解深密經 義疏通講

Why the Introduction Is Not Merely an Introduction

Every sūtra has its introduction, and one tends to read past it. But the introduction to this chapter is no idle opening: what it lays out at the very start — the dwelling of the Bhagavān, the Buddha's virtues, the virtues of the two assemblies — together with the ten bodhisattva leaders it names at the end, is precisely what sets the ground for the whole sūtra. Woncheuk [圓測] divides the entire sūtra into three parts, and the Introduction is the first of them, the "part on the causes and conditions of the teaching's arising": why a sūtra arises, by whom it is spoken, where it is spoken, and for whom it is spoken — all of this the introduction makes known. And the way it makes this known has its own deep import: the Buddha dwells in a great palace that has "for its mark the utmost-sovereign pure consciousness" and there speaks this sūtra — before we have even entered the main teaching, the vein of Consciousness-Only already lies hidden within the realm of this dwelling. And so this chapter is the door through which one enters this root sūtra of Consciousness-Only.

The Realm Displayed by the Adornment of the Buddha-Ground, in Both Its Supporting and Supported Aspects

To speak this deepest of Consciousness-Only sūtras, why, before He opens His mouth, does the Buddha first take a long passage to lay out the very palace in which He abides? At the very start, the introduction writes out, clause by clause, the dwelling of the Bhagavān: a great palace most radiant and adorned with the seven jewels, casting forth a great light that illumines the boundless worlds, surpassing the courses of the three realms, arisen from supramundane roots of goodness. This is no scene-painting — following the Buddhabhūmi-śāstra [佛地經論], Woncheuk takes the nineteen clauses of this dwelling to display precisely the "eighteen perfections" of the Buddha's pure land: perfection of visible colour, of shape, of measure, of locale, of cause, of fruit, of lord, of retinue-in-attendance, of company, of upholding, of activity, of benefiting, of fearlessness, of abode, of road, of vehicle, of gate, and of support — these nineteen clauses displaying, in their order, these eighteen kinds of perfection, so that the palace they adorn is named the Buddha's pure land.

The passage that follows is the Buddha's virtues: the most purified awakening, conduct that falls into neither extreme, the tending toward the markless Dharma, abiding in the abode wherein Buddhas abide, the realizing of the nature shared by all Buddhas, on to the realizing of the equality of the Buddha-ground that has no middle and no bound, exhausting the nature of empty space, reaching to the farthest limit of the future. The former passage displays the adornment of the pure land on which the Buddha rests; this passage displays the perfection of the body and wisdom by which the Buddha rests upon it. With these two adornments — the supporting and the supported — the realm of the Buddha-ground is laid out plainly. This is no idle stroke of the brush: precisely because what this sūtra means to disclose is the deepest doctrine of Consciousness-Only, it first sets the one who discloses (the Buddha) and the realm on which the disclosing rests (the pure land) at the most perfect of heights.

How "Having for Its Mark the Utmost-Sovereign Pure Consciousness" Already Conceals the Vein of Consciousness-Only

Of the nineteen clauses on the dwelling, the sixth — "having for its mark the utmost-sovereign pure consciousness" — most deserves notice: it is the "perfection of fruit" among the eighteen perfections, and Woncheuk expressly cites Bandhuprabha's [親光] commentary in the Buddhabhūmi-śāstra to bring out its Consciousness-Only sense: "That is, the great palace, utterly sovereign, has the Buddha's untainted mind for its very substance and mark — because there is consciousness only, and apart from consciousness there are no jewels and the like standing separately outside it; it is the Buddha's pure mind that thus transforms-and-manifests what seems to be the host of jewels and so forth — this, then, is the pure consciousness conjoined with the Tathāgata's Great Mirror Wisdom."

This one clause says it through and through: this great palace adorned with the seven jewels is not a case of jewels and the like, real things, set out there apart from consciousness; it is precisely what the Buddha's untainted pure mind — the pure consciousness conjoined with the Great Mirror Wisdom — transforms-and-manifests as a semblance of jewel-adornment. In other words, even a realm as perfect as the Buddha's pure land is nothing other than what consciousness manifests. The sūtra is still in its introduction, has not yet formally established the doctrine of Consciousness-Only — and yet the statement "because there is consciousness only, and apart from consciousness there are no jewels and the like standing separately" is already stored within this clause on the adornment of the dwelling. This makes the clause important scriptural material for later Yogācāra accounts of Buddha-lands; how each treatise uses it remains a matter for comparison at that treatise's explicit passage.

The Meaning of the Eighteen Perfections

These eighteen aspects are ranged out one by one — why is it that the sixth alone, "fruit," most deserves the eye? Because it is just this aspect that turns the whole array of the pure land's adornment into a single clause of Consciousness-Only. The eighteen perfections analyse the perfection of the Buddha's pure land into eighteen aspects for display: visible colour, shape, measure, and locale speak of the pure land in its appearance, its size, and its place; cause and fruit speak of the roots of goodness from which the pure land is formed (cause) and of what it has for its substance and mark (fruit); lord, retinue-in-attendance, and company speak of the lord of this land (the Tathāgata) and of the bodhisattvas and the followers gathered like clouds within it; upholding, activity, benefiting, and fearlessness speak of how this land can uphold the savour of Dharma, accomplish the benefit of beings, extinguish affliction and calamity, and stand apart from the hosts of Māra; and abode, road, vehicle, gate, and support are precisely what the sūtra's clauses display — "the ground on which the Tathāgata's adornment rests" displays the abode, "with great mindfulness, wisdom, and conduct for the road it travels" displays the road, "with great calm and wondrous insight for what it rides upon" displays the vehicle, "with the great emptiness, the markless, and the wishless liberations for the gate it enters by" displays the gate, and "raised up by a host of great jewel-flower kings" displays the support.

The nineteen clauses of the sūtra, in their order, display these eighteen matters. And among these eighteen aspects, the sixth, "perfection of fruit," is just the clause "having for its mark the utmost-sovereign pure consciousness" — it is not merely one of the eighteen, but the pivot of this whole array of adornment: visible colour, shape, and measure have spoken the pure land's appearance to the full, and only at this aspect of "fruit" is it pointed out from where that appearance comes to be — solely what the Buddha's pure consciousness transforms-and-manifests. The fullness of the introduction's laying-out looks to be only a setting-up, one by one, of the perfect realm of the Buddha-ground, establishing a most perfect place from which what follows may be expounded; yet in truth, at the very centre of these eighteen aspects, the one clause of Consciousness-Only — "pure consciousness for its mark" — has already been quietly laid down as a hidden vein.

Why These Ten Bodhisattvas Are Named as Leaders

At the end of the introduction, ten bodhisattvas are named as leaders: He Who Unravels the Hidden Intent of the Profound Meaning, Who Asks in Accord with Principle, Dharma-Welling-Forth, Well-Purified Wisdom, Broad Wisdom, Root-of-Virtue, Born of the Ultimate Meaning, Avalokiteśvara, Maitreya, and Mañjuśrī. This list is no casual roll-call of retinue: it anticipates principal interlocutors in the chapters that follow, but is not an exhaustive list of questioners.

The bodhisattva He Who Unravels the Hidden Intent of the Profound Meaning is the respondent in Chapter Two; Who Asks in Accord with Principle, Dharma-Welling-Forth, and Well-Purified Wisdom are its first three questioners. Elder Subhūti, the fourth Chapter Two interlocutor, is not among the ten. Broad Wisdom asks about mind, thought, and consciousness in Chapter Three; Root-of-Virtue about the three characteristics in Chapter Four; Born of the Ultimate Meaning about the three non-natures in Chapter Five; thereafter Maitreya asks about calm and insight (Chapter Six), Avalokiteśvara about the grounds and perfections (Chapter Seven), and Mañjuśrī about the fruit of Buddhahood (Chapter Eight). The ten leaders therefore anticipate the principal interlocutors of the later chapters, but they are neither an exhaustive list of questioners nor ten people each asking one question. The list remains an important structural foreshadowing stored within the introduction.

An Introduction, and No Idle One

Taken together: this introduction opens with the adornment of the Buddha-ground in both its supporting and supported aspects, and in the one clause "having for its mark the pure consciousness" already conceals the vein of Consciousness-Only; with the Buddha's virtues it displays the perfection of the one who expounds; with the virtues of the two assemblies it displays the excellence of those in attendance; and at the end, with the ten bodhisattva leaders, it anticipates the principal interlocutors of the later chapters without exhausting their questioners. The door of a root sūtra of Consciousness-Only is in this way set up — to read this introduction is not to read past an opening scene, but to read the whole compass of the sūtra: why it arises, from what place it is spoken, and among which principal interlocutors its questions and answers unfold.

A General Statement of the Five Mark of Ultimate Truth

What kind of characteristic, after all, is the ultimate truth? That one line is what this chapter asks after. The World-Honoured One does not hand down a definition outright — He cannot, for the ultimate is simply no object that can be pointed out head-on — but instead brings it into view through four approaches of question and answer: in the first, the Bodhisattva Who Asks in Accord with Principle questions the Bodhisattva Who Understands the Profound Secret Meaning; only in the latter three do the questioners report what they have observed and ask the World-Honoured One to decide. Woncheuk divides the seven chapters of the sūtra's main exposition into three stretches: the first four chapters clarify the object to be contemplated; the next two distinguish the contemplating practice; the last one displays the fruit attained. The present chapter belongs at the very head of the first stretch, "the object to be contemplated," to its "clarifying of the true truth," and together with the next chapter ("clarifying of the conventional truth") forms the pair of the two truths. Within the chapter, following the words of the Yogācārabhūmi scroll seventy-five — "the ultimate truth has five characteristics" — it is gathered into four stretches, fitting exactly with the four chapters of Paramārtha's Foshuo Jiejie jing (佛說解節經), the full counterpart to T676 Chapter 2, divided into four chapters and partial only relative to the sūtra as a whole. In a word: this chapter explicitly establishes the five characteristics of ultimate truth and is an important scriptural source for ultimate truth and suchness. Later works are compared only at the identified passages in the Madhyānta-vibhāga, Mahāyāna-saṃgraha, and Thirty Verses; they are not all said to take this chapter as a single ground.

Which five characteristics? Inexpressible, non-dual, beyond reasoning, neither-one-nor-other, and a single taste pervading everything — it is apart from all speech, falls into neither of the two extremes of conditioned and unconditioned, is no place that reasoning's reckoning can reach, is neither one with nor other than the conditioning-forces, and equally pervades all dharmas without difference. The five characteristics are not five things, but one and the same ultimate seen from five sides, one and the same matter. And the rare thing is that this chapter speaks none of the characteristics in the void: the first exchange is answered by the Bodhisattva Who Understands the Profound Secret Meaning with the conjuror simile; in the latter three, the questioners report what they observed and the World-Honoured One responds with the bitter-and-pungent savour, fresh-white conch, and space similes. What follows takes up the four sections in order, leading with the question and bringing forth with the simile, opening out each characteristic in turn.

Section One: Why the Ultimate Is Inexpressible and Non-Dual

The bodhisattva Who Asks in Accord with Principle asks after "the non-duality of all dharmas," and the bodhisattva He Who Unravels the Hidden Intent of the Profound Meaning answers — and this one answer establishes the characteristic of being inexpressible and the characteristic of being non-dual.

What is answered out is, first, the twofold division of all dharmas: the conditioned and the unconditioned. And the key line is this: the conditioned is neither conditioned nor unconditioned; the unconditioned too is neither unconditioned nor conditioned. This "non-duality" is not the merging of two things into one; rather it says: the two names "conditioned" and "unconditioned" are themselves not the true face of the dharmas. The scripture says it plainly: what is called "conditioned" is a phrase provisionally set up by the Foundational Teacher; being a phrase provisionally set up, it is amassed by imagination and spoken in words, in the last analysis but the manifold things of imagination's words, not amounting to anything real, and therefore "not the conditioned." The unconditioned is likewise. To put it another way: the conditioned and the unconditioned are only names-and-notions that the Buddha provisionally set up upon the inexpressible Dharma-nature, in order to make others fully awake; the name is provisionally set up, the Dharma-nature is inexpressible. This is "inexpressible": the ultimate is apart from all provisionally-set-up words. And since neither of the two names, conditioned and unconditioned, amounts to anything real, there is nothing to be grasped at — this is "non-dual." (The inexpressible runs through all four characteristics; it is only here, with the non-dual, that the two are spoken of close together.)

But if words amount to nothing real, is there then nothing whatever to be spoken of? No. The scripture asks back, "What is the thing?" and answers: the noble ones, by noble wisdom and noble vision, being apart from name-and-word, become fully and rightly awake; and upon just this inexpressible Dharma-nature, in order to make others fully awake, they then provisionally set up a name-and-notion and call it conditioned, call it unconditioned. So "inexpressible" is not annihilation, not the having of nothing to point to; the "thing" pointed to is precisely the inexpressible Dharma-nature itself, realized by the noble ones apart from name-and-word — it is only that this Dharma-nature is beyond what words can reach, and whatever names are set up are all provisional settings-up.

This whole sense rests upon the World-Honoured One's simile of the skilled conjuror — and this simile is the eye of the passage. A skilled conjuror stands at a great crossroads and conjures the tile, gravel, grass, and sticks beneath his feet into elephants, horses, chariots, and foot-soldiers, conjures forth jewels, pearls, conch, and granaries. One and the same conjuring; and three sorts of people, seeing it, see three different things.

The first sort, the foolish and of bad wisdom, see it before them and take it for real, settling it in their hearts that "there are real elephant-bodies, real horse-bodies, real treasures," and clinging fast to "this alone is real, all the rest is foolishness and delusion" — what they see is illusion, yet what they grasp is the real. The second sort, those of good wisdom, know there are no real elephants or horses, only "an illusory shape deceiving the eye"; they too follow along in raising notions and in saying "this is an elephant, that is a treasure," yet they know in their hearts it is not real, and do not cling fast. The third sort, a step higher still, are the noble ones who have seen the noble truths and know the inexpressible Dharma-nature as it truly is: toward all that is conditioned and unconditioned they see clearly — "surely there is no real conditioned or unconditioned, yet there is an appearance, arising from discrimination, like an illusory thing." Mount these three sorts in turn, and the very boundary between worldling and noble one stands revealed.

The crux lies in one line of Woncheuk's glossing of Paramārtha's record: "This is a figure for how beings, through deluded and inverted manifold discrimination, long abide in birth-and-death and undergo all manner of suffering, not knowing the illusion's source and the inexpressible non-dual suchness, and grasp it as really existent; while the noble ones see clearly, and recognize this as not real." The pith is in the two words "the illusion's source" — the illusion's source is that inexpressible Dharma-nature. Not to recognize the illusion's source but to grasp the illusion as real is just the worldling's giving rise, upon the conditioned and the unconditioned, to a grasping at them as surely and really existent; to recognize the illusion's source as not real is just the noble one's becoming fully awake apart from name-and-word. Names like "conditioned" and "unconditioned" are like the elephants and horses the conjuror brings forth: you may follow along and say them, but you must not take them for real — to take them for real is to mistake provisionally-set-up words for the true face of the dharmas. The meaning of being inexpressible and non-dual is brought to light in full by this one illusion-simile.

Section Two: Why the Ultimate Is Beyond Reasoning (Five Reasons)

In the second section, the bodhisattva Dharma-Welling-Forth brings forward a thing he has himself witnessed, and so asks out the characteristic of being beyond the range of reasoning.

In another Buddha-land he had seen a place: seventy-seven thousand followers of other paths, together with their head teachers, sat together in one gathering and all at once "deliberated, weighed, examined, and searched out on every side" the characteristic of the ultimate truth — many of them, their strength concerted, their searching diligent — and in the end gained nothing whatever. What they came away with was only "all manner of construals, divergent construals, altered construals," each holding to his own word, at odds with one another, until at last "they loosed from their mouths the spears and lances of speech, and with spear after spear thrust at, pricked, vexed, and undid one another, and each scattered apart." Seventy-seven thousand clever heads reckoning together, and what they reckoned out was not the ultimate but a brawl, speech for their spears and lances, wounding one another. This scene shows the matter by contrast all the more plainly: the ultimate is simply no realm that reasoning's reckoning can reach — the harder you reckon, the farther off you are. The World-Honoured One thereupon, by five reasons, speaks the "beyond-reasoning" through to the end. First: the ultimate is what the noble ones inwardly realize within themselves, while what reasoning ranges over is only what worldlings realize by handing it on from one to another — the ultimate is an inwardly-realized realm, not to be handed on by transmission. Second: the ultimate ranges in the markless, while reasoning ranges only in the realm of marks — the ultimate is no realm of mark-grasping. Third: the ultimate is inexpressible, while reasoning ranges only in the realm of speech — the ultimate is beyond what speech can reach. Fourth: the ultimate cuts off all indication, while reasoning ranges only in the realm of indication — the ultimate cannot be marked out by the manifold indications of seeing, hearing, sensing, and knowing. Fifth: the ultimate cuts off all dispute, while reasoning ranges only in the realm of dispute — the ultimate is beyond the reach of right-and-wrong contention. Inwardly realized, markless, inexpressible, cutting off indication, cutting off dispute: these five reasons, one by one, place reasoning outside the ultimate, and therefore "know that the ultimate is beyond the realm-characteristic of all reasoning."

These five reasons the World-Honoured One brings forth each with a simile, and the five similes all strike the same knot: a man is bound by his own long-standing habit, so that he cannot so much as conceive another kind of realm.

Take the first simile first. There is a man who "all his life has been used to bitter and pungent flavours" — a lifetime with nothing in his mouth but the bitter, the harsh, the astringent, never once touched by the sweet. Speak to him of honey, of rock-sugar, of such exquisite savours, and he "cannot reason it out, cannot reckon it, cannot believe-and-understand it" — not that he refuses to believe, but that on that tongue of his there is simply nothing to set it against; he cannot so much as conceive what sweet is. Just so is the reasoner toward the savour of the ultimate: it is not that the ultimate is too far off, but that he has only ever lived in this one savour of reasoning, and his tongue is already set.

The remaining four similes are every one of this same pattern: each names one thing "long clung to," and thereby one fine realm is barred. The man scorched through the long night by the burning fires of desire-greed cannot conceive the subtle, far-off joy of seclusion that "extinguishes all the marks of form, sound, smell, taste, and touch" — the desire-bound do not understand the joy of inward realization. The man who through the long night relishes and clings to the world's ornate speech cannot conceive the "joy of the noble silence inwardly stilled" — the speech-bound do not understand the wordless realm. The man who through the long night relishes and clings to the manifold indications cannot conceive the "cessation of the self-body-view, the ultimate nirvāṇa, that forever severs all indication" — the indication-bound do not understand the ultimate that cuts off indication. The man who through the long night harbours "mine" and "appropriation," relishing and clinging to dispute, cannot conceive the state of the Northern Continent Kuru, "where there is no 'mine,' no appropriation, and dispute is left behind" — the dispute-bound do not understand the ultimate that cuts off dispute. Five similes set out together, matching the five reasons one to one: the deeper the one savour you have long settled into, the farther off is the ultimate it surpasses — the man used to bitter-and-pungent cannot taste honey, the man habituated to dispute cannot conceive non-dispute, the principle is one and the same.

Section Three: Why the Ultimate Is Neither One with nor Other than the Conditioning-Forces (Breaking the Two Graspings, the Two Bondages and Two Obstructions)

In the third section, the bodhisattva Well-Purified Wisdom too brings forward a dispute he has himself witnessed: he had seen, at one gathering, bodhisattvas on the stage of resolute conduct sitting together to deliberate whether "the characteristic of ultimate truth and the characteristic of the conditioning-forces are one, or are other," deliberating until they split into two parties each holding to its end, while bystanders still wondered to one side "whose word is real and whose is false." This dispute asks out the characteristic of being beyond the sameness-or-otherness of all dharmas.

