The Goldsmith Refining Gold
The First Ground begins to close. The bodhisattva sees buddhas past counting and serves them with the plainest things — robes, food, bedding, medicine. Then the sūtra does something it has not done so far in this chapter: it says frankly what this bodhisattva cannot yet do. And it offers the image the whole ground has been building toward, of gold that must go back into the fire.
Buddhas Past Counting, and Four Ordinary Gifts
The escalating numbers of buddhas are one of the sūtra's most familiar devices, and what makes this instance worth pausing over is what gets offered to them. After a list that climbs to hundreds of thousands of millions of nayutas, the gifts named are robes, food, bedding, and medicine — the four requisites, the most ordinary support a community gives anyone who needs it.
「佛子！菩薩住此歡喜地已，以大願力得見多佛。所謂：見多百佛、多千佛、多百千佛、多億佛、多百億佛、多千億佛、多百千億佛、多億那由他佛、多百億那由他佛、多千億那由他佛、多百千億那由他佛。悉以大心、深心，恭敬尊重，承事供養，衣服、飲食、臥具、醫藥，一切資生悉以奉施，亦以供養一切眾僧，以此善根皆悉迴向無上菩提。
"Child of the Buddha! A bodhisattva who abides on this Ground of Joy, by the power of the great vows, comes to see many buddhas. That is to say: they see many hundreds of buddhas, many thousands of buddhas, many hundreds of thousands of buddhas, many millions of buddhas, many hundreds of millions of buddhas, many thousands of millions of buddhas, many hundreds of thousands of millions of buddhas, many millions of nayutas of buddhas, many hundreds of millions of nayutas of buddhas, many thousands of millions of nayutas of buddhas, and many hundreds of thousands of millions of nayutas of buddhas. With a great mind and a profound mind they revere and honor them all, attend upon them and make offerings to them — robes, food and drink, bedding, and medicine, every requisite of life presented as a gift — and they make offerings to the whole Saṅgha as well, dedicating all these wholesome roots to unsurpassed awakening.
佛子！此菩薩因供養諸佛故，得成就眾生法，以前二攝攝取眾生，謂布施、愛語；後二攝法，但以信解力故，行未善通達。是菩薩，十波羅蜜中，檀波羅蜜增上；餘波羅蜜非不修行，但隨力隨分。是菩薩隨所勤修，供養諸佛，教化眾生，皆以修行清淨地法，所有善根悉以迴向一切智地，轉轉明淨，調柔成就，隨意堪用。
Child of the Buddha! Because this bodhisattva makes offerings to the buddhas, they come to accomplish the dharma of ripening beings, and with the first two means of gathering they gather beings in — namely, giving and kind speech. As for the latter two means of gathering, they act by the power of faith and understanding alone, for their practice of them is not yet thoroughly penetrating. Among the ten pāramitās, in this bodhisattva the pāramitā of giving predominates; it is not that they fail to cultivate the other pāramitās, but they do so according to their strength and according to their share. Whatever this bodhisattva diligently cultivates — making offerings to the buddhas, teaching and transforming beings — is all done as the practice of the dharmas that purify the ground, and every wholesome root of it they dedicate to the ground of all-knowing wisdom, so that these grow ever brighter and purer, becoming pliant and accomplished, fit for whatever use is wished.
This is the first moment in the chapter where the sūtra states a limit. Of the four means of gathering, only giving and kind speech are actually operative; the remaining two — beneficial conduct and working alongside others — are carried by faith and understanding alone, 行未善通達, the practice of them not yet thoroughly penetrating. A text this given to enumerating vast attainments stops here to say plainly what is not yet in hand.
The reason is structural rather than a failing. Giving and kind speech can be performed toward someone whose situation one does not yet fully share. The other two require entering another person's circumstances and staying there, and that capacity belongs to grounds further along. The First Ground is honest about being first.
Back into the Fire
The simile is given in the plainest possible form and then applied clause by clause, so that the second half repeats the first almost word for word. That repetition is the point — the sūtra wants the two descriptions to be recognizably the same description.
佛子！譬如金師善巧鍊金，數數入火，轉轉明淨，調柔成就，隨意堪用。菩薩亦復如是，供養諸佛，教化眾生，皆為修行清淨地法，所有善根悉以迴向一切智地，轉轉明淨，調柔成就，隨意堪用。
Child of the Buddha! It is like a goldsmith skillfully refining gold: putting it into the fire again and again, it grows ever brighter and purer, becoming pliant and accomplished, fit for whatever use is wished. So it is with the bodhisattva as well: making offerings to the buddhas and teaching and transforming beings, all as the practice of the dharmas that purify the ground, and every wholesome root of it dedicated to the ground of all-knowing wisdom, so that these grow ever brighter and purer, becoming pliant and accomplished, fit for whatever use is wished.
「佛子！菩薩摩訶薩住於初地，應從諸佛菩薩善知識所推求請問，於此地中相及得果，無有厭足，為欲成就此地法故；亦應從諸佛菩薩善知識所推求請問，第二地中相及得果，無有厭足，為欲成就彼地法故；亦應如是推求請問，第三、第四、第五、第六、第七、第八、第九、第十地中相及得果，無有厭足，為欲成就彼地法故。
"Child of the Buddha! A bodhisattva mahāsattva abiding on the first ground should seek out and enquire of the buddhas, of the bodhisattvas, and of good spiritual friends concerning the characteristics of this ground and the fruit obtained within it, never satisfied, because they wish to accomplish the dharmas of this ground; and they should likewise seek out and enquire of the buddhas, of the bodhisattvas, and of good spiritual friends concerning the characteristics of the second ground and the fruit obtained within it, never satisfied, because they wish to accomplish the dharmas of that ground; and they should seek out and enquire in this same way concerning the characteristics of the third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth, the seventh, the eighth, the ninth, and the tenth grounds, and the fruit obtained within them, never satisfied, because they wish to accomplish the dharmas of those grounds.
What the goldsmith's fire does is not add anything. Gold comes out of it as gold; what leaves is whatever was not gold. The simile therefore says something quite specific about the bodhisattva's offerings and teaching — that their function is subtractive, and that the repetition (數數入火, again and again) is not inefficiency but method. Nothing is being built up here. Something is being got rid of, in passes.
調柔, pliant, is the quality the fire produces, and it is worth noticing what it is for: 隨意堪用, fit for whatever use is wished. Refined gold's virtue is that it no longer resists being made into things. The bodhisattva's wholesome roots are being brought to a condition of not resisting — which is a strange goal for a practice, and exactly right for one whose whole direction is toward being useful to others.
The closing passage extends the enquiry across all ten grounds at once. A bodhisattva on the first ground is told to ask about the tenth — not later, but now. The grounds are not a sequence of secrets released on completion of the previous one, and the phrase repeated after each is 無有厭足, never satisfied.
Part 410 Complete
This continues the First Ground of the Ten Grounds chapter. Chapter 26 continues in Part 411 with what such a bodhisattva comes to know well — the obstacles of each ground and their remedies, how grounds form and dissolve, how one passes from ground to ground — and then the simile of the caravan leader, who before setting out enquires about every danger on the road ahead and provisions the company accordingly, so that all of them reach the great city unharmed.