She Answers Before He Finishes

汝為…故 … 問諸菩薩所修行門 — because you..., you ask about the gate of practice the bodhisattvas cultivate. The whole sentence is one long subordinate clause followed, only at the very end, by the main verb: he asks. Ten reasons are stacked up before the asking is even named, and every one of them is something Good-Wealth said nothing about in Part 1133 — he asked four practical questions about benefit and gathering and drawing near a throne. She answers with what she reads underneath those questions, which is not information he gave her but a diagnosis, the same move her whole office as a night-spirit has always made.

汝欲普隨一切眾生心之所樂雨法雨故 — because you wish to rain the rain of dharma universally in accord with what every being's mind delights in. The tenth and longest reason, and it is the one that names a method rather than a goal: not merely to help beings, but to do it shaped to what each of them already wants. It is the same principle Part 1121's thirty-seven diagnoses were built on, now stated as something she already sees Good-Wealth aiming at, before he has done a single one of those diagnoses himself.

我得菩薩甚深自在妙音解脫，為大法師 — I have attained the bodhisattva liberation of the Profound and Sovereign Wondrous Voice. I am a great dharma-teacher. This is the direct answer to the fourth of Good-Wealth's four questions in Part 1133, 云何近法王位, how does one draw near to the throne of a dharma-king. She does not describe a technique for approaching a king. She simply states what she has become — a great dharma-teacher, 大法師 — and the ten qualities that follow are not decorations on that title but its actual content.

Ten clauses, each closing 故, because, and every one names a reason she is unobstructed as a teacher rather than a property of the liberation itself. The first is about knowledge — revealing the dharma-treasury; the next few are about beings' welfare — vows, compassion, the tireless accumulation of good; the middle turns to being a light and a guide; the last few return to her own conduct — an equal mind, a pure mind, a body appearing everywhere, and finally, closing the list, 恒事一切諸善知識, constantly serving every good spiritual friend. The great teacher's own qualifications end with her still being somebody's student.

恒事一切諸善知識，為令眾生安住佛教故 — I constantly serve every good spiritual friend, so that beings may abide securely in the buddha's own teaching. The tenth and final quality of a great dharma-teacher is not a teaching she gives but a service she performs, upward rather than downward. A night-spirit whose title in this fascicle has been 大法師, great dharma-teacher, closes her own list of qualifications by naming her own continuing discipleship.