The two ends of the dispute are: one sort grasps that the characteristic of ultimate truth and the characteristic of the conditioning-forces are "altogether without difference" (sameness); one sort grasps that they are "wholly other" (otherness). The World-Honoured One breaks both ends. First He breaks "altogether without difference": if the ultimate and the conditioning-forces had not the least difference, then since worldlings range amid the conditioning-forces day after day, would not all worldlings have long since seen the truths, long since won the unsurpassed, skilful, secure nirvāṇa, long since realized supreme awakening? But this is not so in fact, and therefore "altogether without difference" does not accord with reason. Next He breaks "wholly other": if the ultimate and the conditioning-forces were entirely other, then one who has seen the truths could not do away with the characteristic of the conditioning-forces; unable to do away with it, he could not win release from the bondage to marks, nor even from the bondage of gross heaviness; the two bondages unloosened, he could not win nirvāṇa, could not realize awakening. But the fact is that one who has seen the truths can do away with the conditioning-forces, can win release from the two obstructions, can win nirvāṇa and realize awakening — and therefore "wholly other" too does not accord with reason.

The World-Honoured One presses the breaking still closer from two further sides. First, by way of defilement and purity: if "altogether without difference," then since the conditioning-forces fall within the characteristic of defilement, the ultimate too should fall within defilement — but the ultimate does not fall within defilement, and therefore it is not without difference; if "wholly other," then the ultimate should not be the common characteristic of the conditioning-forces — but the ultimate is precisely the common characteristic of the conditioning-forces, and therefore it is not wholly other. Second, by way of cultivation-and-realization: if "altogether without difference," then the ultimate would have no distinctions among the conditioning-forces, and all the characteristics of the conditioning-forces too should be without distinctions, and the one who contemplates, having seen, heard, sensed, and known, would have no need to seek the ultimate any further — but the characteristics of the conditioning-forces do have distinctions, and the one who contemplates must still seek the ultimate further afterward; if "wholly other," then the ultimate should not be "that which the conditioning-forces manifest as their mere selflessness, their mere ownnaturelessness," and the two characteristics of defilement and purity should be established severally at one and the same moment — but the ultimate is just what the conditioning-forces manifest as their selflessness and ownnaturelessness, and defilement and purity are not established severally at the same moment. By these two breakings, the meaning of the ultimate's being neither one with nor other than the conditioning-forces is established from all four sides: from the seeing of the truths, from the two bondages and two obstructions, from defilement-and-purity, and from cultivation-and-realization.

These four words "neither one nor other" are fine and hard to figure, and the World-Honoured One chose to raise a thing every man has seen to bring it to light — the conch. This simile is the eye of the passage; consider a single conch.

Take up a conch: that body of fresh-white colour — can you say it is "one" with the conch? You cannot: the conch is a single thing, the four elements of earth, water, fire, and wind compounded; the fresh-white is a colour-nature upon it; thing is thing and colour is colour, the general and the particular plainly distinct — how could they be said to be one and the same? Then can you say it is "other"? You cannot either: peel that fresh-white off the conch and show it to me alone — it cannot be peeled off; apart from the conch there is no fresh-white that can be pointed out by itself. Woncheuk glosses it just to the point: the conch is a figure for the characteristic of the conditioning-forces (its four sense-objects being each distinct); the fresh-white colour-nature is a figure for the ultimate truth (the colour-nature pervading throughout); they cannot be said to be one, the general and the particular being other; they cannot be said to be other, there being no separate substance to be divided off. The fresh-white is just upon the conch and not apart from the conch — and the ultimate is just so, just upon the conditioning-forces and not apart from the conditioning-forces: say it is one with the conditioning-forces, and since the conditioning-forces fall within defilement it too should fall, yet the ultimate does not fall; say it is other than the conditioning-forces, and it no longer amounts to their common characteristic, yet the ultimate is precisely their common characteristic. Upon them yet not upon them, apart from them yet not apart — this is "neither one nor other."

Change to another sense-faculty, and the principle is still this one. The wondrous tune-nature upon a harp's string you can neither peel out to set alone nor say is just that wooden harp; the one thread of wondrous scent within black aloeswood, the one mouthful of pungent keenness in pepper, the one layer of clarified-butter-essence upon ripened butter — every one of them is just upon its thing and not apart from its thing, not to be said one, not to be said other. The World-Honoured One in one breath raised ten similes across the six objects of form, sound, smell, taste, touch, and dharma (for form, the fresh-white and the gold-yellow; for sound, the harp's tune-nature; for smell, black aloeswood; for taste, the pungency of pepper and the blandness of myrobalan; for touch, the softness of tūla-cotton and the essence within ripened butter; for dharma, the impermanence upon all conditioning-forces, the suffering upon all that is with-outflows, the pudgala-selflessness upon all dharmas, and the unstilled, defilement characteristic upon greed, hatred, and delusion), and at every place the six faculties confront, it can be tested: the ultimate's being neither one with nor other than the conditioning-forces lies in nothing far-off, but right here between a single conch and a single thread of aloeswood.

Section Four: Why the Ultimate Pervades Everything in a Single Taste

In the fourth section, the elder Subhūti brings forward the last thing he has himself witnessed, and so asks out the characteristic of a single taste pervading everything.

While dwelling in a great forest of trees in the wilderness, he saw a band of bhikṣus gather to one place in the latter part of a day, each according to the direct realization he had gained, each speaking of his own: this sort speaking by way of the aggregates, that sort by way of the sense-fields, yet another by way of dependent arising, the nutriments, the truths, the elements, the foundations of mindfulness, on to the path-limbs — you speaking of the aggregates, I of the sense-fields, he of the path-limbs, each man "declaring what he had understood," each settling upon his own one corner. Subhūti, seeing it, thought to himself: these elders one and all harbour conceit-of-attainment — claiming realization where there is none; and just because they declare severally, they do not reach the characteristic of ultimate truth as the single taste pervading everything. The World-Honoured One confirms it, and sets forth head-on what "pervading everything in a single taste" means: He has revealed that the pure object within all the aggregates is the ultimate truth; that the pure object within all the sense-fields, on to the path-limbs, is likewise the ultimate truth — and this pure object, within all the aggregates, is of a single-taste characteristic, a characteristic without difference or otherness, and so too within all the sense-fields, on to the path-limbs. Thus the ultimate truth pervades all dharmas, of one and the same taste, without difference. Again, the contemplating bhikṣu, once he has penetrated the suchness, the ultimate, the dharma-selflessness-nature of one aggregate, need no longer seek out severally the suchness and ultimate of the remaining aggregates and sense-fields — for the suchness and ultimate are non-dual: to gain one is to gain that which pervades everything. And further: the aggregates and sense-fields each have their differing characteristic; if the suchness-ultimate-dharma-selflessness-nature too followed them in having a differing characteristic, then it should have a cause and be arisen from a cause; arisen from a cause, it would be conditioned; conditioned, it would not be the ultimate — and therefore know that this suchness-ultimate-dharma-selflessness-nature is not called caused, is not arisen from a cause, is not conditioned, and only thus is the ultimate truth; it stands only in every constant time and every enduring time, whether or not a Tathāgata appears in the world, the dharma-nature of the dharmas ever established just so, the dharma-realm ever abiding just so.

So the content of "pervading everything in a single taste" is now made plain: the ultimate truth is the pure object within all dharmas, is suchness, is the dharma-selflessness-nature; it is uncaused, not arisen from a cause, not conditioned, and so it does not differ along with the difference of the dharmas, and only thus can it pervade everything in a single taste. The World-Honoured One draws it to a close with the simile of space: lift your eyes to that one stretch of space, and beneath it lie the manifold kinds of form, each of a differing characteristic — the blue, the yellow, manifold and not of one — yet space, amid them, is markless, without discrimination, without alteration, from first to last only one taste, and pervading all the places of form. Woncheuk glosses it in three meanings: in space there is no characteristic of producer or produced, and so it is markless; there is no form of manifold distinctions, and so it is without discrimination; there is no decaying or altering, and so it is without alteration; possessing these three meanings, it is named the single-taste characteristic. Form-characteristics differ a thousandfold, while space is of one taste and pervades — and the ultimate's being within the dharmas is exactly thus. Turn back now to that band of bhikṣus: their malady is just this, that they have taken this one stretch of single-taste space for form parcelled out cell by cell — settling on "the ultimate is in the aggregates," "the ultimate is in the sense-fields," "the ultimate is in the path-limbs," each owning his own one corner as the ultimate, and so failing to see that all-pervading, undifferentiated single-taste characteristic. Penetrate the suchness of one aggregate, and one need not by rights seek out the remaining aggregates and sense-fields severally at all — for the suchness-ultimate is non-dual, and to gain one is to gain that which pervades everything; declaring severally is just the conceit-of-attainment of one who does not understand this principle.

What the Later Tradition Carries On

The five characteristics of ultimate truth and the meaning of suchness established in this chapter may be read point by point alongside later Consciousness-Only treatises. The Madhyānta-vibhāga's Chapter Distinguishing the Real treats the three ultimates of meaning, attainment, and right practice; its Chapter Distinguishing the Characteristics 〔T31n1600 0465c04–11〕 treats emptiness and false discrimination as neither one nor other. These may respectively be compared with this chapter's ultimate-truth teaching and its ultimate and conditioned phenomena as neither one nor other. The Mahāyāna-saṃgraha's Division on the Characteristics of the Knowable treats suchness and the perfectly-accomplished nature's unchanging and pure-object aspects, for comparison with this chapter's suchness, pure object, and constant abiding. The twenty-fifth verse of the Thirty Verses identifies the ultimate of dharmas with suchness, corresponding to this chapter's usage; the Twenty Verses may likewise be compared with its ultimate beyond reasoning and expression. Each comparison is limited to the passage in which the later work actually makes the relevant claim.

Why this chapter matters for the Consciousness-Only scriptures

This chapter rises from a single question of the bodhisattva Broad Wisdom: the bodhisattva the Buddha calls "skilled in the secret of mind, manas, and consciousness" — to what point must one reach before that counts as skilled? And on what basis does the Tathāgata set him forth as one who is skilled? The question asks no more than those two words, "skilled"; but what the World-Honoured One answers out is important scriptural material for the eighth consciousness: its three names, what it appropriates, and how it turns together with the prior six consciousnesses. Later treatises can be compared at their own explicit passages on ālaya, all-seeds, appropriation, and the torrent simile; no line-by-line single chain of dependence is asserted.

Woncheuk assigns this chapter to the first stretch of the whole sūtra, "the object to be contemplated," and within the two objects, true and conventional, it stands precisely at the position of "setting forth the conventional truth" — the preceding chapter (the chapter “The Mark of Ultimate Truth”) set forth the true truth, and this chapter turns instead to set forth the conventional truth: that is to say, the very consciousness that bears birth-and-death and flows on unbroken. Woncheuk further divides the chapter within into "first the question, then the answer": Broad Wisdom asks first, the World-Honoured One answers after. The reading below follows just this order of one question and one answer.

Why the eighth consciousness is given three names

What the World-Honoured One answers first is the name of this consciousness. But here one question should first be put: a single consciousness — why establish three names for it? Is this to pile a bed upon a bed, taking a few extra titles for one and the same thing?

It is not. The three names are each established from one meaning of this consciousness; the names differ, but what they point to is one and the same consciousness.

To call it the ādāna consciousness is to speak from the one meaning of "appropriating-and-maintaining": this consciousness pursues the body without parting from it and appropriates the form-faculties so that they are not lost or spoiled — what it maintains here is this lifetime's body and form-faculties. Woncheuk glosses "ādāna, here translated as 'appropriating-and-maintaining,'" which is exactly this meaning; neither the sūtra nor this gloss adds a claim here about continuity of sensation.

To call it the ālaya consciousness is to speak from the one meaning of "taking-in-and-storing": this consciousness, with respect to the body, takes it in, conceals itself within it, and shares with the body one safety and one peril — when the body is at ease it is at ease, when the body is in peril it is in peril; it corresponds with the body it rests upon as one substance and dwells abiding within it, not as an onlooker but sharing one fate. Woncheuk glosses "ālaya, here translated as 'storehouse,'" and "storehouse" carries the threefold meaning of that-which-can-store, that-which-is-stored, and that-which-is-grasped-and-stored.

To call it citta is to speak from the one meaning of "accumulation": this consciousness is accumulated and nourished by forms, sounds, smells, tastes, contacts, and the rest — day by day it piles up, and all the perfumings gather here. Woncheuk glosses "citta" (Sanskrit citta) as carrying the manifold senses of "gathering-and-arising" and "accumulation"; this sūtra establishes the name precisely upon the one meaning of "accumulating and nourishing."

So these are not three consciousnesses, but three faces of one consciousness. Appropriating-and-maintaining, taking-in-and-storing, accumulating — one and the same root consciousness; under whichever meaning it comes to the fore, it is given that name.

The all-seeds mind-consciousness: the root of the linking-and-continuance of rebirth

So from what moment does this consciousness begin to work?

The World-Honoured One points to the very first moment of a life: a being, whether born from eggs, from a womb, from moisture, or by transformation, at the very outset when the bodily frame first arises, has from the very first an "all-seeds mind-consciousness" that matures, develops, joins together, grows, and becomes vast. This one line points to the root identity of the eighth consciousness: it takes in and maintains all seeds, is the support of all seeds, and is the root of the linking-and-continuance of rebirth — birth-and-death flows on, one span after another, no head to be seen ahead and no tail behind, precisely because it appropriates the seeds unbroken before and after. Woncheuk further glosses "all seeds" as the three latent imprints: those of names, of self-grasping, and of the limbs of existence.

The two appropriations: what, after all, does this root consciousness clutch?

Since this consciousness appropriates and maintains at every moment, what it maintains, what it takes as its object, is, after all, what? The World-Honoured One says there are two portions.

One portion is "the form-possessing faculties together with their supports"—the material faculty-body, appropriated and maintained in continuity by this consciousness.

The other portion is the latent imprints of "marks, names, discrimination, verbal expression, and conceptual elaboration" — that is, the name-and-word latent imprints perfumed into being by verbal discrimination. The reckoning, the naming, and the discussing of a person's whole life — the seeds these let fall are likewise gathered and held by this consciousness.

The one side the body, the other side the latent imprints; the one side the present body of faculties, the other side the latent imprints let fall in the past — these two portions are precisely the object that the eighth consciousness appropriates and takes as its support. Within the form realm, both appropriations — body-faculties and latent imprints — are present; in the formless realm, where there are no form-faculties, the pair is not both present and only latent-imprint appropriation remains. Thus what this consciousness appropriates differs according to realm: in the form realm it appropriates both the faculty-body and latent imprints; in the formless realm, latent imprints alone. Neither is a "self."

The torrent and the wind-stirred waves: a constant flow unbroken, yet the waves with no self of their own

Here the question forces out the most essential pass. Since this consciousness is said to maintain in continuity, unbroken before and after, then these acts of seeing-hearing-feeling-knowing that we plainly have right now — one eye-consciousness arises, one ear-consciousness arises, arising and then ceasing, now many now few — these waves that rise and fall, where do they come from? On a stream of water that is never once interrupted, how should so many wave-crests come welling up, arising and ceasing?

The World-Honoured One answers most concretely: with the ādāna consciousness as their support, as their establishment, the six consciousness-groups of eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and manas are able to turn and arise. In other words, the waves do not rise out of nowhere; the waves rise upon this stream — the prior six consciousnesses all arise in dependence on this root consciousness.

So why do the waves rise at one time and not at another, now one and now many? What the sūtra gives is those four words, "the condition for arising being present": "If the condition for a single wave to arise is present, only a single wave turns; if the condition for two waves, or for many waves, to arise is present, then many waves turn." Let one condition come, and one wave arises; let several conditions come, and several waves arise. The ancient masters made this "condition" more tangible still — Kuiji glosses it as "wind striking and forming waves": when the water has not met the wind, it is but one level flow, and to the eye not a single ripple rises; only when the wind stirs it do the waves then well up. While this "perfuming wind" has not yet stirred, this consciousness is but a level flow thought-moment by thought-moment, flowing on in quiet; when the wind stirs, the forming of seeds is then like waves — when the cause for one wave arrives, one wave is born; when the causes for many waves arrive, many waves rise.

And so this picture comes alive: that constantly-flowing water is the ādāna consciousness that maintains in continuity; that wind brushing across the water's surface is the manifold conditions present before us; those waves that rise to the wind and, having risen, fall again, are precisely the seeing-hearing-feeling-knowing of the prior six consciousnesses. We meet form and an eye-consciousness arises, we meet sound and an ear-consciousness arises — and here, looking one layer finer: the prior five consciousnesses arise upon their objects, never alone, but always with a discriminating mind-consciousness running along with each, at the same time, upon the same object. This discriminating mind-consciousness is but one: when at this time only one eye-consciousness turns, then only one discriminating mind-consciousness arises with it, sharing one and the same object; when at this time two, three, four, or five consciousnesses turn together, there is still only one discriminating mind-consciousness, arising together with these several consciousnesses upon the same object. So the prior five consciousnesses appear according to conditions, more or fewer and never fixed (where the condition for arising is present in one place one wave rises, where present in many places many waves rise), while the discriminating mind-consciousness running along with them is ever one.

But the eye of the whole passage lies in the latter line of the torrent simile: "Yet the water of this cascade flows on of its own kind, constant, unbroken, and inexhaustible." — for all that the waves rise and cease, the water flows on of one kind, constant, unbroken and inexhaustible. This is precisely the most savourable characteristic of this consciousness: it is continuous and unbroken, yet there is no single place in it that can be grasped. The foolish want to find a "self," and what they seek is a thing that abides permanently, standing still; but the torrent points you to a thing of just this kind — it is never once interrupted, yet never once stands still, and search the whole river over, you will not find one block of water that does not flow. Constant flow, so it is not annihilated; no abiding, so it is no self. A single waterfall flows the six words "continuous and yet without self" right before your eyes.

The simile of the mirror: images appear, yet the mirror neither turns into them nor is exhausted by them

Hard upon the torrent, the World-Honoured One speaks one more simile. The torrent has already shown "constant flow, with the waves following the conditions"; so when this root consciousness gives rise to the prior consciousnesses, does it itself change or not, take harm or not?

It is like a clear, clean mirror's face: when the condition for one image to arise is present, only one image arises; when the conditions for many images to arise are present, many images arise. Yet it is not that this mirror's face has turned into the images, nor can any using-up or extinction of this mirror's face be found. What this simile shows is: the eighth consciousness, as the support for all consciousnesses, can give rise to all consciousnesses, yet the mirror-face does not turn into the images and is not used up or exhausted by their appearing. The stream of the root consciousness still changes moment by moment; the simile shows only that it does not turn into the prior consciousnesses or become exhausted when they arise.

The two similes thus complete each other into a pair: the torrent simile shows its "unbroken continuance with the waves arising according to conditions," the mirror simile shows images appearing without the mirror turning into them or being exhausted by them. The one says it flows yet is unbroken, the other says it manifests images without becoming those images — setting forth plainly the characteristic of this root consciousness as "constant yet not permanent, turning yet unbroken."

The difference between skill in the knowledge-of-the-abiding-of-things and skill in the ultimate

Having reached this point, Broad Wisdom's first question can be drawn back up and gathered: to have penetrated all of the foregoing — the three names, the all-seeds, the two appropriations, the turning-together of the torrent — does that count as "skill in the secret of mind, manas, and consciousness"?

