The Four Intentions, and the Four Hidden Implications

T1606 supplies a concrete scriptural example for each of the four, and together they explain how the very same statement can mean something quite different from what its surface wording would suggest, once its intention is correctly identified. The intention of equality is illustrated by the Buddha's own statement, "I was once, long ago, the Tathāgata Excellent Insight" — a claim that sounds like a report of personal continuity across lifetimes, but whose actual intention rests on the equality of the dharma-body itself, which is undifferentiated across all buddhas, rather than on any literal single personal identity persisting through time.

The intention regarding a later time is illustrated by statements such as "whoever aspires to be reborn in the Pure Land of Utmost Bliss will certainly attain that rebirth," or "whoever merely hears the name of the Tathāgata Stainless Moonlight will never again regress from supreme awakening" — statements whose actual intention concerns a result to be reached only at some later time, through further necessary practice, not an instantaneous guarantee upon the bare act of hearing or aspiring alone.

The intention regarding a different meaning is illustrated by the very statement already examined at length across the previous two parts — "all dharmas lack own-nature" — where the actual intention, as already shown, is a specific and qualified absence matched to each of the three natures, not the sweeping, undifferentiated non-existence a purely literal reading would suggest.

And the intention regarding a being's own disposition is illustrated by the Buddha praising or criticizing the very same modest wholesome root on different occasions for different listeners: praising it to encourage a discouraged practitioner toward joyful, vigorous effort, or criticizing it to prevent one already satisfied with a small accomplishment from settling for too little. In just this way, he praises the abundance and splendor of a buddha-land specifically to those inclined toward greed, and praises the superior qualities of various buddhas specifically to those inclined toward pride; he reassures a practitioner troubled by persistent remorse over past disrespect shown to buddhas or bodhisattvas that even this need not bar rebirth in a fortunate realm; and, for those of uncertain spiritual lineage, he predicts that even a committed śrāvaka will eventually attain buddhahood, and declares that there is, in the end, only a single vehicle and no second — each statement calibrated precisely to the specific disposition of the being it addresses.

T1606 explains each of these four in turn, and together they comprise, in brief, the entire body of hidden meaning behind the Tathāgata's teaching within the Mahāyāna. The hidden implication of entry is illustrated by the śrāvaka teaching's own statement that form and the other dharmas genuinely possess own-nature — spoken so that beginners, not yet ready for emptiness's own more demanding teaching, might enter the noble teaching gradually and without fear, rather than being turned away at the very threshold. The hidden implication of characteristic is exactly the three natures already examined, under which "all dharmas lack own-nature" and "all dharmas are unborn and unceasing" are stated — the very implication unpacked across Part 80. The hidden implication of counteraction is illustrated by the Buddha's own teaching of the supreme vehicle specifically to subdue eight particular faults at once: contempt for the Dharma, laziness, contentment with only a small accomplishment, greedy or arrogant conduct, persistent remorse, uncertain spiritual lineage, and related distinctions — the very same range of dispositions already surveyed under the intention regarding a being's own disposition. And the hidden implication of transformed wording is illustrated by deliberately cryptic scriptural language whose surface wording, taken at face value, would suggest something quite different from its actual intent — as in the verse: "Awakening firm within what is not firm, deeply abiding in what is inverted, thoroughly wearied by affliction, one attains supreme awakening." Here, T1606 explains, "firm within what is not firm" means directing unwavering resolve toward what is not itself fixed or agitated; "deeply abiding in what is inverted" means steadily practicing what actually reverses the four ordinary inversions of permanence, pleasure, self, and purity — so that this "inversion" is itself correct rather than mistaken; and "thoroughly wearied by affliction" means having genuinely exhausted oneself through prolonged, diligent ascetic effort — such that one who has genuinely accomplished all three of these will swiftly and certainly realize supreme awakening, a promise that only becomes visible once the deliberately paradoxical wording has been correctly decoded.