Fifty-Three Teachers
A boy named Sudhana is told by Mañjuśrī to go south and find a teacher. He finds one. That teacher teaches him one thing, insists it is the only thing he knows, and sends him further south to somebody else. Fifty-three times.
The people he is sent to are: a monk on a mountain. A man who has stared at the sea for twelve years. A physician. A laywoman. An ascetic standing on a hill of fire and blades. A girl. An elder who used to sell incense. A king whose punishments are so horrifying that Sudhana doubts he can be a bodhisattva at all. A renunciant of an entirely different religion. A sea-captain. A woman whose reputation makes strangers warn Sudhana away from her door. Nine night-goddesses. The Buddha's own mother. A schoolteacher, who immediately refers him on to his own best pupil — a child. And at the end, a tower large enough to contain the universe, and the bodhisattva standing in front of it.
This is the longest sustained narrative in the Buddhist canon: seventeen fascicles of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, one pilgrimage, recounted in full. It is translated complete on this site, across 454 parts, with Fazang's eighth-century commentary throughout. There is no other course like this in English, because there is no other complete translation to teach it from.
Fifty-three teachers, and not one of them is who you would have chosen. The subject of this course is that you can learn from anyone — and how unwelcome that turns out to be.
Fifty-three teachers will not fit into a term, and a summary of fifty-three teachers would be worth nothing. So this is a route — thirteen teachers chosen because together they make the pilgrimage's argument, with at least one drawn from each of the five stages the path traces. Each session reads that teacher's episode in full, from the text.
The other forty are all there, complete, and the course points at them constantly. If you want the whole pilgrimage rather than a route through it, start at Part 1 and keep walking.
This chapter was rendered into Chinese twice, nearly three centuries apart, and both translations are complete on this site — so reading one against the other is a matter of opening two tabs.
Buddhabhadra 六十卷本
Śikṣānanda 八十卷本
Every quotation in these thirteen sessions comes from Buddhabhadra's, for one reason: Fazang wrote his commentary on that text, and the reading notes are half of why the collection is worth reading at all. But when a passage matters to you, go and find it in the other. The differences are not cosmetic, and noticing them is where reading a translation begins, rather than reading straight through one.
- Recognise the pattern every episode follows — a teaching given, a single liberation disclosed, a disclaimer that this is the only gate the teacher knows, and a referral onward — and see why the repetition is the argument rather than a structural tic.
- Say what a kalyāṇamitra is, in the specific sense this text means: not a guru, not a lineage-holder, but whoever is in front of you with something you do not have.
- Read an episode that offends you — a king who tortures, a woman with a reputation, a teacher outside the tradition — and locate the actual teaching rather than the discomfort.
- Follow the five stages of the bodhisattva path as the pilgrimage traces them, which is the structure Fazang's commentary reads it by.
- Stand in front of Maitreya's tower, the largest single episode in the canon, and know what you are looking at.
One teacher a session, and the same six steps — plus the referral, which is how every episode actually ends.
Sessions are being published one at a time. Teacher numbers are their place among the fifty-three.
- Nothing to buy. The whole of Entering the Dharma-Realm is on this site — Buddhabhadra's 418–420 CE Chinese beside Ru-Yi's English, in 454 parts, with Fazang's commentary throughout.
- No previous course required, though Read a Whole Sūtra ends on the Vows of Samantabhadra, which is where this pilgrimage ends too. If you took it, session 13 will feel like arriving somewhere you have been before.
- A tolerance for repetition. Fifty-three teachers say versions of the same thing. That is not a flaw in the text; it is the text's method, and session 1 explains why.
- A willingness to be taught by the wrong person. At least three of these thirteen will offend somebody. The course does not apologise for them, and does not pretend they are simple either.