It does, yet it is not the ultimate. The World-Honoured One sets out a difference of higher and lower. If a bodhisattva, by reason of the "knowledge-of-the-abiding-of-things" serving as his support, has penetrated the secret of mind, manas, and consciousness as set forth above, he is indeed already "skilled in the secret of mind, manas, and consciousness." Yet the Tathāgatas do not on that account grant him to be a bodhisattva skilled in "all the secret of mind, manas, and consciousness" — the skill of the knowledge-of-the-abiding-of-things still falls one step short.

Short where? Short in that there is still "seeing." The true ultimate is "skill in the ultimate": the bodhisattva who, inwardly and severally, as it truly is, does not see ādāna and does not see ādāna consciousness, does not see ālaya and does not see ālaya consciousness, does not see accumulation and does not see citta, and so on to not seeing eye and form and eye-consciousness, not seeing ear and sound and ear-consciousness, and on to not seeing manas and dharmas and mind-consciousness. Only when one comes to this point of "seeing none of it whatsoever" does the Tathāgata set him forth as a bodhisattva skilled in the ultimate, and set him forth too as a bodhisattva skilled in all the secret of mind, manas, and consciousness. The former (the knowledge-of-the-abiding-of-things) is skilled in the characteristic of "how consciousness is established and how it turns together"; the latter (the ultimate-knowledge) finds all these consciousness-characteristics, every one, altogether unobtainable — to know how they are established is skill; not to grasp at their establishment, and to see nothing whatever within it, is the ultimate skill.

Profound and subtle, not to be expounded to the foolish and unlearned

At the last the World-Honoured One makes the meaning clear once more in a verse. But this verse first hides a question within it: since this consciousness is the very lifeline this chapter has taught from beginning to end, and important scriptural material for later accounts of the eighth consciousness, why does the World-Honoured One then say "I do not expound it"?

"The ādāna consciousness is profound and subtle; all its seeds are like a torrent in flood; I do not expound it to the foolish and the unlearned, lest they should discriminate and grasp it as a self." — the answer lies in that last line. This one consciousness, being the support of birth-and-death and that on which all seeds are lodged, with the characteristic of its unbroken ever-flowing continuance moreover so very subtle and hard to see, is such that the foolish and unlearned, hearing of it once, all too easily mistake this torrent of "continuous appropriation" for a permanently-abiding "self": just failing to see that half, "flowing on of its own kind" (constant yet not permanent), and seizing only this half, "maintaining unbroken," they take it for a self. So the World-Honoured One speaks of it with care and does not lightly expound it — which itself shows how very profound it is, and shows too the close care of him who established this consciousness.

Here one more stroke deserves notice: the verse as Xuanzang transmits it takes only the "torrent" simile up into the verse (the torrent and the mirror, both similes, stand in the prose; only the torrent enters the verse). The line "all its seeds like a torrent" can be read directly alongside the Thirty Verses' "ever-turning like a torrent"; the shared image is exact, while the Thirty Verses does not repeat this chapter's full three-name formulation.

What the later tradition carries on

This chapter's eighth-consciousness teaching may be compared item by item with later treatises, and one of its most widely shared images is “all its seeds like a torrent.” The Mahāyāna-saṃgraha's Support of the Knowable explicitly names the Saṃdhinirmocana-sūtra and directly quotes this chapter's ādāna/torrent passage 〔T31n1594 0133b25–28〕; its other ālaya and threefold-storehouse discussions are thematic comparisons. The Thirty Verses opens with ālaya, maturation, all-seeds, and “ever-turning like a torrent,” but does not relist ādāna, ālaya, and citta as three names. The Cheng Weishi Lun scrolls 2–4 treat ālaya, maturation, all-seeds, seeds, appropriation, and the consciousnesses turning together; the Hundred Dharmas lists ālaya among the eight mind-dharmas. Each comparison is limited to its evidence grade and explicit passage.

Why this chapter is important scriptural material for the Consciousness-Only three natures

The myriad dharmas of the world differ a thousand and ten-thousand ways — by what reckoning, then, does one count as "skilled in the characteristics of dharmas"? At Root-of-Virtue's request, the World-Honoured One gathers their characteristics into the wholly-imagined, other-dependent, and perfectly-accomplished. The chapter is an important scriptural source for the later three-nature teaching; later works are compared only through their own explicit passages, not presented as a line-by-line single derivation.

Woncheuk divides the seven chapters of the sūtra's main exposition into three stretches: the first four chapters set forth the object to be contemplated; the next two distinguish the contemplating practice; the last one displays the fruit attained. The Chapter on the Marks of All Dharmas is fastened to the first stretch, "the object to be contemplated." And within "the object to be contemplated" there is a further division into the object as true-and-conventional and the object as natured-and-natureless; this chapter stands precisely at the first of the "object as natured-and-natureless," the "setting forth of the object of the three natures" — first establishing the three natures (that which has a nature), and then, in the next chapter, The Absence of Intrinsic Nature, establishing upon these three natures the three non-natures (that which is natureless). The natureless is established in dependence on the natured; therefore the three natures are set forth first, and the three non-natures spoken of after.

The first of the three marks: the wholly-imagined mark — the false mark of names and words

First, a question: a thing's name is not the thing itself; then the names and words we lay upon it — what standing do they really have?

The World-Honoured One answers this first mark by saying that it is "the establishing by names and words of the own-nature and distinctions of all dharmas, on even to the giving rise, in their train, to verbal expression." This is to say: with respect to all dharmas, one falsely establishes by names and words their own-nature, falsely establishes their distinctions, and so there arises in their train every kind of verbal expression. In other words, the wholly-imagined mark is not the true mark of the dharma itself, but a layer of marks established by names and words and reckoned-and-clung-to by discrimination — it is something "reckoned up." Woncheuk, glossing this mark, says it "raises the imagining in order to take hold of what is clung to": the point lies not in the imagining mind that does the reckoning, but in that layer of false marks which is clung to. This layer of marks arises upon the other-dependent mark by reason of the latent imprints of verbal expression (as the simile of the sphaṭika below displays), while in itself it is without reality and without own-nature.

The second of the three marks: the other-dependent mark — the conditionally-arisen mark

Again, a question: since no single dharma can be by itself and independently, what is the force that holds a dharma within "being"?

The World-Honoured One answers this second mark by saying that it is "the conditionally-arisen own-nature of all dharmas — this being, that is; this arising, that arises — namely, conditioned by ignorance, formations arise, on even to the amassing of the whole great mass of suffering." This is no dry formula: ignorance conditions formations, and formations condition consciousness, link drawing on link, turning forward in this way, on even to the amassing of the whole great mass of suffering — this is a living chain of turning-and-flowing, and it is the conditioned arising that the other-dependent mark takes in. What "dependent" means is precisely arising in dependence on the force of the host of conditions, unable to be by itself. Woncheuk, glossing it, says, "because it arises dependent-and-conditioned out of the seeds born of its own perfuming, it is named dependent-arisen" — it is born of the seeds (the self-perfuming) in dependence on conditions. This conditionally-arisen mark is the foundation on which the defiled and the pure alike rest: the wholly-imagined mark must arise upon it, and the perfectly-accomplished mark too must be displayed upon it, once the wholly-imagined is left behind.

The third of the three marks: the perfectly-accomplished mark — the suchness equal throughout, upon the other-dependent and apart from the wholly-imagined

A third question: once that layer of false name-mark is peeled away, what is left? Some other thing now arisen, or the same dharma seen truly?

The World-Honoured One answers this third mark by saying that it is "the suchness, equal throughout, of all dharmas," and says that the bodhisattva must, having for cause-and-condition "a valiant and vigorous striving" and "right attention and undistorted reflection," then be able to penetrate it; and having penetrated it, cultivate and gather it little by little, on even to supreme perfect awakening, where at last it is realized in its fullness. This is to say: the perfectly-accomplished mark is just the suchness, equal throughout, of all dharmas — not some other suchness standing apart from the dharmas, but the nature of equal reality displayed right upon the other-dependent mark once that layer of imagined false marks has been left behind. Woncheuk, glossing it, cites "because of its unchanging nature, and again because of its nature as the pure object … by reason of the supreme meaning it is named perfected," and also cites "the fully accomplished true nature of dharmas displayed by the two emptinesses is named perfected": it is full, accomplished, and real — the true nature of dharmas displayed by the two emptinesses (the emptiness of self and the emptiness of dharmas). What matters is this: the perfectly-accomplished does not lie outside the other-dependent — and the simile of the sphaṭika below sets out this relation most plainly of all.

The simile of the eye-disease: what the sick eye sees was never there at all

The World-Honoured One first displays the three marks by the simile of the eye-disease, and the force of this simile lies wholly in the string of things it lists.

It is like a man afflicted with an eye-disease: before his eyes there "appear" all manner of marks — hairs, a ring upon ring, bees and flies darting about, scattered sesame-seeds, on to clumps of blue, yellow, red, and white colour, each distinct, all vivid before him. Yet of these things, plainly not a single one is really there before his eyes; just because the eye is spoiled, they "appear."

This one appearing parts the three marks out. Look first at two layers: one layer is the eye-spoiling "affliction of the eye-disease" — the sickness within the eye, the root of the disorder; the other layer is the string of marks the sick eye makes "appear" — the hairs, the ring, the bees and flies — which float up, as though there, in train of the sickness. These two layers are not one thing: the sickness is the root that can disorder, that string of marks is the shadow disordered out of it. The World-Honoured One says: the distorted appearance produced by the eye-disease is a simile for the wholly-imagined mark (the falsely grasped mark); the various marks of the eye-disease are a simile for the other-dependent mark (the marks that, as though there, arise in train of the sickness). Look then at the third layer: if it be a man with clear eyes, free of the affliction of the eye-disease, then "the realm ranged over by the original nature of his clear eye" is a stretch of "undistorted realm" — not that he has changed for another pair of eyes and sees some other world, but the same stretch of realm, where, the sickness gone, there is no more disorder. This undistorted realm is a simile for the perfectly-accomplished mark.

There is here a hinge that the ancient masters take special care to point out: the eye-disease is itself plainly a dharma of causes-and-conditions — how then can it be taken as a simile for "the wholly-imagined"? Dunlun's Notes on the Yogācārabhūmi records Master Jing's explanation: "It does not take the eye-disease; the meaning is to show that, because of the eye-disease, one falsely sees the hair-ring — and this is the simile for the wholly-imagined." The drift of the simile lies not in the eye-disease as such, that cause-and-condition, but in this false seeing of "the hair-ring falsely seen because of the eye-disease": what is clung to is that falsely-seen hair-ring, and not the eye-disease. Pointed out thus, the difference among the three marks grows the plainer still: the false seeing (the wholly-imagined), the mark that is as though there (the other-dependent), the original realm apart from the false (the perfectly-accomplished) — sickness, shadow, original realm, three layers upon one and the same pair of eyes.

The simile of the sphaṭika-jewel: one jewel, seen on three faces

The World-Honoured One next, by the simile of the clear sphaṭika-jewel, displays the relation of the three marks most transparently of all. The sphaṭika-jewel (Woncheuk, citing Master Ying's Phonetics and Glosses, gives "here called water-jade, or said to be a white pearl"; Dunlun, citing the Master of the Three Baskets, "like a water-crystal white pearl, of no fixed colour") is just a lustrous, pure, colourless crystal.

Now look at this one clean crystal: lay a blue dye behind it, and it looks "like" a blue jewel, a great-blue jewel, those blue jewels; change the backing to a red one, and it looks "like" amber; change it to a green one, and it looks "like" marakata (the jewel that a green dye makes it look like); change it to a yellow one, and it looks "like" gold. Yet take it up and look closely — from first to last it is no more than that one clear crystal; when did it ever really turn into a blue jewel, turn into gold? And yet there are foolish men who wrongly grasp and cling, supposing it to be truly a blue jewel, truly gold, and so are deluded by it, disturbed by it.

The three marks are seen out in just this "seeming-to-be yet originally-not." The first face: that clean crystal in itself is a simile for the other-dependent mark — the foundation of the conditionally-arisen mark, its own substance pure, without fault in itself. The second face: the dye laid behind, and that one thought which grasps the colour that appears as a true jewel, is a simile for the wholly-imagined mark — this, as Woncheuk says, is precisely "the other-dependent mark, by the force of self-and-dharma discrimination and the seeds of names and words, appearing as though outward though it is within inner consciousness," a layer dyed up upon the other-dependent mark by the latent imprints of verbal expression and then taken for true by wrong clinging. The third face, and the most crucial: this crystal, "at all constant times," is "without reality, without own-nature" — it was never really a blue jewel, never really gold; this "never really," this absence of reality and of nature, is precisely a simile for the perfectly-accomplished mark. Woncheuk says it in a single stroke: "the sphaṭika-jewel is a simile for the other-dependent; the unreal blue jewel is a simile for the perfectly-accomplished."

So the three marks are not three separate things: the jewel, the dye, and the jewel's "never really" are three faces upon one and the same jewel. The perfectly-accomplished, then, does not lie outside the other-dependent — it is just this jewel's own purity, the absence of reality of that "unreal blue jewel," right upon the other-dependent. The scriptural words, "upon the other-dependent mark, the latent imprints of verbal expression for the wholly-imagined mark — know that it is just so," set the wholly-imagined mark precisely upon the other-dependent mark. Later passages on "the wholly-imagined upon the other-dependent" may be read thematically alongside this one; no single direct chain of dependence is asserted.

The three marks known one through another: now that the three marks are set up, what is to be done

The three marks are set up to be put to work. The World-Honoured One next sets forth how they are known one through another, so that the three dharmas — the markless, the defiled, and the pure — are established, and how thereby the defiled is cut off and the pure realized — and this is the very home to which the three marks return.

First, three lines of knowing. If the bodhisattva can, upon the other-dependent mark, know as it really is the wholly-imagined mark, then he can know all "markless" dharmas — for the wholly-imagined mark is in itself without reality, and to know it is to know its marklessness. If he knows as it really is the other-dependent mark, then he can know all "defiled"-marked dharmas — for the conditioned arising-and-flowing (ignorance conditioning the activities, on to the great mass of suffering) is precisely what the defiled takes in. If he knows as it really is the perfectly-accomplished mark, then he can know all "pure"-marked dharmas — for the suchness equal throughout is precisely what the pure displays.

Then comes this chapter's true point of landing. If the bodhisattva can, upon the other-dependent mark, know as it really is the markless dharma, then he can "cut off" the dharmas of defiled marks; and able to cut off the defiled, he can then "realize" the pure-marked dharmas. Thus the knowing of the three marks joins onto the order of cultivation-and-realization: to know the marklessness of the wholly-imagined → to cut off the defilement of the other-dependent → to realize the purity of the perfectly-accomplished. This chapter's repeated verse locks this road shut from the reverse side: "If one does not know the markless dharma, the dharma of defiled marks cannot be cut off; and because the dharma of defiled marks is not cut off, one ruins the realizing of the dharma of subtle, pure marks." — knowing is the cause of cutting off, cutting off is the cause of realizing; lacking the first step, the latter two collapse entire. The bodhisattva "skilled in the characteristics of dharmas" is just one who, by this knowing-as-it-really-is of the three marks, accomplishes the skill of cutting off the defiled and realizing the pure.

What the later tradition carries on

The three marks established in this chapter may be read point by point alongside later Consciousness-Only treatises. The Mahāyāna-saṃgraha's Division on the Characteristics of the Knowable establishes the three natures and the wholly-imagined upon the other-dependent; Woncheuk cites its fourth scroll while reconciling this chapter's three marks. The Madhyānta-vibhāga's Chapter Distinguishing the Characteristics distinguishes the three natures by false discrimination and emptiness, for comparison with this chapter's order of knowing the markless, defiled, and pure. Verses twenty through twenty-five of the Thirty Verses define the three natures in terms corresponding to this chapter; Woncheuk directly cites its line on the other-dependent nature arising from discrimination and conditions. The comparison is limited to these attested passages: the generic Hundred Dharmas outline is not made a warrant for this chapter, and transformation-of-basis is not imported into it.

Opening overview

The preceding chapter, "The Marks of All Dharmas," set up the three natures — the wholly-imagined, the other-dependent, and the perfectly-accomplished. Now, in this chapter, the World-Honoured One takes up these three natures once more and, upon them, sets up three kinds of absence of intrinsic nature, and by a hidden intent teaches that all dharmas are without intrinsic nature. This whole turn of phrase is meant precisely to join the three natures of the preceding chapter to the editorial shorthand all dharmas are without intrinsic nature: the Buddha had, elsewhere, through measureless gateways of Dharma, widely taught that the aggregates, the bases, the truths, and the elements, the applications of mindfulness on to the eightfold noble path, each have their own characteristic, each have arising and ceasing, each are to be fully known, wholly cut off, cultivated, and realized; yet now He says that all dharmas are without intrinsic nature, without arising, without ceasing, quiescent from the very first, by their own nature in nirvāṇa — is the one not at odds with the other? What the bodhisattva Born of the Ultimate Meaning asks after is just this: where lies the hidden intent? And the World-Honoured One's answer is the three kinds of absence of intrinsic nature.

Woncheuk divides this chapter, from within, into five parts: the bodhisattva's question, the Tathāgata's right exposition, the understanding-and-upholding, the weighing-and-praising, and the upholding of the teaching according to the teaching. The whole chapter is carried by a single questioner, Born of the Ultimate Meaning, from the opening question to the upholding, in one unbroken thread. Woncheuk also glosses the chapter's name thus: "absence of intrinsic nature" is, in brief, of three kinds — the absence of intrinsic nature as to mark, the absence of intrinsic nature as to arising, and the absence of intrinsic nature as to ultimate meaning; the phrase "absence of intrinsic nature" displays just these three absences, and "character" means body-character, these three absences taking, in order, the three natures for their body-character — hence the name "The Mark of the Absence of Intrinsic Nature." So this chapter is not a loose discourse on the meaning of emptiness, but pairs off the three natures with the three absences one by one, and by a hidden intent says that all dharmas are without intrinsic nature. It is important scriptural material for the Consciousness-Only teaching of the three non-natures and the classification of teachings; the clearly identified later cross-readings are Triṃśikā verses 23–24, the Cheng Weishi Lun in scrolls 8–9, and Kuiji's citation of this chapter's three-period passage. What follows runs through the five sections in order, opening each in turn; all that is set forth has scripture, and the ancient masters' judgement, for its warrant, with nothing of doctrine newly invented.

Section One: The Question — Why the One Seems at Odds with the Other

In the first section, the bodhisattva Born of the Ultimate Meaning relates what he had once heard and, doubting, raises his question.

The point of his doubt is very real: the World-Honoured One had, through measureless gateways, widely taught that the aggregates have their own characteristic, have arising and ceasing, are to be fully known and wholly cut off, and that the bases, dependent arising, the kinds of nourishment, the truths, the elements, the applications of mindfulness on to the eightfold noble path are all spoken of in this way too — this plainly says that dharmas each have their characteristic and each are to be realized; and yet the World-Honoured One also says that "all dharmas are without intrinsic nature, without arising, without ceasing, quiescent from the very first, by their own nature in nirvāṇa." On the one side, dharmas have characteristic and have cultivation; on the other, all dharmas are without intrinsic nature, without arising or ceasing — where, after all, lies the hidden intent? This one question is the setting-in-motion of the whole chapter. Woncheuk points out: what this question bears upon and rests on is raised with regard to the markless teaching of the second time set forth below — the second time, in dependence on "all dharmas are without intrinsic nature, without arising or ceasing, quiescent from the very first, by their own nature in nirvāṇa," turned the wheel of the Dharma by way of a hidden mode of expression, and Born of the Ultimate Meaning, with regard to that hidden teaching, raises his question, seeking that the Buddha disclose its hidden intent. So this saying "without intrinsic nature" is itself a hidden word calling for disclosure, and not an annihilatory nothingness to be taken as the words stand.

