Seven Things It Has No End Of

無邊 … 無盡 … 無際 … 無壞 … 無底 — boundless, inexhaustible, without edge, indestructible, bottomless. Five of the seven qualities open with 無, without, and only two are stated positively: 甚深, profound, and 廣大, vast. Asked what a liberation is, this sūtra's first instinct is to say where it stops, and then to report that it does not.

此解脫無際，入無際畔一切眾生心想中故 — this liberation is without edge, because it enters into the thoughts of all beings, which have no edge or border. The word 無際 is used twice in one clause, once of the liberation and once of what it enters. The reason given for its limitlessness is not that it is large but that its object is. A gate that goes into people's thinking has to be as unbounded as thinking is, and the sūtra derives the property from the destination rather than from the traveller.

此解脫無底，盡於法界之源底故 — this liberation is bottomless, because it exhausts the very source and floor of the dharma-realm. The character 底, floor or bottom, appears twice, once denied and once affirmed. It is bottomless precisely because it has reached the bottom — which is not a contradiction so much as a statement that when you arrive at the floor of the dharma-realm there is nothing there to stand on.

The seven clauses before this one all read 此解脫, this liberation; every clause from here to the end of the run reads 此解脫者, with the topic particle 者 added. The count is exact — seven without it, twenty-five with — and the seam falls precisely where the sentences stop asserting properties and start asserting identities and likenesses. Chinese marks the change of what kind of statement is being made by adding one character, and does not explain.

此解脫者於一事中普見一切諸神變故 — because within a single thing it sees universally every spiritual transformation there is. 一事, a single thing or affair, is unusually plain vocabulary for this sūtra, which normally reaches for a mote of dust or a pore. The claim is the standard Huayan one at its most domestic: whatever is in front of you, all of it is in there.

此解脫者猶如影像 — this liberation is like a reflected image. This exact simile is used twice in the run, and the second occurrence, some way further on, gives a different reason: there, 隨眾生心而照現故, because it shines forth according to the minds of beings. Here the reason is that it is produced by the light of a vow. The same image serves once for where the liberation comes from and once for how it appears, and the sūtra does not flag the repetition.

猶如大水，能以大悲潤一切故 … 猶如大火，乾竭眾生貪愛水故 — like great water, because it moistens everything with great compassion; like a great fire, because it dries up the water of beings' craving and love. Two adjacent clauses, and the second destroys what the first is made of. The resolution is in the adjectives: there are two waters here. 大悲, great compassion, is the water that should wet everything; 貪愛, craving and love, is the water that should be boiled off. The sūtra could have avoided the collision by choosing another image for fire. It chose not to, and the result is a reader who has to notice that the same element does opposite work depending on what it is.

猶如大地，為一切眾生所依處故 — like the great earth, because it is the place on which all beings rest. The first of the four, and the humblest claim in the whole run. In Part 1115 the previous night-spirit told Good-Wealth that she had once been 主地神, an earth-spirit named Bringing Forth the Meaning of Equality. That was a different teacher in a different fascicle, and no connection is drawn here. But the image of ground that holds everything up without preference keeps returning in these night-spirit chapters, and it returns now as what a liberation is.

猶如虛空，普容三世佛神力故 — like empty space, because it universally contains the spiritual power of the buddhas of the three times. The verb is 容, to hold or make room for, and it is the only reason in the run that works by having nothing in it. Every other simile explains itself by what the thing does — earth supports, water moistens, fire dries, wind speeds, clouds rain. Space qualifies by being available.

如大城廓，一切妙法所莊嚴故 — like a great walled city, because it is adorned by every wondrous dharma. Part 1122 had this same teacher meeting people who 居住城廓, live in a walled city, and sending them to 法王城, the city of the dharma-king. The image has now moved from something she says to someone else about where they live, to something she says about what she has attained. She is describing her own liberation with the furniture of her students' lives.