The Long Night of Birth and Death
She has been describing literal darkness. Here the metaphor turns over: the night she really works in is the whole of birth and death, and the catalogue of what people do in it is the longest and harshest list in this fascicle.
As I Do Here, So Everywhere
The vow is built as an analogy she states herself: this is what I do in the dark, and this is what I want to do in the other dark.
作是念言：『如我於此照除夜暗，令諸世事悉得宣敘；願我普於一切眾生生死長夜、無明暗處，以智慧光普皆照了。
And I think this: "Just as here I shine and dispel the darkness of night, so that the affairs of the world can all be carried on — so may I, throughout the long night of birth and death of every being, in the places darkened by ignorance, universally illuminate and make all things clear with the light of wisdom.
如我於此照除夜暗，令諸世事悉得宣敘 — just as here I shine and dispel the darkness of night, so that the affairs of the world can all be carried on. 世事宣敘 is deliberately mundane: business gets done, journeys get made. She does not describe her light as revealing truth; she describes it as making ordinary life possible. The vow that follows asks for the same service at the scale of 生死長夜, the long night of birth and death.
Everything Done in That Darkness
Twenty-odd clauses, beginning with the four classical inversions and ending with theft from monasteries and the five heinous deeds. The sūtra does not soften any of it.
是諸眾生無有智眼，想心見倒之所覆翳，無常常想，無樂樂想，無我我想，不淨淨想，堅固執著我人眾生、蘊界處法，迷惑因果，不識善惡，殺害眾生，乃至邪見，不孝父母，不敬沙門及婆羅門，不知惡人，不識善人，貪著惡事，安住邪法，毀謗如來，壞正法輪，於諸菩薩呰辱傷害，輕大乘道，斷菩提心，於有恩人反加殺害，於無恩處常懷怨結，毀謗賢聖，親近惡伴，盜塔寺物，作五逆罪，不久當墮三惡道處。
These beings have no eye of wisdom, and are veiled over by the inversion of their thought, their mind and their views — taking what is impermanent for permanent, what is without pleasure for pleasure, what is without self for a self, what is impure for pure. They cling firmly to a self, a person, a being, and to the dharmas of the aggregates, elements and sense-bases; they are confused about cause and effect and do not tell good from evil. They kill living beings, and so on down to holding wrong views; they are unfilial to their parents and disrespectful toward śramaṇas and brāhmaṇas; they do not know an evil person and do not recognize a good one; they covet and cling to evil affairs and abide in false teachings; they slander the tathāgatas and ruin the wheel of the true dharma; they revile, insult and injure the bodhisattvas, make light of the path of the Great Vehicle, and cut off the mind of awakening. Toward those who have shown them kindness they respond with killing, and where no wrong has been done them they constantly harbor knots of enmity; they slander the worthy and the holy and keep close to evil companions; they steal the property of stūpas and monasteries and commit the five heinous deeds — and before long they will fall into the places of the three evil destinies.
願我速以大智光明，破彼眾生無明黑暗，令其疾發阿耨多羅三藐三菩提心。』
May I swiftly, with the light of great wisdom, break the black darkness of ignorance in those beings, and cause them quickly to give rise to the mind of anuttara-samyak-sambodhi."
無常常想，無樂樂想，無我我想，不淨淨想 — taking what is impermanent for permanent, what is without pleasure for pleasure, what is without self for a self, what is impure for pure. These are the four inversions, 四倒, the standard diagnosis of unawakened perception; and the sūtra puts them at the head of a list that ends in murder and sacrilege, treating a mistaken perception and a heinous act as the same darkness at different depths.
於有恩人反加殺害，於無恩處常懷怨結 — toward those who have shown them kindness they respond with killing, and where no wrong has been done them they constantly harbor knots of enmity. The two halves are exactly inverted, which is the passage's method throughout: the darkness she describes is not blankness but reversal, the same fault diagnosed in Part 1076 as taking high for low.
令其疾發阿耨多羅三藐三菩提心 — and cause them quickly to give rise to the mind of anuttara-samyak-sambodhi. After that catalogue, the remedy is not punishment or even repentance. It is 發心, giving rise to the aspiration — and 疾, quickly. Nothing is required of them first.
And Then Eight Things She Shows Them
Having got them to the aspiration, she does not leave them there. What she opens next is the whole of a buddha's estate, ending on the strangest item in it.
既發心已，示普賢乘，開十力道，亦示如來法王境界，亦示諸佛一切智城、諸佛所行、諸佛自在、諸佛成就、諸佛總持、一切諸佛共同一身、一切諸佛平等之處，令其安住。
And once they have given rise to that mind, I show them Samantabhadra's own vehicle and open the path of the ten powers for them; I also show them the tathāgata's own domain as dharma-king, and also show them the buddhas' city of all-knowing wisdom, the buddhas' conduct, the buddhas' sovereignty, the buddhas' accomplishment, the buddhas' comprehensive retention, the single body every buddha holds in common, and the place where every buddha is equal — and I cause them to abide there.
一切諸佛共同一身、一切諸佛平等之處 — the single body every buddha holds in common, and the place where every buddha is equal. The list of what she reveals climbs through conduct, sovereignty and accomplishment and then stops being a list of possessions at all. These last two items are not things a buddha has; they are the fact that the plural has broken down. It is the Huayan claim in its briefest form, set at the end of a passage otherwise concerned with murderers.
The Sick, the Old, the Poor, the Condemned
Back to the concrete, and to the one case in this fascicle with no remedy available in the world at all — a person already sentenced.
「善男子！一切眾生，或病所纏，或老所侵，或苦貧窮，或遭禍難，或犯王法，臨當受刑，無所依怙，生大怖畏；我皆救濟，使得安隱。
"Good son, among all beings some are bound up by illness, some are encroached upon by old age, some suffer poverty, some meet with calamity and hardship, and some have broken the king's law and are about to receive punishment, with nothing at all to rely on, so that great dread arises in them; all of them I rescue and deliver, so that they attain safety.
復作是念：『願我以法普攝眾生，令其解脫一切煩惱、生老病死、憂悲苦患，近善知識，常行法施，勤行善業，速得如來清淨法身，住於究竟無變易處。』
And I further think this: "May I gather beings in universally by means of the dharma, causing them to be liberated from every affliction, from birth, aging, sickness and death, and from sorrow, grief, suffering and distress; may they draw near to good spiritual friends, constantly practice the giving of dharma, diligently practice good deeds, swiftly attain the tathāgata's pure dharma-body, and abide in the place that is ultimate and without change."
或犯王法，臨當受刑，無所依怙，生大怖畏 — some have broken the king's law and are about to receive punishment, with nothing at all to rely on, so that great dread arises in them. She does not distinguish the guilty from the unlucky. Illness, old age, poverty, disaster and a death sentence are one list, and the phrase 無所依怙, nothing to rely on, is what they all have in common — the condition her rescue actually answers.
Part 1077 Complete
This continues chapter thirty-nine, 入法界品, in fascicle sixty-eight. Part 1078 finishes her prose teaching with those lost in the thicket of views who take the unawakened for awakened, and then she speaks the whole liberation again in verse, beginning with a line about waiting for the right moment to say it.