Section Two: The Right Exposition — The Three Kinds of Absence of Intrinsic Nature; by Hidden Intent, All Dharmas Are Without Intrinsic Nature

On the one side, dharmas each have their own characteristic, each have arising and ceasing, each are to be fully known, wholly cut off, cultivated, and realized; on the other, all dharmas are without intrinsic nature, without arising or ceasing, quiescent from the very first, by their own nature in nirvāṇa — set these two sayings side by side, and how should they not collide? The second section is the right exposition of the whole chapter, and it is here that the World-Honoured One begins His answer: the "absence of intrinsic nature" He means is not a wiping-away, at one stroke, of the aggregates and bases He had spoken of before, but rests upon a single hidden intent; let that hidden intent be opened, and the seeming conflict resolves of itself. The World-Honoured One sets it through from four sides: first, He pairs the three absences with the three natures; next, He clarifies that the hidden intent of "without arising, without ceasing, quiescent from the very first, by their own nature in nirvāṇa" is not an annihilatory nothingness; then He displays it by three similes; and at the last, in view of beings' capacities, He discloses the hidden intent of the One Vehicle.

First He sets up the three kinds of absence of intrinsic nature, pairing each with one of the three natures. The absence of intrinsic nature as to mark is paired with the wholly-imagined mark: the wholly-imagined is set up as a character by mere designation, and not set up as a character by its own characteristic, and therefore is said to be without intrinsic nature. Here the "character" and the "no-nature" Woncheuk takes apart cleanly — "this is set up as a character by designation" glosses that word "character," and "not set up as a character by its own characteristic" glosses that word "no-nature"; gathered together, the wholly-imagined is a character that exists in conception but is void in principle, and because it is void in principle it is said to be without nature. The absence of intrinsic nature as to arising is paired with the other-dependent mark: the other-dependent comes to be through the force of conditions, and is not there of itself, and therefore is without intrinsic nature; "it comes to be through the force of dependent conditions" glosses the "arising," and "it is not there of itself" glosses the "no-nature." The absence of intrinsic nature as to ultimate meaning has two gateways: first, spoken of with regard to the other-dependent — the other-dependent is not the object-realm of pure cognition, and therefore is also called the absence of intrinsic nature as to ultimate meaning; second, spoken of with regard to the perfectly-accomplished — the selflessness-of-dharmas of all dharmas is called the ultimate meaning, it is the ultimate truth of all dharmas and is made manifest by the absence of intrinsic nature, and therefore the perfectly-accomplished mark too is called the absence of intrinsic nature as to ultimate meaning. The crux of these two gateways Woncheuk points out in a single phrase: to set up the third absence in dependence on the second nature (the other-dependent) is to say that upon the other-dependent there is no perfectly-accomplished, and so the conditionally-arisen dharma is not only called the absence of intrinsic nature as to arising but also the absence of intrinsic nature as to ultimate meaning. Thus the three absences — as to mark, as to arising, as to ultimate meaning — take, in order, the wholly-imagined, the other-dependent, and the perfectly-accomplished natures for their body-character, paired off one by one.

Next He clarifies that the hidden intent of "without arising, without ceasing, quiescent from the very first, by their own nature in nirvāṇa" is not an annihilatory nothingness. This sentence is most easily mistaken for annihilation, yet the World-Honoured One specially marks two gateways of hidden intent, showing that it is at root no saying that dharmas are annihilated into nothing. First, spoken of upon the hidden intent of the absence of intrinsic nature as to mark: the own-characteristic of the wholly-imagined is from the very first wholly without existence, and the own-characteristic being absent there is no arising, no arising there is no ceasing, without arising and without ceasing it is quiescent from the very first, quiescent from the very first it is by its own nature in nirvāṇa — and within it there is no least thing whatever that could besides be made to enter nirvāṇa. One sees, then, that this "without arising, without ceasing, quiescent from the very first, by their own nature in nirvāṇa" is spoken with regard to the wholly-imagined mark's being void of own-characteristic from the first, and is no saying that the other-dependent and the perfectly-accomplished too are annihilated into nothing. Second, spoken of upon the hidden intent of the absence of intrinsic nature as to ultimate meaning made manifest by the selflessness-of-dharmas: this absence of intrinsic nature as to ultimate meaning, at all times and through all time, the dharma-nature of dharmas abiding and unconditioned, does not correspond with any defilement; being unconditioned it is without arising and without ceasing, and because it does not correspond with defilement it is quiescent from the very first, by its own nature in nirvāṇa. One sees, then, that the second layer of hidden intent in this sentence is spoken with regard to the constant and unconditioned abiding of suchness, the dharma-nature — a being-quiescent-of-itself, a being-in-nirvāṇa-from-the-first — and is still less an annihilatory nothingness. The World-Honoured One further clarifies the occasion of setting up the three absences: it is not that beings take, each one severally, the three natures to be a nature, but that beings, upon the other-dependent and the perfectly-accomplished, superimpose the wholly-imagined, and only then does the World-Honoured One, by way of counteraction, set up the three absences. To superimpose the wholly-imagined upon the other-dependent and the perfectly-accomplished is the malady; to set up the three absences so as to dispel that superimposition is the remedy — and so "absence of intrinsic nature" is a hidden saying that dispels superimposition, and no saying of dharmas into a void. This is just the joint at which this chapter guards against the view of annihilation.

Then He displays the three absences by three similes. The World-Honoured One does not merely set up names, but raises three images that lie before the very eye, pointing out from the similes that the "without, and yet not annihilated."

First look at the absence of intrinsic nature as to mark. A man whose eyes are stricken with a film-disease, gazing toward the clear sky, plainly sees flowers present in the air; yet, told as it truly is, there were from the first no flowers in that empty space. The flowers were not taken away by anyone — they were never in the sky at all; it was only because of the eye-disease that they seemed to be and appeared. The wholly-imagined is just so: it exists in conception, is void in principle, and the so-called "intrinsic nature" is only a character set up by mere designation, never truly there upon the dharma. Hence it is said to be without intrinsic nature as to mark. Woncheuk pairs this simile with the absence of intrinsic nature as to mark, taking just this one sense — "the flower-like character appears, while told as it truly is it was from the first not there."

Next look at the absence of intrinsic nature as to arising. The conjured images a magician sets up — be it a horse, be it an elephant — plainly move, plainly walk, and to look at them seem wholly real; yet their whole "existing" has not one part that is their own — all is conjuring, all is conditions met together, and the conditions once scattered the images are gone. They do indeed have a character of arising, yet have not a particle of an intrinsic nature that arises of itself. The other-dependent is just so: it comes to be through the force of conditions, and is not there of itself — it has its "arising," and that "arising" is borrowed, and therefore it is called the absence of intrinsic nature as to arising. Woncheuk says that the other-dependent, the conditionally-arisen dharma, "all takes the other-dependent for its nature, and is therefore like a conjured image," pairing the conjured image with the absence of intrinsic nature as to arising, and pairing it besides with one portion of the absence of intrinsic nature as to ultimate meaning, taking just this one sense — "it is not existent yet seems existent, and is without reality."

Last look at the absence of intrinsic nature as to ultimate meaning. Empty space may be known from two sides: on the one side, it is just what is made manifest by the "no-nature" of the host of forms — wherever there is no resisting form, there empty space is made manifest; space is marked out by "no-form"; on the other side, it pervades all places, and there is no place that is not it. Suchness, the ultimate meaning, is likewise just these two sides: on the one side, it is what is made manifest by the selflessness-of-dharmas — just because that "self" upon dharmas was from the first absent, this suchness is able to be made manifest, after the very manner of empty space's being made manifest by "no-form"; on the other side, it pervades all dharmas, and there is no dharma that it does not gather in. Woncheuk, glossing the empty-space simile, marks out the two senses "made manifest by no-form" and "pervading all places" to pair with suchness, the ultimate meaning — pairing just this layer. The three similes pair off one by one: the sky-flower's seeming-existent yet really-absent, the conjured image's existing-through-borrowed-conditions, empty space's being-made-manifest-by-absence-and-pervading-all — and from the similes the "without, and yet not annihilated" of the three absences is seen plainly.

Last, in view of beings' capacities, He discloses the hidden intent of the One Vehicle. The World-Honoured One makes it clear: for beings who have not yet planted roots of good, He first sets forth in dependence on the absence of intrinsic nature as to arising, that they may conceive aversion toward the conditionally-arisen formations, cultivate good, and amass the collections; and when their collections are furnished, He sets forth for them besides the absence of intrinsic nature as to mark and the absence of intrinsic nature as to ultimate meaning, that they may penetrate as it truly is, extinguish the clinging to the other-dependent mark, and cut off the cause of a future life. In this way the three lineages — śrāvaka, pratyekabuddha, and Tathāgata — all alike, by this one wondrous and pure path, come home to a single ultimate purity, and there is no second; it is upon this hidden intent that the World-Honoured One says "there is but One Vehicle" — and this is not to say that within the realm of beings there are no distinctions of beings of dull, of middling, or of sharp faculties. Why is this "One Vehicle" a hidden intent and not a flattening of the lineages? Woncheuk says it in a single phrase: provisionally He speaks of three, but in truth it is one; the three vehicles, though different, are alike in one suchness; the wondrous pure path is just "the path being one," the ultimate purity is "the fruit being one," and upon this one path and one fruit there is no second — therefore the intent of Unravelling the Profound Mystery is to say by hidden intent that there is but One Vehicle. The "One Vehicle" is a hidden saying with regard to the one and the same wondrous pure path, and not a wiping-away of the distinctions of lineage. This chapter specially marks here that "a śrāvaka wholly bent toward quiescence can in the end not be made to sit at the place of awakening and realize unsurpassed awakening" — which shows just that the One Vehicle is a hidden intent, and that the lineages are not without distinction. At the last the World-Honoured One draws it together in a verse: "The absence of intrinsic nature as to mark, as to arising, as to ultimate meaning — these I have already disclosed; whoever does not know this hidden intent of the Buddha's spoils the right path and cannot go forward," "therefore within this I set up the One Vehicle — yet this is not to say that the lineages of beings are without distinction." The three absences, the hidden intent, and the One Vehicle are gathered into one verse.

Section Three: The Understanding — Sealing the Final Meaning by Four Similes

The World-Honoured One having set the three absences through, in what does the goodness of this teaching of final meaning consist, and to what degree is it good? Born of the Ultimate Meaning, having understood, does not praise with empty words but raises in a row four worldly images to praise it — the four similes out, the measure by which this teaching of final meaning surpasses, throughout, every sūtra of provisional meaning is thereby weighed out.

He first pairs the three natures and three absences back onto dharmas, self-testing what he has understood: upon the conduct-aspect that the wholly-imagined mark rests on, the designating-and-setting-up as the form aggregate and as its arising, ceasing, wholly-cutting-off, and full-knowing is just the wholly-imagined mark, and in dependence on it the absence of intrinsic nature as to mark is set up; that conduct-aspect itself is just the other-dependent mark, and in dependence on it the absence of intrinsic nature as to arising and one portion of the absence of intrinsic nature as to ultimate meaning are set up; the selflessness-of-dharmas suchness, the pure object of cognition, made manifest within that conduct-aspect by the wholly-imagined mark's not being established as real, is just the perfectly-accomplished mark, and in dependence on it one portion of the absence of intrinsic nature as to ultimate meaning is set up. As with the form aggregate, so with the remaining aggregates, on to the bases, the limbs of existence, the kinds of nourishment, and the elements; as with the truth of suffering, so with the remaining truths, on to the applications of mindfulness and the limbs of the path; as with right concentration, so by example may it be expounded at length — this is just the pairing of the right exposition's three natures and three absences upon every gateway of Dharma.

The pairing-off being now self-tested, Born of the Ultimate Meaning praises by four similes the surpassing-throughout of this teaching of final meaning, and the World-Honoured One straightway seals his words. These four similes are raised by Born of the Ultimate Meaning himself after his understanding, and sealed and restated by the Buddha.

First, the simile of the viśva remedy. "Viśva" means "all," "every" — this is a single remedy that enters everywhere into every quarter; into whatever prescription of dispersal-medicine or of seers'-medicine, this one remedy ought to be placed, and there is not one prescription that can do without it. The teaching of final meaning is just such a single "all-entering" remedy: it ought to be placed within all the sūtras of provisional meaning, and there is no sūtra into which it cannot be placed.

Second, the simile of the ground of a coloured painting. A painter, before he paints, must have a prepared ground for the coloured painting. This ground of painting has two powers: for one, throughout all the works of coloured painting — blue, yellow, red, white — it is of one and the same savour from first to last, not changing with the colours laid upon it; for another, it is able to "set forth and reveal" that painting, causing the shapes upon it to appear and stand out vividly upon its ground. The teaching of final meaning likewise has these two uses: throughout all the sūtras of provisional meaning it is of one and the same savour; and it is able to set forth and reveal the meaning those sūtras have not made fully plain, causing their latent sense to be made manifest upon the ground of this final meaning. The one-and-same-savour is its "not-changing," the power to set-forth-and-reveal is its "bringing-forth" — and of the four similes this one most shows that the teaching of final meaning not only consorts with the other sūtras but is able to bring out the not-yet-fully-disclosed meaning of those other sūtras.

Third, the simile of clarified butter. All the ripe and choice cakes and fruits are already savoury of themselves; yet if a measure of clarified butter be cast upon them besides, they "bring forth a finer savour still," better than before. The teaching of final meaning set within the sūtras of provisional meaning is just so: it does not start a fresh pot, but causes the original sūtra-words to "bring forth a finer savour still," giving rise to a surpassing gladness.

Fourth, the simile of empty space. Empty space pervades all places, is everywhere of one and the same savour, and hinders none of the works that are done — all manner of doings proceed within space, and space never stands in anyone's way. The teaching of final meaning pervades the sūtras of provisional meaning, is of one and the same savour, and likewise hinders none of the works cultivated by śrāvakas, pratyekabuddhas, or those of the Great Vehicle. It is worth marking that the empty-space simile appears twice in this chapter: in the right exposition it is a simile for the absence of intrinsic nature as to ultimate meaning (made manifest by selflessness-of-dharmas, pervading all); in the understanding it is a simile for the final-meaning teaching's pervading the sūtras of provisional meaning (of one and the same savour, without hindrance). The senses they rest on are two, but the image borrowed is the one same empty space — the sense the simile rests on differs, the simile-body is the same. Taking the four similes together, they display one and the same meaning: this teaching of final meaning, "all dharmas are without intrinsic nature," is the root teaching that can be placed throughout all the sūtras of provisional meaning, can set forth and reveal, can bring forth a surpassing savour, and can be without any hindrance.

Section Four: The Weighing-and-Praising — the Classification of the Three Turnings

The same one Buddha, the same one mouth — why is the wheel of Dharma that He has turned divided into a first, a second, and a third time, the first two judged not yet of final meaning and the third alone granted to be truly of final meaning? In the fourth section, Born of the Ultimate Meaning relates the three turnings of the wheel of Dharma, and asks after the merit of hearing and upholding this sūtra of final meaning — this passage is the most distinct of all, the sūtra's own classification of the three turnings.

Look at how Born of the Ultimate Meaning relates these three turnings, marking that at each turning he takes the same measuring-rod to it: to what degree it is "marvellous and rare"; whether it is "surpassable and has room beyond it" or "unsurpassable and has nothing beyond it"; whether it is "not yet of final meaning" or "truly of final meaning"; whether or not it is "a ground on which disputes may come to rest."

At the very first, in one time, in the Deer Park at the Sage's Falling-Place near Vārāṇasī, the World-Honoured One, solely for those who set forth in the śrāvaka vehicle, turned the wheel of the right Dharma by way of the characteristic of the four truths. This turning, such as none in the world before had been able to turn in accord with the Dharma, cannot but be called marvellous and rare; yet take that rod to it — it is surpassable and has room beyond it, is of provisional meaning, and is a ground on which disputes may come to rest. Marvellous it is, marvellous; but the door is not yet shut: there is something higher above, and disputes still find a foothold.

In the past, in the second time, the World-Honoured One, solely for those who set forth and cultivate the Great Vehicle, in dependence on "all dharmas are without intrinsic nature, without arising, without ceasing, quiescent from the very first, by their own nature in nirvāṇa," turned the wheel of the right Dharma by way of a hidden mode of expression. This turning is more marvellous than the first; yet take that same rod to it again — it is still surpassable and has something beyond it to receive, is still of provisional meaning, and is still a ground on which disputes may come to rest. More marvellous yet, but the door is as before not shut: spoken hiddenly, it has not yet come to be made explicit; there is something higher above, and disputes are still there.

Now, in the present, in the third time, the World-Honoured One, universally for those who set forth in every vehicle, in dependence on "all dharmas are without intrinsic nature, without arising, without ceasing, quiescent from the very first, by their own nature in nirvāṇa, by the very absence of intrinsic nature," turns the wheel of the right Dharma by way of a fully explicit mode of expression. This turning is the foremost marvel, the most rare of all; take the rod to it all the way — it is unsurpassable and has nothing beyond it, is of true final meaning, and is not a ground on which disputes come to rest. At this turning, the rod has at last run to its end: there is nothing higher to be spoken, disputes have no place left to stand, and the door is here shut fast. The first time marvellous yet surpassable, the second time more marvellous yet still surpassable, the third time marvellous to the utmost and thereafter unsurpassable — this rung-by-rung climb is just the backbone of the classification of the three turnings.

This classification is the sūtra's own: in the first time the wheel is turned by way of the four truths; in the second time, in dependence on all dharmas being without intrinsic nature and so forth, it is turned in a hidden mode; in the third time, in dependence on the absence of intrinsic nature, it is turned in a fully explicit mode. The first two are judged not yet of final meaning and the third truly of final meaning. Summarizing these as the “teaching of the four truths,” the “teaching of no-characteristic,” and the “teaching of final meaning” is Wŏnch'ŭk's ancient exegetical terminology; “teaching of no-characteristic” is not the sūtra's own label in this passage. This layer separately records the sūtra's self-classification and the ancient exegetical judgment, adjudicating neither — as to the final and not-final meaning in the classification of the three turnings, ancient masters offered divergent glosses of several houses; here their evidence is recorded without pleading for or disparaging any school.

The classification being now clear, Born of the Ultimate Meaning asks after the merit of hearing and upholding this sūtra of final meaning. The World-Honoured One weighs it by the similes of the soil upon a fingernail against the soil of the great earth, and the water in the track of an ox's hoof against the water of the four great oceans: the merit gained by hearing and gaining conviction in the sūtras of provisional meaning, on to bringing forth the application by way of the practice of cultivation, beside the merit amassed by hearing and gaining conviction in this teaching of final meaning, on to bringing forth the application by way of the practice of cultivation, is not a hundredth part, on to the upaniṣad portion it is not so much as a part. The pinch of soil upon a fingernail against the great earth, the puddle in an ox's hoof-track against the four oceans — this distance is just what follows from the four similes before: the four similes had shown the teaching of final meaning surpassing, throughout, the sūtras of provisional meaning, and here it is sealed and settled by the weighing of merit.

Section Five: The Upholding — the Teaching of Ultimate-Meaning Final Meaning

The teaching being of final meaning and the merit being surpassing, by what name should this chapter's teaching be called, and how should it be upheld? In the fifth section, Born of the Ultimate Meaning asks after this teaching's name and the manner of upholding it; the World-Honoured One sets up the name, and the great assembly gains benefit.

