Twenty-Four Who Can Enter
Before she answers the question at all, the night-spirit tells Good-Wealth how nearly unanswerable it is — five ways in which the domain resists knowing, twenty-four qualities that alone admit anyone into it, and one reason she will explain it to him regardless.
Difficult in Five Ways
The answer opens by warning that it may not really be answerable at all — not to the ordinary world, and not to the two vehicles either.
夜神言：「善男子！此處難信、難知、難解、難入、難說，一切世間及以二乘皆不能知。
The night-spirit said: "Good son, this domain is difficult to believe, difficult to know, difficult to understand, difficult to enter, and difficult to explain; the whole world, together with the two vehicles, is entirely unable to know it.
難信、難知、難解、難入、難說 — difficult to believe, difficult to know, difficult to understand, difficult to enter, difficult to explain. Five near-synonyms for inaccessibility, stacked before a single word of content has been given, and the sentence that follows names exactly who is shut out: not only 一切世間, the whole ordinary world, but 二乘, the two vehicles — the śrāvaka and the pratyekabuddha paths — named specifically and separately from it. Considerable attainment is not, by itself, enough to reach this domain; the exclusion is aimed at a particular kind of attainment, not merely at its absence.
Twenty-Four Who Can Enter
The single exception clause that follows runs to twenty-four qualities before it closes — twelve kinds of mind, and then twelve kinds of capability that a mind like that turns out to have.
唯除諸佛神力所護，善友所攝，集勝功德，欲樂清淨，無下劣心，無雜染心，無諂曲心，得普照耀智光明心，發普饒益諸眾生心、一切煩惱及以眾魔無能壞心，起必成就一切智心，不樂一切生死樂心，能求一切諸佛妙樂，能滅一切眾生苦惱，能修一切佛功德海，能觀一切諸法實性，能具一切清淨信解，能超一切生死暴流，能入一切如來智海，能決定到無上法城，能勇猛入如來境界，能速疾趣諸佛地位，能即成就一切智力，能於十力已得究竟；如是之人，於此能持、能入、能了。
Only excepted are those protected by the spiritual power of every buddha, gathered in by a good spiritual friend, who have amassed supreme merit, whose aspiration is pure; who are without an inferior mind, without a defiled mind, without a flattering and deceitful mind; who have gained a mind of universally shining wisdom-light, who have given rise to a mind that universally benefits every being, a mind that no affliction and no host of demons can ever destroy, who have given rise to the mind that must accomplish all-knowing wisdom, and who do not delight in the pleasures of birth-and-death; who are able to seek the wondrous joy of every buddha, able to extinguish the suffering and affliction of every being, able to cultivate the ocean of every buddha's merit, able to contemplate the true nature of every dharma, able to be complete in every pure faith and understanding, able to cross over the raging torrent of birth-and-death, able to enter the ocean of every tathāgata's wisdom, able to reach with certainty the unsurpassed city of the dharma, able to enter courageously into the tathāgata's own domain, able to hasten swiftly to the ground of every buddha, able to accomplish at once the power of all-knowing wisdom, and able to have already reached the very culmination of the ten powers — people such as these are able to uphold this, to enter it, and to understand it.
能求⋯⋯能滅⋯⋯能修 — able to seek, able to extinguish, able to cultivate. Counted directly against the source, the exception clause holds exactly twenty-four items, and it splits precisely in half. The first twelve describe a mind's condition — protected, gathered in, pure, free of an inferior or defiled or flattering character, holding a handful of specific minds that cannot be destroyed or turned aside. Every one of the twelve that follow opens with 能, able to, and describes not what such a mind is but what it can now do. The list is not twenty-four qualities of equal kind; it is twelve conditions, and then the twelve capacities that only those conditions unlock.
Even the Bodhisattvas Do Not Know It
Having named who can enter, she names who still cannot — and then, in the very next breath, decides to speak anyway.
何以故？此是如來智慧境界，一切菩薩尚不能知，況餘眾生！然我今者，以佛威力，欲令調順可化眾生意速清淨，欲令修習善根眾生心得自在，隨汝所問，為汝宣說。」
Why is this so? Because this is the domain of the tathāgata's own wisdom, which even the bodhisattvas themselves are not yet able to know — still less any other being! And yet I, now, by the Buddha's own majestic power, wishing to cause the minds of beings who are tractable and fit to be transformed to become swiftly pure, and wishing to cause the minds of beings who cultivate wholesome roots to gain sovereign freedom, will, according to what you have asked, now expound it for you."
一切菩薩尚不能知⋯⋯然我今者⋯⋯為汝宣說 — even the bodhisattvas are not yet able to know it⋯⋯and yet I, now⋯⋯will expound it for you. The sentence that closes this exchange contains its own reversal: first a claim that puts the domain beyond every bodhisattva without exception, then a single 然, and yet, that undoes the force of the claim entirely. What makes the explanation possible is not stated as her own attainment but as 佛威力, the Buddha's own majestic power — she answers not because she has outgrown the limit just described, but because something greater than her own knowing is doing the answering through her.
Part 1148 Complete
This continues chapter thirty-nine, 入法界品, in fascicle seventy-two. Part 1149 opens the verse she speaks next, restating in poetry what her prose has just spent this whole Part warning could hardly be said at all.