but one’s vision remains only partial.

At purification of the six faculties, distinguishing one illness reveals many kinds, understanding one sentence of Dharma penetrates immeasurable sentences, and the simultaneous teaching of the buddhas of the ten directions can all be received and retained at once. Yet this is only the breath of approximation. When ignorance obstructing superknowledge is broken and true and conventional are illuminated together, it is called pervasive breaking through Dharmas.

The final answer, then, is not to multiply the seventy-two thousand alternatives into a still larger number. Sequential breaking layer by layer cannot yet be called pervasive; only nonsequential breaking is pervasive. Because the preceding contemplations unfold in so many overlapping layers that practitioners might lose their way, the treatise uses pervasive breaking through Dharmas as its conclusion after contemplation in entering emptiness and contemplation in entering the provisional.

Through the Eye of the Fuxing

Zhanran first gathers the intent of entering the provisional under “great compassion benefiting beings” and clearly judges planting a tree in empty space to be the mark of emerging into the provisional. The arrow simile does more than display remarkable technique. The arrow of prajñā is shot into emptiness first; the arrow of skillful means follows and supports it, preventing its fall onto the ground of nirvāṇa. This explanation illuminates at once not falling into birth-and-death and not abiding in nirvāṇa. As for “grief of the same body,” Zhanran limits it to seeing beings’ suffering as one’s own and does not read it as the identity of substance associated with unconditioned great compassion.

The five conditions and five similes are paired one by one in the mirror. Kinship is an inborn bond corresponding to compassion of the same body. Compact is a binding covenant corresponding to the original vow. Strategy is an extraordinary plan corresponding to skillful means. Strength is vigor corresponding to sharp wisdom. Courage is intrepidity corresponding to diligence. This makes the preceding four alternatives of sharp and dull faculties concrete: wisdom occupies only one place, and emergence into the provisional still depends on whether the other four conditions are complete. The threefold consolation in the Vimalakīrtinirdeśa Sūtra is Zhiyi’s judgment of the chapter on inquiring about illness. Entry into the provisional occupies the place between entry into emptiness and entry into the Middle; the scripture itself does not list these three headings.

Zhanran explicitly says that not one of the three Dharmas—knowing illness, recognizing medicine, and administering medicine according to illness—may be lacking, and gives the great physician and good spiritual friend as their classical background. Within the calculations of the delusions of views, direct totals and totals that include the roots coexist, which makes the number sequence appear to jump. The point of the five divisions of the Vinaya is likewise not to memorize a chestful of titles, but to prepare a cause for opening the Dharma eye so one can correct oneself and others when conditions arise.

In Zhanran’s judgment, the three kinds of Dharma medicine all belong to what a bodhisattva emerging from emptiness into the provisional must pervasively know. The treatise’s own term at the conclusion, however, is “ignorance obstructing superknowledge”; the two cannot be substituted for one another. Supramundane and supreme medicines may share counts and names, but the meanings of supreme medicines must return to the Perfect and Distinct. In the simile of medicinal substances, bark, flesh, sap, and fruit respectively correspond to the four siddhāntas; roots, stems, branches, and leaves correspond to faith, ethical discipline, concentration, and wisdom; and the soils of the four directions represent the four gates within each of the four teachings. These are meanings unfolded in the mirror, not items explicitly stated one by one by the author in the main text.

In the passage on Shennong, Hua Tuo, and Bian Que, Zhanran compares Shennong to the Buddha and later skilled physicians to bodhisattvas emerging into the provisional. Composing treatises in reliance on scriptures is the making of new prescriptions. Regarding “I dispatched three sages,” the mirror separately names an old scripture and associates Yan Hui, Confucius, and Laozi with particular bodhisattvas, but Zhanran immediately records that many catalogs suspect the work to be spurious. The main treatise names no scripture there. What the Fuxing records therefore combines a supplementary source attribution with language of doubt.

The four faculties—lower, middling, higher, and supreme—are named by viewing the four teachings in relation to one another. The sixteen gates arise because every gate possesses the Four Truths, yielding sixteen truths of path and cessation to counteract sixteen truths of suffering and origination. For the rain from one cloud, the mirror judges the cloud to be manifested bodies and the rain to be the teaching of Dharma. Heavenly rain is impartial, yet what plants and trees receive differs. This qualification locates difference in the faculties receiving Dharma, not in partiality of the Dharma rain.

Regarding stages, scriptural references to the eighth and other grounds in the Shared Teaching are only initial explanations according to faculties; they cannot comprehensively cover the universally applicable intent. The great-bird simile is likewise Zhiyi’s adaptive reuse according to meaning, and its details are not listed verbatim in a Shared-Teaching scripture. Zhanran judges purification of the six faculties in the Perfect Teaching to be entry into the provisional for lower faculties and says its function already exceeds the ten dedications of the Distinct Teaching. The core of the five exchanges that follow the stage discussion is that one mind can also make distinctions, because superior capacity can encompass inferior capacity.

The mirror’s judgment of the benefits passage is stricter still. True benefit from emerging into the provisional necessarily begins at the first ground of the Distinct Teaching or first abode of the Perfect Teaching. Bodhisattvas of the Tripiṭaka and Shared teachings do not truly arise in response. The treatise first describes their limited benefits; the Fuxing separately uses stages to restrict what counts as true benefit from emerging into the provisional. Distinguishing deviant from correct transformation is necessary precisely because demonic objects can assume similar appearances; the ground from which a response arises and the reality of its accomplishment must determine the judgment.

At the conclusion of pervasiveness, Zhanran first distinguishes wording from original intent. Textually, pervasively breaking views and thought is only entry into emptiness. In intent, one must see that views and thought are ignorance and ignorance is Dharma-nature. Entering the provisional from emptiness likewise has both sequential textual marks and nonsequential textual intent. The “ignorance obstructing superknowledge” that is broken is explicitly identified in the mirror as ignorance that obstructs the superknowledges of the inconceivable path of transformation. The conclusion could have been left until after contemplation of the Middle Way, yet it gathers the discussion here because all the preceding layered unfoldings ultimately do not go beyond one mind. Through this eye, “pervasive” does not become a total count of categories but returns to whether one mind can be immediately empty, immediately provisional, and unobstructedly penetrating.

For the simile of the whirling wheel of fire, Zhanran further judges fettering karma to be origination and falling into painful destinations to be suffering, showing suffering and origination revolving through one another. In the similes of the leaking vessel and colored garment, meditative Dharma is water, mind-nature the vessel, and mental conduct the leak; worldly meditative concentration is the colored garment, mental conduct the rain, and loss of attainment the fading of color. In both cases, every element of the simile is bound back to the Dharma meaning being taught without expanding the image into another sequence never stated by the author.