Born of the Ultimate Meaning asks: within the Dharma-gateway of Unravelling the Profound Mystery, by what should this teaching be named, and how should it be upheld? The Buddha answers: this is called "the teaching of ultimate-meaning final meaning," and this teaching of ultimate-meaning final meaning you should uphold. The chapter's name is here drawn to a knot — the three absences of intrinsic nature, the pairing of the three natures with the three absences, the three similes and four similes, the classification of the three turnings, and the hidden intent of the One Vehicle, all set forth in the four preceding sections, come home together under the one name "the teaching of ultimate-meaning final meaning." Just as this teaching was being set forth, within the great assembly six hundred thousand beings brought forth the mind of unsurpassed perfect awakening, three hundred thousand śrāvakas gained the pure Dharma-eye, one hundred and fifty thousand śrāvakas wholly exhausted their contaminations and won liberation of mind, and seventy-five thousand bodhisattvas gained the forbearance grounded in the non-arising of dharmas — by the abundance of the assembly's gain, sealing this teaching as one of final meaning.

What the later tradition carries on

This chapter’s three absences of intrinsic nature, their relation to the three natures, the hidden-intent teaching of non-nature, the three-period classification, and the One-Vehicle intent provide important points of comparison with later Yogācāra treatises. Verses 23–24 of the Thirty Verses correspond to the chapter’s three natures and three non-natures, and Woncheuk cites them in his gloss. The Cheng Weishi Lun, scrolls 8–9, treats the three natures and three non-natures and, in scroll 9, says the teaching of non-nature is not utterly definitive 〔T31n1585 0048a06–b03〕. The explicit three-period classification belongs instead to Kuiji’s Forest of Categories of the Mahāyāna Dharma-Garden, which names the sūtra at 〔T45n1861 0248b26–27〕 and quotes this chapter's passage at 〔0248c06–21〕. The Mahāyāna-saṃgraha discusses the three natures and the hidden intent of non-nature, and its One-Vehicle passage can be compared with this chapter 〔T31n1594 0151b16–20〕. The Madhyānta-vibhāga discusses false discrimination and the three natures; in glossing this chapter's conjured-image simile, Woncheuk separately cites the Abhidharma-sūtra: "the eight similes of conjuration and the rest display the other-dependent" 〔X0263a12–13〕. These works have distinct structures, so the cross-reading keeps the three-period, One-Vehicle, and non-nature claims with their own verified sources.

Opening overview

In the preceding chapters the World-Honoured One has fixed in place, one after another, the objects to be contemplated — the non-duality of the ultimate, the deepest secret of mind-manas-and-consciousness, the three characteristics of dharmas, and the hidden intent that all dharmas are without self-nature. The objects being established, there must then be a contemplating practice by which to enter into them; and so, in this chapter, at the request of the bodhisattva Maitreya, the World-Honoured One unrolls the whole bolt of the contemplating practice of calm and insight. Woncheuk divides the seven chapters of the sūtra's main exposition into three stretches: the first four chapters clarify the object to be contemplated, the next two distinguish the contemplating practice, and the last one displays the fruit attained; this chapter belongs precisely to the first of the "contemplating-practice" pair, named "the Yoga of Discernment, clarifying the gateway of calm-and-insight practice," and only the chapter after it (the chapter of the grounds and perfections) clarifies the ten grounds and ten perfections. This chapter is therefore an important scriptural source for Consciousness-Only contemplation: it carries calm (śamatha) and insight (vipaśyanā) from their support and object through the realization of awakening, vast majestic power, and cessation of feelings without remainder. Relations to later treatises must still be tested passage by passage.

The whole chapter is carried through by a single line of questioning from the bodhisattva Maitreya, and is the longest chapter of the sūtra. From the long prose's "broad distinguishing of the marks of calm and insight," Woncheuk opens out eighteen gates, naming each in turn: support-and-abode, object, the seeking, the attention that accords, whether the two paths differ, consciousness-only, single-and-joint, the numbered kinds, relying or not relying on the Dharma, applied-and-sustained thought and the rest, settling-rousing-equanimity, knowing the Dharma and knowing the meaning, the embracing of the concentrations, the workings of cause and fruit, the countering of obstructions, the realizing of awakening, the drawing-forth of majestic power, and the cessation of feelings without remainder. The eighteen gates follow one another unbroken, from the support of the contemplating practice to its fruit — a single, complete path of yoga. In what follows, these eighteen gates are gathered into six functional groups for the unfolding: the support and object of calm and insight; the seeking, the attention, and the two paths; the manifestation of consciousness alone, single-and-joint cultivation, and the numbered kinds; relying on the Dharma, applied-and-sustained thought, settling-rousing-equanimity, and knowing the Dharma and the meaning; the embracing of the concentrations, cause-and-fruit, and the countering of obstructions; and the realizing of awakening, the majestic power, and the cessation of feelings. Within each group the order of the eighteen gates is still kept, and all that is set forth rests upon the scripture and the ancient masters' judgements recorded in the apparatus layer, with no doctrine newly added. Among them, the gate of "the manifestation of consciousness alone" in the third group is the very spine of the chapter: the image engaged by calm and insight is only consciousness, with no object apart — and this is just the root of why Consciousness-Only contemplative practice is Consciousness-Only at all.

One　The Support and Object of Calm and Insight (gates ①–②)

From where are calm and insight to take root? The scripture first sets up their support, then sets up their object. Maitreya asks on what a bodhisattva must rely and in what he must abide in cultivating calm and insight within the Great Vehicle, and the World-Honoured One answers: "the conventional designation of dharmas, together with the vow not to forsake unsurpassed perfect awakening — these as his support and his abode." The "conventional designation of dharmas" is the conventional naming of dharmas set up by the twelve divisions of teaching, from the discourses on through the expositions; the "vow not to forsake awakening" is that non-retrogressing mind that seeks great awakening. The one is the support of the dharmas taken as object, the other the support of the resolve set up — and calm and insight take these two as their support and abode in arising. Bodhiruci here renders it "relying on the speaking of the various differentiated marks of dharmas" and "abiding-and-upholding the mind of unsurpassed perfect awakening," a variant translation in the same sense as Xuanzang's "conventional designation of dharmas" and "vow of awakening."

The support being established, the object must be distinguished. The World-Honoured One had spoken of four kinds of object-of-engagement: the image bearing discrimination, the image free of discrimination, the limit of things, and the accomplishment of what is to be done. Maitreya asks how these four are apportioned between calm and insight, and the World-Honoured One answers: the image free of discrimination is the object of calm, the image bearing discrimination is the object of insight, and the limit of things and the accomplishment of what is to be done are objects shared by both. This apportioning is of the first importance: calm, taking the image free of discrimination as object, tends toward the stillness of the concentration-state; insight, taking the image bearing discrimination as object, gives rise to the brightness of discernment; and the two meet again upon the limit of things (the limit of the suchness of dharmas) and upon the accomplishment of what is to be done (what is ultimately accomplished). Dunlun, citing Master Jing's gloss on these four objects, takes the image bearing discrimination as the object of the wisdom that, before the grounds, contemplates in reliance on the teaching; the limit of things as the suchness that is the object of calm and insight within the ten grounds; and the accomplishment of what is to be done as the object of calm and insight at the Buddha-ground — so one sees that the sūtra's four objects are not merely four objects standing side by side, but run through the whole course from before the grounds to the Buddha-ground. Relations to later texts remain bounded cross-readings at their own explicit passages.

Two　Seeking Calm and Insight, the Attention That Accords, and Whether the Two Paths Differ (gates ③–⑤)

The object being clear, one must ask how calm can be attained and insight well cultivated — this is the gate of seeking. The World-Honoured One answers in full: the bodhisattva first, upon the twelve divisions of teaching, well listens, well receives, becomes well-versed in the wording, well ponders, and well penetrates; then, upon those well-considered dharmas, he dwells alone in a quiet place and attends to them with thought, and upon this very thinking mind he makes the inner mind continuous, attending to it with thought; and by abiding much in this, there arise a bodily ease and a mental ease — this is the way calm arises. Having gained bodily and mental ease as his support, he then, upon the image engaged by inner concentration, observes, resolves upon, and lets go of the mental mark, and within the meaning known through that image discerns rightly, discerns to the utmost, investigates thoroughly and examines thoroughly, on to acceptance, delight, wisdom, view, and contemplation — this is insight. The one becomes calm through the continuity of mind, the other becomes insight through the discernment of wisdom; the seeking of calm and insight lies wholly herein.

But before bodily and mental ease are gained, what does that attention count for? This is the gate of the attention that accords. The World-Honoured One judges it clearly: one who, not yet having gained ease, takes the mind as object and thinks upon it, has not the attention of calm but "the attention that accords with calm and corresponds to resolve"; one who, not yet having gained ease, takes the image as object and thinks upon it, has not the attention of insight but "the attention that accords with insight and corresponds to resolve." So one sees that calm and insight have a boundary to their being fully formed — until ease has arisen, there is only an according-and-tending-toward, not yet true calm and insight. This judgment keeps the practitioner from mistaking preliminary resolve-attention, before calm and insight are accomplished, for already-formed calm and insight; the passage itself does not yet assign it to the later formal five-position “stage of applied effort.”

Are the two paths in the end one single path, or two separate paths? This is the gate of whether the two paths differ. The World-Honoured One answers, "neither differing nor no different": they do not differ, because insight takes for its object the very mind whose object is the object-condition — what insight contemplates is just the very mind that calm has settled upon; they are not no different, because the image bearing discrimination is not the object of calm — insight takes the image bearing discrimination as object, but calm does not. Taking one mind as object, yet with the object differing, calm and insight are thus neither one nor different. This judgement of "neither differing nor no different" guards both against splitting calm and insight apart and against confounding the two.

Three　The Manifestation of Consciousness Alone, Single Cultivation and Joint Operation, and Their Numbered Kinds (gates ⑥–⑧)

The first gate of this group is the very spine of the chapter — the gate of the manifestation of consciousness alone. Maitreya's question goes a step further than before, pointing straight at the root of the very image contemplated in concentration: the image engaged by the concentrations of insight, and this mind that takes it as object — do they differ, or are they no different? The World-Honoured One answers cleanly: "They should be said to be no different. Why so? Because that image is only consciousness. Good son! What I teach as the object of consciousness is only the manifestation of consciousness." This sentence is the master-thread of the whole sūtra's Consciousness-Only contemplative practice: the image contemplated in concentration is not an object lying out there apart from mind for one to take hold of; it is only consciousness — the object of consciousness, the manifestation of consciousness alone. Woncheuk glosses this gate as "dispelling the doubt of an outer object," and cites the two glosses of Vasubandhu and Asvabhāva to make it clear: Asvabhāva's gloss says "what I teach as the object of consciousness outside is only the appearing of inner consciousness"; Vasubandhu's gloss says "the object of consciousness is only the manifestation of consciousness, there being no separate object" — both glosses display the one thing: the object of consciousness is only the image appearing upon consciousness, with no body of it standing apart from consciousness.

But Maitreya is at once forced into a most natural doubt: if the image is truly no different from mind, then contemplating this image — does it not come to "this mind in turn seeing this mind"? How can mind turn around and see itself? This is the one question anyone who cultivates to this point will raise. The World-Honoured One dispels it with the single phrase, "there is no slight dharma that can see another slight dharma" — there is no slight dharma here that goes to see another slight dharma, no seer and seen standing opposed as two things; it is only that, when this mind arises in such a way, just such an image appears along with it. Woncheuk glosses it plainly: "there is no slight dharma" displays the absence of an agent, "that can see another slight dharma" displays the absence of a function — upon this single thought of dependently-arisen mind there is in itself no real mind-body to act as seer, and no real function apart from mind to act as seen; it is only that, when the seeming-mind of dependent arising arises, just such an image appears, and one then provisionally says "this mind grasps an object." When consciousness arises, the image appears with it; upon one dependently-arisen consciousness an apparently twofold image appears, and cognizer and cognized are provisionally designated. There is no real seeing agent or seeing function, nor does mind take its own substance as an object. What consciousness-only removes is a real subject-object pair and a separate external object, not by positing that mind literally sees itself.

This message — "an image appearing with consciousness, seemingly two without being a real duality" — is hardest of all to grasp by mere reasoning, and so the World-Honoured One sets up a mirror to throw light on it. Look at a man before a mirror: he has his face for the condition (the substance for the condition), and what the mirror casts back is still this very face (he sees again the very substance) — that "image" in the mirror is nothing but this very face of his appearing upon the mirror-face, and there is no second face hidden within the mirror. Yet he will insist on saying "I see an image in the mirror," and supposes besides that, apart from this face of his, there is a separate image lying within the mirror there (apart from the substance, a separately engaged image appearing). In truth he meets, from first to last, only his own face cast back by the mirror-face — when did he ever see a second thing? So it is too when mind arises: though there is only this mind showing itself forth, it appears "as if differing," as if there were a separate image engaged by concentration set up over against it. Dunlun's Notes on the Yogācārabhūmi, citing Master Jing, fixes its essence and function by just this simile: the mirror is a simile for concentration (a simile for the body of concentration), the substance a simile for the mind-king corresponding to concentration, and the image a simile for the perceived-portion of mind. The mirror shows mind-king and perceived-portion, cognizer and cognized, provisionally established without leaving one consciousness: the image appears dependent on consciousness, with no real self-seer and no object apart from consciousness. (Bodhiruci's variant translation draws both "substance" and "the very substance" into the one name "object-image," so that, the bone of the simile being the same, the distinction of substance and image is somewhat slight.)

Nor does the World-Honoured One let this be shut up within concentration alone: when ordinary beings abide in their own nature and, in everyday life, take form and the rest as object, the image engaged by the mind is likewise no different from mind — it is only that foolish ones, by a topsy-turvy awareness, cannot know it as it truly is to be only consciousness, and so truly form the topsy-turvy understanding that there is an object outside mind. So one sees that the manifestation of consciousness alone is not confined to the concentration-state, but runs through all mind; and contemplation within concentration is nothing but the seeing forth, as it truly is, of this Consciousness-Only principle that is of itself thus and yet is covered over by topsy-turviness. The "manifestation of consciousness alone" that this gate sets up is important scriptural material for the later tradition's entry into Consciousness-Only contemplation: the Cheng Weishi Lun, scroll seven, has the shorter line 「所緣唯識所現」 ["the object is only the manifestation of consciousness"] 〔T31n1585 0039a07〕; the expanded 「諸識所緣唯識所現」 ["what all consciousnesses take as object is only the manifestation of consciousness"] is Kuiji's explicit citation of this sūtra 〔T45n1861 0259a02–03·0260a03–04〕. In scroll nine verse 27, “setting up before one a slight thing, calling it the nature of consciousness-only,” still marks the subtle positing and attainment of the application stage; verse 28, “when, with regard to the object, cognition gains nothing at all,” marks entry into the penetration stage.

The spine being set up, one must ask: calm and insight — are they cultivated on one side only, or do both operate together? This is the gate of single cultivation and joint operation. One who cultivates insight alone, in continuous attention, thinks only upon the mental mark; one who cultivates calm alone, in continuous attention, thinks only upon the uninterrupted mind; one in whom calm and insight operate together conjoined rightly thinks upon the one-pointedness of mind. To each of these three the World-Honoured One sets a distinct gloss: the mental mark is the image bearing discrimination engaged by concentration, the object of insight alone; the uninterrupted mind is the mind that takes that image as object, the object of calm alone; only the one-pointedness contemplated when calm and insight operate jointly is defined as penetrating that the image engaged by concentration is only its own consciousness, or, having penetrated this, going further to think upon suchness. “Only its own consciousness / suchness” therefore defines the one-pointedness of joint operation; it is not a common endpoint assigned here to the two single modes.

How many kinds, then, has calm, and how many insight? This is the gate of the numbered kinds, which the World-Honoured One lays out one by one. Insight has three: bearing marks (purely thinking upon the image bearing discrimination), investigating (thinking upon dharmas not yet well understood, in order to understand them well), and examining (thinking upon dharmas already well understood, in order to attain well the utmost liberation). Calm too has three (reckoned by the uninterrupted mind), and also eight (the first meditative absorption on up to the sphere of neither-perception-nor-non-perception, each one), and also four (the four immeasurables of loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity, each one). Insight is divided into three by the depth or shallowness of wisdom, calm into its various numbers by the height or lowness of the concentration-stage — and at a single question the numbered kinds of calm and insight are laid out in full.

Four　Relying or Not Relying on the Dharma, Applied-and-Sustained Thought, Settling-Rousing-Equanimity, and Knowing the Dharma and Knowing the Meaning (gates ⑨–⑫)

Whether calm and insight are cultivated in reliance upon the teaching or not, the faculties differ as sharp or dull — this is the gate of relying or not relying on the Dharma. One who, following the marks of the dharmas previously received and considered, attains calm and insight upon their meaning is called one who relies on the Dharma, and such a bodhisattva practises in accord with the Dharma and is of sharp faculties; one who, not by the marks of dharmas received and considered, but relying only on another's instruction and teaching (such as contemplating the bruised-and-festering, or contemplating impermanence, suffering, no-self, and quiescence), attains calm and insight is called one who does not rely on the Dharma, and such a bodhisattva practises in accord with faith and is of dull faculties. Again, with regard to the dharmas taken as object, there is a division of particular and collective: one who takes the individual discourses and the rest as object takes a particular dharma as object; one who gathers all the discourses and the rest into one mass, one heap, and thinks that they accord with suchness, with awakening, with nirvāṇa, and with the transformation of the basis, takes dharmas collectively as object. Taking dharmas collectively has the three grades of small, great, and measureless; and the calm and insight that take dharmas collectively as object require further the five conditions (the melting away of the gross-and-heavy, the gaining of the delight of the Dharma, the understanding of the Dharma-light, the constant presence of the pure portion's mark of non-discrimination, and the taking up of each successive surpassing cause), their penetration being at the first ground, the Ground of Great Joy, and their attainment at the third ground, the Ground of Radiance. So one sees that calm and insight deepen layer upon layer according to the teaching, the Dharma, and the ground.

By the presence or absence of applied-and-sustained thought, calm and insight are further divided into the three grades of concentration — this is the gate of applied-and-sustained thought and the rest. When toward the marks of applied-and-sustained thought there is still a gross and evident receiving and observing, it is called concentration with applied and sustained thought; when there is no gross-and-evident, but a subtle receiving and observing attending upon the radiance, it is called concentration without applied thought and with only sustained thought; when toward all marks there is no attending at all by way of receiving and observing, it is called concentration without applied thought and without sustained thought. And the three — investigating, examining, and taking dharmas collectively as object — are apportioned to these three grades. The more applied-and-sustained thought is stilled, the deeper the concentration-state; this is just the order in which calm and insight enter gradually into the subtle.

The mind within concentration may grow restless or sink low, and must be regulated by a counter-measure — this is the gate of settling, rousing, and equanimity. When the mind is restless or one fears it may grow restless, to attend to dharmas that may be wearied of and to the uninterrupted mind, and so gather it in, is called the mark of settling (countering restlessness); when the mind sinks low or one fears it may sink low, to attend to dharmas that may be delighted in and to the mental mark, and so rouse it, is called the mark of rousing (countering sinking low); when upon the path of calm, the path of insight, or the path of joint operation one is defiled by the two secondary afflictions, to set it at ease by the effortless attention and the attention in the mind's coursing of its own accord is called the mark of equanimity. The three marks — settling, rousing, equanimity — are just the three hands and eyes by which the practitioner regulates the mind at any moment within concentration: if it sinks, rouse it; if it is restless, settle it; if it is level, leave it in equanimity.

The gate of knowing the Dharma and knowing the meaning is the longest, the broad reach of this group. Knowing the Dharma is by five marks: knowing the name (the conventional designation, among defiled and pure dharmas, of the conceiving of an own-being there set up), knowing the phrase (what proclaims the defiled and pure meanings and serves as their support and establishment), knowing the letter (the syllables upon which name and phrase rest), knowing them severally (the attention of severally taking them as object), and knowing them collectively (the attention of collectively taking them as object). Knowing the meaning opens out into ten marks, five meanings, four meanings, and three meanings, several rounds over. Among its ten marks, the seven kinds of suchness opened out from "the nature of how-things-are" are of the first importance: flowing-on, marks, cognition, establishment, wrong practice, purity, and right practice. This chapter itself lists those seven names; the later Yogācāra seven-suchness passages can be compared through their own explicit wording. The distinction of knowledge and vision is also clarified: the fine wisdom that takes dharmas collectively as object is knowledge, the fine wisdom that takes a particular dharma as object is vision. And the method of removing the marks is clarified: by attending to suchness, one removes the marks of dharmas and the marks of meaning, on to the point where, toward name, phrase, letter, and every meaning, nothing whatever is found, and one no longer contemplates the mark of their support, but removes them; while within the comprehended meaning of suchness there is from the very first no mark and nothing to be found, and so there is nothing further to remove. Here too a most essential question is asked: what sort of mind is fit to contemplate suchness? The World-Honoured One answers with three similes — a vessel of muddy water, a dust-clouded mirror, and a churned spring-pool. You wish to see your own face cast back, but the water is turbid, the mirror is dirty, the spring is churned, and the reflection of the face cannot be cast; you must wait until the water settles clear, the mirror is wiped clean, and the spring grows still, and then that face shows of itself. So it is with mind: when the mind is not well cultivated, scattered and floating, it is like turbid water and a churned spring, and suchness is not cast back upon it; when the mind is well cultivated, the calm water settling clear, it is fit to observe suchness as it truly is. This simile is the plainest of all, yet it points out an order: one must first, by calm, settle this pool of mind-water clear, and only then has the brightness that contemplates suchness a ground upon which to cast its reflection; calm comes before the contemplating of suchness for just this reason. There are also set up ten kinds of mark removable by ten kinds of emptiness, what is removed being the image-mark engaged by concentration, and from the mark of defiled bondage one gains liberation. At the last Maitreya asks after the mark of the collective nature of emptiness, and the World-Honoured One answers: within the other-dependent and the perfectly-accomplished, the nature that is the ultimate distance from every kind of defiled, pure, and wholly-imagined mark, and the finding of nothing whatever therein — this is the mark of the collective nature of emptiness of the Great Vehicle. The single gate of knowing the Dharma and knowing the meaning gathers in, without remainder, the dharmas and meanings, the suchness and the emptiness, that calm and insight come to know; and within its distinction of knowing the meaning, its judgement of the three wisdoms born of hearing, pondering, and cultivating (the wisdom born of cultivating "both rests upon the letter and does not rest upon it, and has present before it the image engaged by concentration in the likeness-portion of the thing known"), Kuiji cites this passage of the present sūtra in the Forest of Categories of the Three Wisdoms to clarify the difference among the three wisdoms.

Five　Embracing the Concentrations, the Workings of Cause and Fruit, and Countering the Obstructions (gates ⑬–⑮)

What place do calm and insight hold among the concentrations? This is the gate of embracing the concentrations. The World-Honoured One answers: the measureless kinds of supreme concentration belonging to the measureless śrāvakas, bodhisattvas, and Tathāgatas are all embraced by this calm and insight. So one sees that calm and insight are not one kind among the concentrations, but the master-thread that gathers in all supreme concentration — no concentration falls outside calm and insight.

What are the cause, the fruit, and the work of calm and insight? This is the gate of the workings of cause and fruit. Their cause is pure moral discipline and the pure right view born of hearing and pondering; their fruit is well-purified precepts, a pure mind, and well-purified wisdom, on to all the mundane and supramundane wholesome dharmas, which are all the fruit attained of them; their work is to liberate from the two kinds of bondage, the bondage of marks and the bondage of gross-and-heaviness. With pure precepts and right view for cause, with pure precepts, mind, and wisdom for fruit, and with liberation from the two bondages for work — the whole course of calm and insight, from where it comes to where it goes, is here at a glance.

The obstructions that calm and insight counter are the most fully laid out — this is the gate of countering obstructions. First, the obstructions are distinguished by the five bonds: regard for body and wealth is an obstruction to calm; not gaining one's wish with regard to the holy teachings is an obstruction to insight; dwelling amid pleasant entanglements and being content with little are obstructions to both. Next, by the five hindrances: restlessness and remorse are obstructions to calm; dullness, drowsiness, and doubt are obstructions to insight; greed and ill-will are obstructions to both; and when dullness and drowsiness are removed entirely the path of calm attains full and perfect purity, when restlessness and remorse are removed entirely the path of insight attains full and perfect purity. There are also set up five kinds of mental distraction (of attention, of the outward mind, of the inward mind, of marks, and of gross-and-heaviness) to be known when calm and insight are present before one. Most essential is the counter-action of the ten grounds: calm and insight, on the first ground, counter the obstruction of the defilement of the afflictions, action, and birth of the evil destinies, on to the tenth ground, where they counter the obstruction of not gaining the full realization of the Dharma-body, and on the Tathāgata-ground counter the most subtle and utterly most subtle affliction-obstruction and obstruction-to-the-knowable, harming these obstructions forever and ultimately realizing the all-knowing knowledge-and-vision that is without attachment and without hindrance, and establishing the utterly purest Dharma-body. From the near obstructions of the five bonds and five hindrances to the deep obstructions countered one by one through the ten grounds, the whole course of calm and insight's countering of obstructions is here laid out to the full. Later Yogācāra accounts of ten grounds and ten obstructions are compared only at their own identified passages.

Six　Realizing Awakening, the Vast Majestic Power, and the Cessation of Feelings Without Remainder (gates ⑯–⑱)

Cultivated to the very end, calm and insight realize awakening — this is the gate of realizing awakening. The bodhisattva, having gained calm and insight, relying on the seven kinds of suchness, within the dharmas heard and pondered, with a mind of supreme concentration rightly thinks upon suchness; his mind is able to cast off even the present activity of all subtle marks, how much more the gross. Abiding much in this, he well cultivates and refines his mind, away from all bonds, hindrances, and distractions, and there arise, with regard to the seven kinds of suchness, seven several inwardly self-realized penetrating knowledges — this is called the path of seeing. By this he enters the certitude of right nature, is born into the family of the Tathāgata, and realizes the first ground. In the prior time, by gaining calm and insight, he had already gained the objects of the image bearing discrimination and the image free of discrimination; now, by the path of seeing, he further gains the object of the limit of things; and in each successive ground, advancing in the path of cultivation, he gains the object of the accomplishment of what is to be done.

Here a question naturally arises: after the path of seeing, ground following upon ground, how is that "removing of marks" actually accomplished, and how can it not be done at a single stroke? The World-Honoured One sets up two similes that answer these two questions exactly. First, on the means of removing marks: it is like a man who drives out a coarse wedge with a fine wedge — the coarse wedge stuck fast in the wood cannot be pulled out, and so he takes another, fine wedge and drives it in from the side, and instead pushes that coarse wedge out. The bodhisattva's removing of marks is just so: he does not seek some thing outside mind to break the marks, but by the means of "driving out a wedge with a wedge" uses this mark — the later-arisen, finer attention to the object — to push out the gross inner mark before it; the tool he uses is of the same kind: removing a mark by a mark. The coarse mark removed, the gross-and-heaviness bound to the mark is removed along with it (the marks being removed, the gross-and-heaviness too is removed), and so he forever harms all marks and gross-and-heaviness. Next, on the gradualness of this matter: it is again like the refining of gold — gold is not made pure in a single fire, but must be refined over and over, furnace upon furnace, before the dross retreats layer by layer. The bodhisattva, in each successive ground, refines his mind just so: each ground has its own degree of fire, and mark and gross-and-heaviness are melted off portion by portion, ground advancing upon ground, until, the furnace-fire being now sufficient, he realizes unsurpassed perfect awakening. The one simile displays that the removing of marks uses the same-kind means of breaking a mark by a mark; the other displays that the accomplishing rests upon the unceasing gradual refining of ground upon ground — and the four objects too come present before one in order, answering to the grounds. This gate joins the path of seeing, the path of cultivation, the four objects, and the realization of the ten grounds into the whole course of realizing awakening. The Cheng Weishi Lun, scrolls nine and ten, can be cross-read at its identified passages on the path of seeing, the four investigations and four knowledges of true reality, and the ten grounds and ten obstructions; this does not make the present chapter the single scriptural root of its complete five-position scheme of provision, application, penetration, cultivation, and the ultimate.

The next gate explains how vast majestic power is drawn forth — this is the gate of drawing forth majestic power. The bodhisattva who well knows the six points (the arising, abiding, emerging, increase, decrease, and means of the mind) is able to draw it forth. Of these, well knowing the arising of the mind is to know as it truly is the differences in the arising of the mind in sixteen modes — and the first of these sixteen modes is "the arising of the imperceptible, firmly-abiding receptacle-consciousness, namely the ādāna consciousness": at the very lowest layer of all the mind's arising there is still that appropriating, continuous ādāna consciousness, of one lineage with the ādāna consciousness set up in chapter three. Well knowing the abiding of the mind is to know the suchness of cognition; well knowing the emerging of the mind is to know the emerging from the two bondages of marks and of gross-and-heaviness; well knowing the increase and decrease of the mind is to know the increase and decrease of the counteracting mind and the mind to be counteracted; well knowing the means is to know the cultivating or removing of the liberations, the spheres of mastery, and the spheres of totality. Knowing these six points well, the majestic power is thereby drawn forth.

Last is the gate of the cessation of feelings without remainder. Maitreya asks: within the realm of nirvāṇa without remainder, all feelings are forever extinguished without remainder — what feelings are extinguished? The World-Honoured One answers that two kinds of feeling are forever extinguished: the feeling of the gross-and-heavy support (of four kinds: with form as support, with the formless as support, whose fruit is already fulfilled, and whose fruit is not yet fulfilled) and the feeling of the object-realm that is its fruit (also of four kinds: upholding, requisites, enjoyment, and regard). Within nirvāṇa with remainder these two feelings are gradually extinguished, and only the feeling born of the clear contact remains; on reaching final nirvāṇa without remainder this feeling born of the clear contact too is forever extinguished, and so it is said that all feelings are forever extinguished without remainder. Bodhiruci here renders "the feeling of the gross-and-heavy support" as "the feeling-mark of seeing the body," with no word "gross-and-heavy," while Xuanzang marks gross-and-heaviness plainly — the one a gross-and-heavy feeling dogged by the afflictions, the other the object-realm feeling that is its fruit, both extinguished, and only then without remainder. The whole path of calm and insight comes here, by way of the awakening that is realized, home to the quiescence that is realized.

The eighteen gates being now spent, the World-Honoured One praises Maitreya for "being well able to rely upon the full and utterly purest wondrous path of yoga," and charges all good sons and good daughters to be valiant and diligent by it and to cultivate it rightly; and again, in a repeated verse, makes clear once more the import that "within the yoga set up by the conventional designation of dharmas, if one practises heedlessly one loses the great purpose." At the last Maitreya asks the name of this teaching, and the World-Honoured One answers, "the teaching of the definitive meaning of yoga," charging him to uphold it — and the name of the chapter and the home of the chapter are here knotted together. The chapter's name, "the Yoga of Discernment," is set up by taking just this "teaching of the definitive meaning of yoga."

Cross-readings with later texts

The calm and insight (śamatha, vipaśyanā), four objects, manifestation of consciousness alone, and eighteen-gate path of yoga in this chapter are important scriptural materials for Consciousness-Only contemplation. In its Division on the Characteristics of the Knowable, the Mahāyāna-saṃgraha explicitly names the Saṃdhinirmocana-sūtra and directly quotes this chapter's mind-image and consciousness-only passage 〔T31n1594 0138b04 (latter half)–0138b14 (first half)〕; it does not thereby reproduce the chapter's complete eighteen gates or formal four-object terminology. Its four investigations and four true knowledges 〔0142c17–25〕 and its six perfections are instead bounded thematic cross-readings. The Madhyānta-vibhāga and the Cheng Weishi Lun likewise are cross-read only at the identified passages: the latter's scroll seven has “the object is only the manifestation of consciousness” 〔T31n1585 0039a07〕, while its scroll nine distinguishes the application and penetration stages. The formal four-object terminology remains grounded in T676/T1579. The Yogācārabhūmi—attributed to Maitreya and translated by Xuanzang—in scroll seventy-seven of its Division of Ascertainment explicitly quotes the whole chapter, including the eighteen gates, repeated verse, upholding, and gains; its named citation therefore has broader coverage than the Mahāyāna-saṃgraha's named quotation of this one passage.

Opening overview

In the preceding chapters the object contemplated (the ultimate, mind-manas-and-consciousness, the characteristics of dharmas, non-self-nature) has been established, and the contemplating practice (the calm-and-insight of discriminative yoga) has been opened up; with this chapter we enter upon the stations traversed by that contemplating practice — how a bodhisattva climbs in, ground by ground, which perfections he cultivates upon each ground, which obstructions he severs, through how many aeons he passes, and why the Buddha speaks of One Vehicle by hidden intent on the basis of one dharma-realm and one principle while retaining differences of lineage. Woncheuk divides the seven chapters of the sūtra's main exposition into three stretches: the first four chapters clarify the object to be contemplated, the next two distinguish the contemplating practice, the last one displays the fruit attained; the present chapter is the latter of the two chapters that distinguish contemplating practice. Its ten grounds, ten perfections, and severance of obstructions may be cross-read with the later Consciousness-Only stage of cultivation, while the formal five-stage sequence remains a later treatise framework. So this chapter is not a loose discourse on the gateways of practice; it spreads out in one unbroken sweep the bodhisattva's course from the first ground to the Buddha-ground, together with the cultivation of the ten perfections.

The whole chapter is threaded through by a single questioner, Avalokiteśvara. Woncheuk divides the prose into four stretches: first, a full account of the grounds; second, a full account of the ten perfections; third, a separate exposition of the obstructions countered by raising the perfections upon their grounds; fourth, a clarifying of the Buddha-Tathāgata's intent in teaching the One Vehicle. The first three present the sequence of raising the perfections upon the grounds and removing obstructions through the perfections; the fourth separately explains the One-Vehicle intent. Below, each stretch unfolds from its relevant questions, all posed by that same questioner, and is grounded in the scripture and the ancient masters' divisions.

Section One: The ten bodhisattva grounds — the four purities, the eleven portions, the twenty-two follies, the eight excellences, the excellence of birth, and the three vows

Avalokiteśvara first asks: concerning the ten bodhisattva grounds of which the Buddha has spoken, on to the Buddha-ground as the eleventh — by how many kinds of purity, by how many portions, are they to be comprised? This one question leads out the whole "full account of the grounds" stretch. Within this first stretch Woncheuk further opens six lesser sections, making the gradations of the grounds clear from six aspects.

First, the four kinds of purity and the eleven portions comprise the grounds. The four purities are the purity of the higher resolve, the purity of the higher discipline, the purity of the higher mind, and the purity of the higher wisdom: the purity of resolve comprises the first ground, the purity of discipline the second, the purity of mind the third, while the purity of wisdom, because upon each successive ground it grows ever more excellent and wondrous, comprises from the fourth ground all the way to the Buddha-ground. These four purities — the three higher trainings (discipline, mind, wisdom) together with the resolve of the first ground — comprise all eleven grounds entire. As for the eleven portions comprising the grounds, this speaks of the gradual ascent of the eleven grounds by way of "cultivating what is not yet fulfilled, and advancing further once it is fulfilled," portion by portion: when the prior portion is fulfilled, one sees again that the next portion is not yet fulfilled, and by diligent cultivation fulfils it, advancing thus in turn, until at the last portion's fulfilment, fulfilment is gained in all the portions. This brings out, from the two sides of purity and portion, the very layering by which a "ground" is a ground.

Second, explaining the meaning of the grounds' names. The scriptural text sets up a name for each ground, and each name has its meaning, every ground being named for the virtue accomplished upon that ground. Having first accomplished the great purpose and given rise to great gladness, hence named Great Joy; far removed from subtle breach of discipline, hence Freedom from Defilement; the samādhi and the dhāraṇī of retaining what is heard one has gained being able to serve as the support of a light of wisdom, hence Radiance; the dharmas of the limbs of awakening burning up the afflictions, the wisdom like a flame, hence Blazing Wisdom; gaining sovereign mastery in cultivating those dharmas of the limbs of awakening, most exceedingly hard to do, hence Most Hard to Conquer. Again, contemplating manifestly the flowing-on of formations and cultivating markless attention much, hence Manifestation; entering far into markless attention, bordering close upon the pure grounds, hence Far Travel; gaining effortlessness through marklessness and not being stirred by the occurrence of afflictions, hence Immovability; gaining sovereign mastery in teaching the Dharma in every mode and a faultless and vast wisdom, hence Excellent Wisdom; the body of coarse-heaviness vast as empty space and the Dharma-body fulfilled like a great cloud spreading to cover all, hence the Dharma-Cloud. As for the forever-severing of the most exceedingly subtle afflictions and the obstruction to the knowable, and the manifesting of right and perfect awakening toward the objects of the knowable in every mode, the eleventh is therefore named the Buddha-ground. One name, one virtue: the ground-name is just the mark of the ground's virtue.

Third, the twenty-two follies and eleven coarse-heavinesses as what is to be countered. This section is not the mere reporting of a number; what it states is the very reason a ground is a ground — each single ground is defined precisely by the two follies it severs. The grounds each set up two follies and one coarse-heaviness as what is to be countered: the first ground severs the two follies of clinging to the person and to dharmas, and of the defilement of the evil destinies, on to the Tathāgata-ground severing the two follies of the most exceedingly subtle attachment toward all the objects of the knowable, and of the most exceedingly subtle obstruction; ground by ground each severs its two follies and one coarse-heaviness, totalling twenty-two follies and eleven coarse-heavinesses (the Buddha-ground too sets up two follies, making twenty-two in all). So the line "by severing these twenty-two follies and eleven coarse-heavinesses the grounds are established" says precisely this: the grounds are not heaped up rung by rung out of empty air; it is by severing one fold of folly that one fold of ground is revealed, and when these twenty-two and eleven are severed to the end, supreme perfect awakening is parted from their bondage. Nor is this number one that any man may add to or take from — Dùnlún, in his Notes on the Yogācārabhūmi, makes special note of the collation against the Sanskrit text made by the Master of the Three Baskets: Paramārtha's translation of the Mahāyāna-saṃgraha reads "twenty-two ignorances, coarse-heavinesses, the recompense, and the four kinds of birth-and-death"; but Master of the Three Baskets Xuanzang, collating against the Sanskrit text, found neither the word "recompense" nor the four births-and-deaths, and so settled it as "twenty-two follies and eleven coarse-heavinesses." One sees, then, that this count of twenty-two and eleven is fixed by the scriptural text, ground answering to ground.

Fourth, the eight kinds of excellence by which the grounds are established. Namely the eight: the purity of the higher resolve, the purity of mind, the purity of compassion, the purity of going to the far shore, the purity of seeing the Buddhas and making offerings and rendering service, the purity of ripening beings, the purity of birth, and the purity of majestic virtue. These eight grow successively more excellent from the first ground on to the Buddha-ground, only that upon the Buddha-ground the purity of birth is set aside; the merits of the ten bodhisattva grounds all have something above them, while the merits of the Buddha-ground are unsurpassed.

Fifth, distinguishing by the excellence of birth. Why is the bodhisattva's birth said to be the most excellent among all the births in existence? By four causes: it arises gathered up out of the most pure roots of goodness; it is taken on by the power of deliberate choosing; it is to rescue and deliver beings out of compassion; and, being himself undefiled, he can clear away the defilements of others.

Sixth, distinguishing by the three vows. Why are the bodhisattvas said to practise the vast vow, the wondrous vow, and the excellent vow? Also by four causes: being able well to understand the joyful abode of nirvāṇa and able to realize it swiftly; yet casting away that swiftly-realized joyful abode; without object and without waiting raising the mind of the great vow; and for the benefit of beings settling into long-enduring great suffering.

These six sections taken together make up the whole span of stages of the ten bodhisattva grounds: by the four purities and eleven portions their comprising and their advance are shown; by the meaning of the grounds' names their virtue; by the twenty-two follies and eleven coarse-heavinesses what they sever; and by the eight excellences, the excellence of birth, and the three vows their surpassingness.

Section Two: The ten perfections — the six perfections together with the latter four, comprised by the three trainings, their sequence, and named by five causes

Avalokiteśvara asks again: how many kinds of thing are there that a bodhisattva should train in altogether? This question leads out the "full account of the ten perfections" stretch. Woncheuk, glossing this stretch, finds within it eighteen questions and eighteen sections, expounding the meaning of the ten perfections question by question. Its framework is as follows.

The six gone to the far shore, and the latter four. The bodhisattva's matters of training are, in brief, of six kinds: giving, keeping discipline, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom gone to the far shore. The remaining four in number — skilful means, vow, power, and knowledge — are established as aids to the first six: the perfection of skilful means as an aid to the first three (giving, discipline, patience), the perfection of vow as an aid to vigour, the perfection of power as an aid to meditation, the perfection of knowledge as an aid to wisdom. The six perfections are the root, the latter four are aids, and together they make the ten perfections.

Comprised by the three trainings, comprised by the two equipments. Among the six perfections, the first three (giving, discipline, patience) are comprised only within the higher training in discipline, meditation within the higher training in mind, wisdom within the higher training in wisdom, while vigour pervades them all; again, what is comprised within the higher training in discipline is named the equipment of merit, what is comprised within the higher training in wisdom is named the equipment of wisdom, while the two kinds, vigour and meditation, pervade them all. Thus the six perfections are gathered home into the three higher trainings and the two equipments.

The sequence and the three kinds. Why are the six perfections in this sequence? So that each may serve as the support that draws forth the next: having no regard for body or wealth, one is able to keep discipline; to guard discipline one cultivates patience; cultivating patience one is able to give rise to vigour; giving rise to vigour one is able to accomplish meditation; having fully gained meditation one is able to obtain supramundane wisdom — each later one drawn forth in dependence on the one before, and so this sequence is established. The six perfections again each have three kinds: giving has the giving of Dharma, of goods, and of fearlessness; discipline has turning away from the unwholesome, turning toward the arising of the wholesome, and turning toward the benefit of beings; patience has enduring harm from foes, calmly receiving suffering, and contemplating and examining the Dharma; vigour has donning the armour, the application to the arising of wholesome dharmas, and the application to the benefit of beings; meditation has the joyful abode that counters the afflictions and the many sufferings, that which draws forth merits, and that which draws forth the benefit of beings; wisdom has taking as object the conventional truth, the ultimate truth, and the benefit of beings.

Named "perfection" by five causes. Giving and keeping discipline are likewise done by ordinary folk, likewise done by outsiders; why is it that only a bodhisattva's giving and discipline win the name "gone to the far shore"? The distinction lies just in these five causes — with them, the ordinary good deed turns into a perfection. First, no defiled attachment: not being attached with defilement to the things contrary to the perfections; second, no clinging regard: toward all the fruits and maturations of the perfections, and amid the repayment of kindness, the mind has no bondage — to give without hoping for return is only then giving gone to the far shore; third, no fault: keeping free of the defiling dharmas mixed in, far removed from conduct that is not skilful means; fourth, no discrimination: not, in accordance with mere words, clinging to the own-mark; fifth, right dedication: dedicating all that is performed and gathered in seeking the supreme great fruit of awakening, not for the lesser fruits of gods and men. Lacking these five marks, it is but worldly good; possessed of these five marks, only then is it a perfection. Of this name "gone to the far shore" Woncheuk further points out: the Saṃdhinirmocana reads "the perfection of dāna, śīla, kṣānti, vīrya, dhyāna, and prajñā" — that is the Sanskrit sound of "the far shore," while what Xuanzang marks here is the meaning in the Tang tongue. He also cites the Yogācārabhūmi, scroll forty-nine, glossing "gone to the far shore" by three meanings — time, the purity of own-nature, and the gaining of the wondrous fruit: namely, these ten dharmas, over the most exceedingly long time, on to being able fully to realize the most exceedingly pure own-nature and to gain the most exceedingly wondrous fruit of awakening, are therefore named perfections.

The seven marks of purity. The scriptural text further speaks, generally and particularly, of the mark of the perfections' purity, with seven kinds each; and speaks of the perfections' function, of their mark as vast, undefiled, bright, flourishing, and unshakable, of their cause, fruit, and meaning-and-benefit, on to the grasping by wisdom of the non-nature of all dharmas, and to the distinguishing, by ground, of perfection, near-perfection, and great perfection — what is practised upon the Ground of Resolute Conduct is perfection, from the first ground upward is near-perfection, from the eighth ground upward is great perfection.

The filth simile: giving goods is not the foremost benefit. Coming to "conduct that is not skilful means," the World-Honoured One sets forth a simile most unsparing and yet most apt — it is like filth: be it much or little, there is in the end nothing that can make it become fragrant and clean. Because beings course in the suffering of formation, their nature is itself suffering; if you merely take goods to benefit them for a time, it is like sprinkling perfume upon filth — be the quantity ever so great, it cannot alter that nature, and in the end cannot make them happy. What, then, counts as true benefit? Only the settling of them within the marvellous wholesome Dharma — drawing them out of the unwholesome place and settling them in the wholesome — only this wins the name of foremost benefit. So "true benefit" lies not in how much wealth is given, but in whether one can settle a man within the wholesome Dharma.

The simile of the hungry ghost seeing the sea dried up: beings' poverty is no shortcoming of the bodhisattva's. Hard upon this comes a simile that turns back to guard the bodhisattva's mind of giving. It is like hungry ghosts, their bodies pressed by great heat and thirst, who go to the edge of the great sea and yet see all that brimming sea-water utterly dried up — how is this any fault in the great sea? It is the hungry ghosts' own evil deeds that make them see the sea as dried up. The treasure the bodhisattva gives is likewise as the great sea, in itself measureless, undiminished, and without fault; that the beings of the world are nonetheless poor is not that the bodhisattva has no mind to benefit them, nor no treasure to give, but is by the obstruction of the beings' own deeds — as the hungry ghosts, by the power of their own evil deeds, make even a sea's worth of water bear no fruit when it comes before them. Taking the two similes together: the one says that giving goods, however much, is not ultimate (perfume added to filth), the other says that beings' not gaining benefit is no shortcoming of the giving (the hungry ghost seeing the sea dried up) — the one pressing forward and the other guarding behind, they show precisely that the bodhisattva's perfecting lies in the settling of beings in the wholesome Dharma, not in the bare giving of treasure.

Section Three: The obstructions countered by raising the perfections upon their grounds — the three latent tendencies, the coarse-heaviness of skin, flesh, and bone, the three great aeons, and the undefiled mark of the afflictions

Avalokiteśvara asks once more: when a bodhisattva has reached the grounds, are the latent tendencies of affliction still present upon these grounds or not? And if still present, in what manner are they present? This question leads out the "separate exposition of the obstructions countered by raising the perfections upon their grounds" stretch. To answer it, one must first see one thing clearly: the lurking afflictions do not all lie evenly at a single level — some are shallow, some deep; the shallow are severed early, the deep are exhausted late, and it is only upon the Buddha-ground that they are severed clean. Woncheuk, glossing this stretch, opens four gates: distinguishing the number of kinds of latent tendency, what the severance of coarse-heaviness reveals, the time-span of the severance of coarse-heaviness, and the virtue and flaw of the bodhisattva's afflictions. Below, the exposition follows this sequence, from the shallow inward to the deep.

The three latent tendencies — the three layers, shallow and deep, of the afflictions' lurking. The latent tendencies of affliction upon the grounds are, in brief, of three kinds, which are precisely the three layers from shallow to deep. The shallowest layer is the companion-destroying latent tendency, upon the first five grounds — those occurring afflictions that are not innate were originally the aiding companions of the occurrence of the innate afflictions; when the bodhisattva advances to here, these "chimers-in" are forever no more, hence named companion-destroying (the destroying of their companion-band). Dùnlún cites Master Jǐng's judgement: the companion-destroying latent tendency "is the most coarse of these" — the most afloat upon the surface, and so the first to be severed. A layer deeper is the feeble latent tendency, upon the sixth and seventh grounds — the afflictions now occur subtly, their force feeble, and once subdued by cultivation they do not occur. The deepest layer is the subtle latent tendency, from the eighth ground upward — no affliction occurs any more, and what remains is only that subtlest residual force which has the obstruction to the knowable for its support. The three latent tendencies, from shallow to deep, answer exactly to the step-by-step ascent of the stations.

The severance of the coarse-heaviness of skin, flesh, and bone — how deep one severs is what layer is revealed. These three layers of latent tendency, shallow and deep, the scriptural text reveals through the three portions of "skin, flesh, bone" in their severance — the coarse-heaviness upon the body, as a man has skin, has flesh (the meat beneath the skin), has bone, one layer deeper than another. The severance of the coarse-heaviness in the skin severs the outermost layer, and what it reveals are the first two latent tendencies (companion-destroying, feeble); the severance of the coarse-heaviness in the flesh goes a layer deeper, and what it reveals is the third latent tendency (subtle); while the severance of the coarse-heaviness in the bone — severance reaching to the bone, the deepest, innermost layer — is only then said to be the forever-parting from all latent tendencies, and this severance is positioned upon the Buddha-ground alone. So skin, flesh, and bone are no off-hand simile: they set the matter that "the severing of obstruction goes one layer deeper than another" upon the very body that every man has. The severance of the shallow places, skin and flesh, the bodhisattva upon the grounds can manage portion by portion; the thorough severance reaching to the marrow of the bone, only a Buddha can manage — all latent tendencies severed to the end with nothing left over, not a single thread retained: this is the very reason the Buddha-ground is the Buddha-ground. Kuiji, in 〈Forest of Categories of Consciousness-Only, Third〉, gate nine, “Severing the Obstructing Defilements,” within the Forest of Categories of the Mahāyāna Dharma-Garden, cites this sūtra's text on the three latent tendencies and the severance of the coarse-heaviness of skin, flesh, and bone.

The three great incalculable aeons — how long it takes to sever down to the bone. To sever coarse-heaviness of this kind, down to the severance in the bone, one must pass through three great incalculable aeons, or, as it is said, measureless aeons. Dùnlún, glossing this, speaks in terms of great aeons and small aeons: by great aeons, one severs the coarse-heaviness to its end after passing through but three incalculable aeons; by small aeons, one passes through measureless ones. The severance of the deep places being the hardest to manage, the time passed through is likewise the longest.

The undefiled mark of the afflictions upon the grounds — the bodhisattva's afflictions upon the grounds differ from the ordinary man's. Since it is said that latent tendencies still remain upon the grounds, are not the afflictions a bodhisattva gives rise to upon the grounds also defiled? The sūtra answers: not so — they have the mark of being undefiled. Because the bodhisattva, upon the first ground, has already well penetrated the dharma-realm of all dharmas, he is one who first knows and then gives rise to affliction, not one who gives rise to it without knowing, hence undefiled; within his own person it cannot give rise to suffering, hence without flaw; and the afflictions he gives rise to can, within the realm of beings, sever the cause of suffering, hence they have, on the contrary, measureless virtue. The same two words, "affliction," yet the ordinary man's is bondage suffered in delusion, while the bodhisattva's is function set going in clarity — this layer shows precisely the boundary between the bodhisattva's afflictions upon the grounds and the ordinary man's defiled afflictions.

Section Four: The hidden intent of the One Vehicle

Last, Avalokiteśvara asks: since the World-Honoured One has said "whether the śrāvaka vehicle or again the great vehicle, it is only the One Vehicle," what is the hidden intent of this? This question leads out the "clarifying of the Buddha-Tathāgata's intent in teaching the One Vehicle" stretch. Woncheuk, glossing this stretch, places the request first and the teaching after, and divides the World-Honoured One's teaching proper into three sections: rightly explaining the hidden intent, clarifying the deluded one's wrong grasping, and concluding the hidden intent.

The scriptural text answers this hidden intent itself: just as I, in the śrāvaka vehicle, proclaim the various own-natures of dharmas — the five aggregates, the six inner sense-bases, the six outer sense-bases, and the like; so in the great vehicle I say that those very dharmas are of one dharma-realm and of one principle, and therefore do not say the vehicles have a nature of difference. Dùnlún, glossing this stretch, points straight to its bone: in the lesser vehicle one teaches the various dharma-natures of the aggregates, elements, and sense-bases; in the great vehicle one teaches that these very dharmas are of one suchness-realm and of one principle; and upon their being of one suchness, the Buddha does not teach a nature of difference among the vehicles. Woncheuk's gloss of this hidden intent is especially clear: discussing its true meaning, to say there are three vehicles does not contradict the One Vehicle — the three vehicles, though different, are of one suchness; and upon this the Buddha, with hidden intent, teaches that there is only the One Vehicle — it is not to say that within the whole realm of beings there are no various natures of beings. So "One Vehicle" is taught with hidden intent upon the one suchness-principle; it does not wipe out the difference of lineages. As for those who, "in accordance with mere words, falsely give rise to discrimination over the meaning, one party over-affirming and one party under-denying," these are precisely the deluded one's wrong grasping of this hidden intent, and so, one after another, they raise up disputes — this is what the section "clarifying the deluded one's wrong grasping" expounds.

Having spoken, the World-Honoured One concludes it with a repeated verse, and the line "that which the grounds comprise — perception, the things to be countered, the excellences, births, vows, and trainings" gathers up the grounds, the ten perfections, and the obstructions to be countered, all that the three prior stretches set forth, into "in dependence on what the Buddha taught, they are the great vehicle; one who cultivates them well becomes the Great Awakened One." The bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara asks the name of this teaching, and the World-Honoured One answers, "the teaching of true and final meaning concerning the grounds and the perfections," and charges him to uphold it — here the chapter's name and the chapter's home are concluded together.

What the later tradition carries on

The ten bodhisattva grounds, ten perfections, and corresponding obstructions provide important scriptural material for the stage of cultivation and may be compared point by point with explicitly identified passages in later treatises.

The Mahāyāna-saṃgraha offers the densest set of cross-readings. Its Divisions on the Higher Training in Discipline, Mind, and Wisdom comprise the bodhisattva's training by the three higher trainings and may be compared with this chapter's six perfections, three trainings, four purities, and ten grounds. Its Division on the Differentiation of Cultivation establishes the ten perfections and may be compared with this chapter's six and latter four; its Division on the Fruit of Severance treats transformation-of-basis and the severance of the two obstructions, a valid comparison for this chapter's obstruction-severance. These are comparisons at each division's explicit passages, not a claim of wholesale direct transmission. The skin-flesh-bone simile belongs instead to a commentary on the Saṃgraha 〔T31n1597 0350b11〕, not to that root division.

The Cheng Weishi Lun, in the stage of cultivation of scrolls nine and ten, establishes the ten grounds, the ten perfections, the ten heavy obstructions, and the ten suchnesses, together with the severance of the twenty-two follies and the three great incalculable aeons — materials that can be compared with this chapter’s ten grounds, twenty-two follies, ten perfections, and stage of cultivation; and in glossing this chapter's stretch on the obstructions Woncheuk takes the Cheng Weishi Lun for his framework, citing it ground by ground.

The Madhyānta-vibhāga, in its Chapter Distinguishing the Unsurpassed Vehicle, distinguishes the unsurpassed vehicle of ground, perfection, and fruit, providing a thematic parallel for this chapter’s grounds and perfections; and in glossing this chapter's five marks of training Woncheuk also cites the Madhyānta-vibhāga's text, "the bodhisattva, by the three wisdoms, ever ponders the great vehicle — that is, the ten kinds of dharma-practice."

Grounds, perfections, obstructions, and the One Vehicle make this chapter an important scriptural source for the stages of Yogācāra cultivation; the precise relations to later works remain those bounded comparisons listed above.

The whole sūtra has laid out the Object and the Path, chapter by chapter; one question only remains — when one has cultivated to the very end and become a Buddha, what does that look like? This chapter answers it through the Dharma-body, the transformation-body, the Buddha's speech, and pure and impure lands. Woncheuk and Dunlun read its passages as a three-body structure.

Opening overview

The preceding seven chapters have laid down, one stretch after another, both the Object and the Path: the ultimate, mind-manas-and-consciousness, the characteristics of dharmas, and non-self-nature are the object to be contemplated; the calm-and-insight of the analytic-yoga chapter and the ten grounds and ten perfections of the grounds-and-perfections chapter are the practice that contemplates. The object is established, the practice is traversed — and only one last question remains: when one has cultivated to the very end and become a Buddha, what kind of mark is that?

This chapter answers that question. It no longer speaks of the cultivation of the causal stage; it holds the fruit-stage out in full: how completed transformation-of-basis is the mark of the Tathāgata's Dharma-body, how the transformation-body shows itself in the human world, by what speech-and-sound the Buddha sets forth the Dharma, what kind of wisdom the Buddha's wisdom is, where pure and impure lands differ, and at last how the whole great sūtra draws to its close. Woncheuk divides the seven chapters of the sūtra's main exposition into three stretches — the first four chapters clarify the object to be contemplated, the next two distinguish the contemplating practice, and the last one displays the fruit attained. This chapter is that last chapter, and its account of the Buddha-fruit may be cross-read with the ultimate position in the later five-position scheme of Consciousness-Only. The five-position nomenclature belongs to the later treatises and is not attributed back to the sūtra. In a word: this is the sūtra's chapter displaying the Buddha-fruit.

The whole chapter is carried through by Mañjuśrī in a continuous question-and-answer exchange. Woncheuk divides this into twelve questions-and-answers, and gathers these twelve into the three bodies — the Dharma-body, the transformation-body, and the enjoyment-body. So in reading this chapter, the framework lies in the three bodies: which body does not arise, which body shows itself, which body gives rise to mind within no-application. First, two points of editorial form. The first: when Woncheuk's transmitted edition lists these twelve questions-and-answers, it leaps straight from the eighth to the tenth and marks no "nine" — this is the ordering of Woncheuk's own transmitted edition; the sūtra text itself wants for nothing (the segment on the sending-forth of the great wisdom-light is present in full in the sūtra), and so the segments below follow the sūtra faithfully in order, neither supplying nor altering. The second: Woncheuk's extant commentary stops at the third segment, the skillfulness of the transformation-body, with a closing note at the end of scroll nine, "ending at the ninth scroll"; and so, from the fourth segment on speech onward, the ancient masters' glosses drawn upon are from Dunlun's Notes on the Yogācārabhūmi (where, glossing the cited section of the Division of Ascertainment, all fourteen gateways of the chapter are present in full), and not from Woncheuk. All that is set forth here has scripture, and the ancient masters' judgement, for its warrant; nothing of doctrine is newly invented.

Section One: The Mark of the Dharma-body — transformation of the basis fully accomplished, and its difference from the liberation-body of the two vehicles

Mañjuśrī first asks: the Tathāgata's Dharma-body — what kind of mark does it have?

The Buddha answers very plainly: if, throughout the grounds and the perfections, one well cultivates and brings forth deliverance, cultivating until "the transformation of the basis is fully accomplished" — this is the mark of the Tathāgata's Dharma-body. What is meant by "transformation of the basis"? Woncheuk, following the Mahāyāna-saṃgraha, says it clearly: to turn the basis around, to the point where all that is false and deluded no longer shows itself and all that is true shows itself entire — that turning is the Dharma-body. It has two points that make it beyond conceiving: it is free of conceptual elaboration, and free of any doing. On the Buddha's side, there is long since no falling into the play of words, no recourse to contrivance; whereas on beings' side, they will insist on raising conceptual elaboration and on having something to do — the one has come to rest while the other is still busy, and so it is "beyond conceiving." One sees, then, that the Dharma-body is nothing else: it is precisely that transformation of the basis won by well cultivating deliverance throughout the grounds and perfections; this fruit-body teaching may be cross-read with the later ultimate position.

Mañjuśrī then presses a step further: the śrāvakas and the pratyekabuddhas also have the transformation of the basis that they have won — does that count as the Dharma-body?

The Buddha answers: it does not; that can only be called the "liberation-body." This single stroke divides the two vehicles from the Buddha with utter clarity. Spoken of as the "liberation-body," the three vehicles are equal — śrāvakas, pratyekabuddhas, and all the Tathāgatas alike are delivered out of birth-and-death, and in just this they are no different one from another; spoken of as the "Dharma-body," only then is there difference — and this difference is one of "measureless virtues, most surpassing and most distinct, beyond what number or simile can reach." Where does the difference lie? Dunlun points to it in a word: the two vehicles have severed only the affliction-obstruction, and the suchness thereby made manifest is called the liberation-body, and in this the three vehicles are equal; the Tathāgata has further severed the obstruction-to-the-knowable, and only what is thereby made manifest is called the Dharma-body, and in this alone is there difference. And that phrase "beyond what number can know" itself bears witness, the other way round, that the suchness originally present is inherently endowed with virtues as numerous as the sands of the Ganges — not added on by cultivation, but shown forth of itself once the obstructions are spent. The one severs the affliction-obstruction, the other severs the obstruction-to-the-knowable: just here stands the boundary between the liberation-body and the Dharma-body.

Sections Two and Three: The Mark of the Transformation-body — its arising and its skillfulness (the eight phases of attaining the Way)

The second and third questions turn to the transformation-body.

How does the transformation-body come to be? The sūtra says: the activity of the Tathāgata's transformation-body is "like the arising of all the kinds of a world" — as, when a world arises, the myriad kinds arise along with it, so too the transformation-body arises with the Tathāgata's virtues for its adornment and its upholding-and-maintaining for its mark. And then comes one most essential contrast: the mark of the transformation-body "has an arising," the mark of the Dharma-body "has no arising." The one arises, the other does not — and the dividing line between the transformation-body and the Dharma-body lies just in this between-arising-and-not-arising. Dunlun, citing Master Bei and Master Jing, says that what is distinguished here is the arising of the other-enjoyment-body and the transformation-body, the self-enjoyment-body being passed over and not distinguished; and citing Master Tai, says that just as the arising of the three-thousandfold world is brought about by the common karma of all beings, so too the karma of the transformation-body is like this, having the whole of the Tathāgata's virtues as the mark from which it arises.

Dunlun reads the transformation-body's "skillfulness" in this passage as the eight phases of attaining the Way. The sūtra lays out the Buddha's life: throughout all the Buddha-lands of the three-thousand-great-thousandfold world, whether born in an honoured royal house or in a house of great merit-field, He at one stroke enters the womb, is born, grows up, partakes of desires, leaves the household life, displays the practice of austerities, and, having set austerities aside, attains right and full awakening — displaying Himself in due order, playing through the whole course of becoming a Buddha in the human world. Those four words, "displaying Himself in due order," are most worth dwelling on: the Buddha's Dharma-body is in itself neither born nor perishing, yet it will play out, in the world, a drama with birth and growth, with leaving home and with attaining the Way, for beings to behold — and this is called "the skillful means by which the transformation-body is displayed." Woncheuk points out that the count of marks the various sūtras list is not the same (the Sūtra of the Unsurpassed Basis has thirteen marks, the Sūtra of Continuous Liberation eleven), while the present sūtra marks only seven; he therefore takes in besides, from the various sūtras, the abiding in the heavens, the abiding in the womb, the turning of the Dharma-wheel, and the entering into nirvāṇa, combining them into eleven marks to gloss the present sūtra; Dunlun, for his part, judges this straightway to be the eight phases of attaining the Way. The transformation-body, truly arising in one respect and only a skillful display in another, is just where it stands over against the Dharma-body that "does not arise."

Section Four: The Differences of Speech — the three baskets, the four principles, the five marks of all-knowing-wisdom

The fourth question is the longest; what it asks is the Tathāgata's "speech" — once one has become a Buddha, how does He set forth the Dharma? This is the "speaking" of the Buddha-fruit.

The Tathāgata's speech, all told, does not exceed three kinds: sūtra, discipline, and mātṛkā — that is, the three baskets the Buddha spoke. Dunlun glosses these three names: the sūtra displays the dharmas by way of "the matters-gathered"; the discipline, of old named "the quelling," displays, by way of śrāvakas and bodhisattvas, the prātimokṣa and the dharmas that accord with it; the mātṛkā — formerly transliterated 摩德勒伽 and in the newer rendering 摩呾履迦, translated here as "the mother-source" — because within this basket the various meanings are widely distinguished and the various principles are brought forth, giving birth to meaning as a mother gives birth to a child, is therefore called "the mother-source." Each of the three baskets has its own range: the sūtra gathers the four matters, the nine matters, the twenty-nine matters; the discipline displays the seven marks of the prātimokṣa; the mātṛkā, by eleven kinds of mark, determines and displays the dharmas.

Within the mātṛkā's eleven marks, the one mark of "mode-of-appearance" further opens into eight observations (the true-and-real, the abiding, fault, virtue, the principled approach, flowing-on, principle, and the general and particular); and of these the seventh, "principle," is the famous four principles:

• The principle of dependence — that it is upon cause and condition that the formations arise, and an account is set forth based thereon;
• The principle of function — that it is upon cause and condition that the dharmas can be attained, the various works brought about, and, once arisen, function set going;
• The principle of proving — that it is upon cause and condition that the meaning set up and set forth can be established, and one can be made to awaken rightly to it;
• The principle of dharma-nature — and this one most deserves to be savoured. The sūtra has but one line: whether the Tathāgata appears in the world or does not, that "dharma-nature, that abiding, that dharma-abiding, that dharma-realm" abides just so, constant. Dunlun, fearing one might not catch it, supplies an utterly plain simile: just as the earth is ever firm, and on to the wind being ever in motion — whether or not a Buddha comes into the world, it is not altered one whit. This is what is called "dharma-nature" — the dharma being thus of itself, not waiting on anyone to make or arrange it. The Buddha's setting-forth of the Dharma rests precisely upon these four right principles, and most of all upon this last: the Buddha does not legislate for heaven and earth; the Buddha only speaks forth, as it truly is, the principle that is of itself thus.

The "principle of proving" among the four principles further divides into pure and impure: only by five kinds of mark does it count as pure (the mark won by direct seeing, the mark resting upon what is won by direct seeing, the mark drawn from a simile of its own kind, the perfected-real, and well-purified instruction); the seven kinds of mark that mix in things of a different kind and reach no certainty are impure. The sūtra makes it plainer still: this principle of proving is accomplished by the three measures — direct measure, inference, and the measure of holy teaching; only what accords with the five marks is the well-observed pure principle, which may be cultivated, and what does not accord ought not to be cultivated. Whether a "meaning is established" rightly or not, the sūtra divides off this finely.

As for the Buddha's wisdom that can set forth the Dharma, the sūtra establishes the five marks of all-knowing-wisdom: first, the sound of an all-knowing one appears in the world, and there is none that does not hear it everywhere; second, the accomplishing of the thirty-two marks of a great being; third, the being furnished with the ten powers, able to sever all the doubts of all beings; fourth, the being furnished with the four fearlessnesses, setting forth the right Dharma and not subdued by rival doctrines, but able rather to crush wrong doctrines; fifth, that within the well-spoken Dharma-and-discipline the eightfold holy path and the four recluse-fruits are all presently obtainable. Dunlun says this is "the first distinguished, the rest summed up": the line "because of this appearing" rounds off the first mark, and the other four are known by its example. On the one side stand the Buddha's spoken three baskets, four principles, and pure principle; on the other, the five marks of all-knowing-wisdom of the one who can speak — and this segment of the chapter lays the "speech" and the "wisdom" of the Buddha-fruit out in their full breadth.

Section Five: The Mark of the Arising of Mind — the dhāraṇī not shared with outsiders; the enjoyment-body's arising of mind within no-application

The fifth segment first answers Mañjuśrī's request and speaks briefly of "the dhāraṇī not shared with outsiders" — the most profound of all the meanings within the Buddha's hidden-intent words: whether defiled dharmas or pure dharmas, the Buddha says that all of them alike are "without function and also without any pudgala," because in every respect the defiled and pure dharmas are apart from agency and doing; it is not that defilement comes first and purity is added after, nor that purity is first and defilement falls upon it after. Beings, however, upon this coarse-heaviness body, will insist on grasping at the dharmas and at the pudgala as each having an own-nature, and, with that dormant deluded view for their condition, reckon and cling to an "I" and a "mine," and so say "I see, I hear," on to "I am defiled, I am purified." Could one but know this layer as it truly is, one could forever sever the coarse-heaviness body and win that in which all afflictions do not abide, utmost purity, freedom from all conceptual elaboration, the unconditioned for its resting-place, and freedom from all application — and this is the Buddha's dhāraṇī-meaning not shared with outsiders, which the World-Honoured One then proclaimed again in a verse.

It is just those words, "freedom from all application," that force out the next question: since the Tathāgata is already far apart from all application and all contrivance, does the Tathāgata's mind still "arise"? And how does it arise?

The Buddha first answers decisively: the Tathāgata is not made manifest by the arising of mind, manas, and consciousness — yet the Tathāgata does have a kind of mind-dharma arising that is "without application," and this matter is "like a transformation." Mañjuśrī does not grasp it: since the Dharma-body is already far apart from all application, how can there yet be an arising of mind?

The Buddha then sets forth two similes that could not be more apt — these two similes are the eye of this segment:

It is as when a person is in mindless sleep: he makes no present application toward waking, yet wakes again through the force of application made earlier. Or it is as when a person is in the cessation-attainment: he makes no present application toward emerging, yet rises from the attainment through the force of application made earlier.

The waking of one in sleep and the rising of one in the cessation-attainment involve no present application; both occur through the force of application made earlier. The Tathāgata's arising of mind is just so: it leans on no present contrivance, but on the power of the means and prajñā cultivated formerly. Woncheuk and Dunlun both read this segment as the mark of the enjoyment-body; Dunlun says it has all three members—proposition, simile, and application. The levels must remain distinct: the sūtra speaks only of the Tathāgata's mind arising without application and does not use the term “enjoyment-body” here. That term, and the three-body grouping, belong to the ancient exegesis.

Section Six: Whether the Transformation-body Has Mind or Is Without Mind

The sixth question presses one more stroke, hard upon the transformation-body: the Tathāgata's transformation-body — is it to be said to have mind, or to be without mind?

The Buddha answers as with a turning-word: neither possessed of mind, nor without mind. Why? — Because it has no mind of its own, yet it has a mind dependent on another. Dunlun glosses it most aptly: mind is something that cannot be produced by "transformation," and so the Buddha's transformation-body has no mind that is its own (no mind of its own); yet it leans upon the mind of the enjoyment-Buddha, and faces the conditions to benefit beings, and so it is also said to have a mind dependent on another (a mind dependent on another). Kuiji too, in the Forest of Categories of the Mahāyāna Dharma-Garden, 〈Forest of Categories on the Three Bodies〉, distinguishing the transformation-body transformed by the "wisdom of accomplishing what is to be done," cites this sūtra's very phrase "because it has no mind of its own, yet has a mind dependent on another" to gloss it — the transformation-body has no mind of its own, yet has a mind dependent on another, and this is the reason for its being "neither possessed nor without."

Section Seven: The Difference Between the Tathāgata’s Sphere of Activity and His Domain

The seventh question divides the Tathāgata's "sphere of activity" and "domain" into two faces. The Tathāgata's sphere of activity is the pure Buddha-land, adorned for the multitude with the inconceivable, measureless virtue that all the Tathāgatas hold in common, in all its kinds; the Tathāgata's domain is the difference of "the five realms" in all their kinds — the realm of sentient beings, the realm of worlds, the realm of dharmas, the realm of the disciplined, and the realm of the means of disciplining. The one, in terms of the pure land made by the Buddha's virtues, speaks of "sphere of activity"; the other, in terms of the difference of the five realms, speaks of "domain"; and the two are here divided off.

Section Eight: The Three Marks of Non-Duality in Attaining Right and Full Awakening, Turning the Dharma-wheel, and Entering Nirvāṇa

The eighth question: the Tathāgata's attaining of right and full awakening, His turning of the right Dharma-wheel, and His entering into great nirvāṇa — these three, what mark do they have?

The Buddha answers: these three are all "of a non-dual mark" — neither attaining right and full awakening, nor not attaining right and full awakening; neither turning the right Dharma-wheel, nor not turning it; neither entering great nirvāṇa, nor not entering it. Why are both ends thus left unfixed? The sūtra answers itself cleanly: because the Tathāgata's Dharma-body is ultimately pure, and the Tathāgata's transformation-body ever displays itself. Spoken of from the side of the Dharma-body, it is in itself ultimately pure, with no attaining, no turning, no entering to speak of (hence "neither attaining, nor turning, nor entering"); spoken of from the side of the transformation-body, it ever displays in the world the attaining of the Way, the setting-forth of the Dharma, and nirvāṇa (hence "neither not-attaining, nor not-turning, nor not-entering"). One statement viewed from two sides, and all three great matters are thereby "non-dual." Mañjuśrī asks again: beings, merely by seeing, hearing, and serving upon the transformation-body, can give rise to merit — what causes-and-conditions has the Tathāgata herein? The Buddha answers: the Tathāgata is precisely the "predominant object as cause-and-condition" for that merit of beings, and that transformation-body is in turn upheld and maintained by the Tathāgata's power — so that the merit won by seeing and hearing the transformation-body has its cause-and-condition, in truth, still upon the Tathāgata's body.

Section Nine: The Sending-Forth of the Great Wisdom-Light and the Issuing of Transformation-body Images

The ninth question asks very pointedly: equally "without application," equally effortless — why is it that the Tathāgata's Dharma-body alone can send forth the great wisdom-light for beings and well up measureless transformation-body images, while the liberation-body of the two vehicles has no such thing?

The Buddha again answers with two similes — these two similes light through and through the principle that "the same no-application is put to uses worlds apart":

The first: equally without lifting a particle of effort, the two kinds of "water-and-fire crystal gem" (the crystal gems) of the sun-disc and the moon-disc can send forth a great light that lights up the world everywhere; yet other water-and-fire crystal gems cannot. Why can these alone send it forth? Because they are upheld and maintained by beings of great majestic virtue, and brought to be by the predominant force of beings' deeds. The second: it is like a maṇi-jewel — only when worked by a skillful craftsman, carved and ground and polished, can it mirror forth the image of an imprint; the unworked cannot.

Joining the two similes: the Tathāgata's Dharma-body is precisely what is gathered together by "founding upon the means and prajñā of the measureless dharma-realm, most well cultivated, ground, and polished" — like that sun-and-moon gem upheld and maintained, like that maṇi-jewel carved and worked — and so it can send forth the great wisdom-light and well up transformation-body images. The liberation-body of the two vehicles has not passed through this "grinding and polishing," and so it has not these two great uses. Dunlun says it plainly: that the Dharma-body can send forth a great light, which no other water-and-fire crystal gem can send forth, is precisely the simile that the liberation-body won by the two vehicles has not these two uses. So where the Dharma-body surpasses the liberation-body of the two vehicles lies not in the word "liberation" — there they are equal — but in its having passed through the most thorough grinding and polishing of means and prajñā, and only thereby having this great use of sending forth light and showing forth bodies.

Sections Ten and Eleven: The Majestic Virtue That Upholds and Maintains Body, Wealth, and Sentient Beings

The tenth and eleventh questions issue from the same place, clarifying the "majestic virtue that upholds and maintains" of the Tathāgata and the bodhisattvas. This majestic virtue, whether of the path or of the practice, can in every place cause beings to obtain body and wealth complete — He sets forth for them this path and this practice as is fitting for each, and those who can rightly cultivate-and-practise it then in every place obtain body and wealth complete. The other way round, if anyone goes against and slights this path and this practice, and moreover gives rise toward the Buddha to a mind of harm and anger, then after their life ends their body and wealth are in every case low and mean. So the majestic virtue that upholds and maintains is not able to accomplish only the one face: follow it, and body and wealth are complete; go against it, and body and wealth are low and mean — and between following and going-against, one sees the mark of the majestic virtue that upholds and maintains as it is laid upon sentient beings.

Section Twelve: The Difference Between Pure and Impure Lands, and the Close of the Whole Sūtra

The last question asks what, in the pure and the impure lands, is hard to obtain and what easy. In the impure lands "eight matters are easy to obtain" — outsiders, beings who suffer, the differences of rise and fall in lineage and family-station, those who do all manner of evil deeds, those who break the precepts, those who fall into the evil destinies, those who enter the lower vehicle, and bodhisattvas of low and mean resolve and application: these eight are everywhere in the impure lands; "two matters are hard to obtain" — the resort and gathering of bodhisattvas of surpassing resolve and application, and the appearing of a Tathāgata in the world: these two are exceedingly hard to meet in the impure lands. The pure lands are just the reverse: those eight matters are exceedingly hard to obtain, while those two are easy. Between the one way and its reverse, the weight of pure and impure lands is weighed out.

Having asked thus far, Mañjuśrī asks by what name this chapter's teaching should be called. The World-Honoured One answers with "the teaching of true and final meaning on the Tathāgata's accomplishment of what is to be done," and charges him to uphold it. In that very teaching, seventy-five thousand bodhisattvas "all won the realization-awakening of the perfect Dharma-body." The sūtra itself closes on the perfect Dharma-body; Woncheuk and Dunlun read the chapter's several passages as a three-body structure. Object and Path have been spoken to the end, and the fruit is gathered into this final Dharma-body realization.

What the later tradition carries on

The chapter explicitly speaks of the Tathāgata's Dharma-body, transformation of the basis, transformation-body, four principles, and five marks of all-knowing wisdom; Woncheuk and Dunlun group the Dharma-body, transformation-body, and mind-without-application passages as the three bodies. The Mahāyāna-saṃgraha's Fruit-Wisdom division establishes the own-nature, enjoyment, and transformation bodies, while its Fruit-Severance division treats transformation of the basis; these may be compared with the chapter's fruit-body teaching, and Woncheuk cites the Saṃgraha's seventh scroll while glossing transformation of the basis here. The Cheng Weishi Lun's tenth scroll treats the four wisdoms, three bodies, transformation of the basis, and the obstructions, for a later comparison. In the Madhyānta-vibhāga, only the explicit three-body passage in the Chapter Distinguishing the Stages of Cultivation 〔T31n1600 0473a09–11〕 is used; its Chapter Distinguishing the Unsurpassed Vehicle is not made to carry this chapter's speech, four principles, omniscience, or transformation of the basis. The Yogācārabhūmi's Division of Ascertainment, scroll seventy-eight, explicitly quotes the whole chapter and is therefore the direct same-translator parallel. Sūtra wording, ancient exegesis, and later thematic comparison remain separate.