The Blind Traveller
The reflections continue, and their images get sharper. A traveller who cannot see and has no guide, and who therefore mistakes a road that leads nowhere for the road out. People drowning in water they have no leisure to look at. A prison whose inmates generate their own dread. And, last and quietest, people who could ask for more than they are asking for.
No Guide, and No Leisure to Look
The first two reflections are the longest in the series. The first turns on a single devastating clause about what a person without sight does with a road. The second piles up motion — swirling, carried, rushing, driven — until it arrives at the reason none of it can be corrected from inside.
又作是念：『一切眾生在於生死險道之中，將墮地獄、畜生、餓鬼，入惡見網中，為愚癡稠林所迷，隨逐邪道，行顛倒行。譬如盲人無有導師，非出要道謂為出要，入魔境界，惡賊所攝，隨順魔心，遠離佛意。我當拔出如是險難，令住無畏一切智城。』
And they think further: 'All beings stand upon the perilous road of birth and death, about to fall into the hells, the animal realm, or the hungry ghosts; they have entered the net of evil views, are lost within the dense thicket of delusion, follow after wrong paths, and walk in inverted ways. They are like a blind person who has no guide — taking for the way out what is not the way out; entering the domain of Māra, seized by evil brigands, according with Māra's mind and far removed from the Buddha's intent. I should draw them out of such perils and difficulties, and cause them to abide in the fearless city of all-knowing wisdom.'
又作是念：『一切眾生為大瀑水波浪所沒，入欲流、有流、無明流、見流，生死洄澓，愛河漂轉，湍馳奔激，不暇觀察；為欲覺、恚覺、害覺隨逐不捨，身見羅剎於中執取，將其永入愛欲稠林；於所貪愛深生染著，住我慢原阜，安六處聚落；無善救者，無能度者。我當於彼起大悲心，以諸善根而為救濟，令無災患，離染寂靜，住於一切智慧寶洲。』
And they think further: 'All beings are drowned beneath the waves of a great torrent, fallen into the flood of desire, the flood of existence, the flood of ignorance, and the flood of views; swirling in the eddies of birth and death, carried and turned about upon the river of craving, rushing and driven along in the rapids, with no leisure to observe anything at all. Thoughts of desire, thoughts of anger, and thoughts of harm pursue them and will not let go; the rākṣasa of the view of a self seizes them in the midst of it and carries them forever into the dense thicket of craving and desire. Toward what they crave and love they give rise to deep defiled attachment; they take up residence on the high ground of conceit and settle in the village of the six sense-fields. There is none to save them well, and none able to ferry them across. I should give rise to a mind of great compassion toward them, and with every wholesome root bring them relief and rescue, so that they are free of calamity, apart from defilement and at peace, abiding upon the jewel island of all-knowing wisdom.'
非出要道謂為出要 — taking for the way out what is not the way out. This is what the blindness in the simile actually amounts to, and it is worth noticing that the sentence describes an active mistake rather than an absence. A person who knew they could not see would stop and wait. The difficulty is that the road feels like a road, and so the traveller keeps walking, with confidence, in a direction chosen by something other than sight.
不暇觀察 — no leisure to observe — is the corresponding clause in the water image, and it does the same work. Someone being carried along a river at speed is not in a position to study the river. The sūtra is naming why insight is hard to come by from inside the situation it would be about, and both images point at the same thing: the conditions that need examining are the ones that prevent examination.
Note where the two reflections end. Not in rescue from suffering as such, but in a place — a city and an island, both of them names for all-knowing wisdom. What is offered to someone lost on a road or adrift in water is ground to stand on.
The Prison, the Cave, and the Smaller Vehicle
The last three reflections shorten as they go. The prison is one whose fear is self-generated; the cave is the aggregates themselves, which beings inhabit rather than examine. And the final one is not about suffering at all.
又作是念：『一切眾生處世牢獄，多諸苦惱，常懷愛憎，自生憂怖，貪欲重械之所繫縛，無明稠林以為覆障，於三界內莫能自出。我當令彼永離三有，住無障礙大涅槃中。』
And they think further: 'All beings dwell within the prison of the world, with many sufferings and torments; constantly harboring love and hate, they generate their own grief and dread. Bound by the heavy fetters of covetous desire and covered over by the dense thicket of ignorance, they cannot get themselves out of the three realms. I should cause them to leave the three modes of existence forever, and to abide within the unobstructed great nirvāṇa.'
又作是念：『一切眾生執著於我，於諸蘊窟宅不求出離，依六處空聚，起四顛倒行，為四大毒蛇之所侵惱，五蘊怨賊之所殺害，受無量苦。我當令彼住於最勝無所著處，所謂：滅一切障礙無上涅槃。』
And they think further: 'All beings cling to a self, and within the cave-dwelling of the aggregates they seek no way out; relying upon the empty settlement of the six sense-fields, they set up the four inverted ways of acting. They are assailed and tormented by the four poisonous snakes of the great elements and slain by the brigands of the five aggregates, undergoing measureless suffering. I should cause them to abide in the most supreme place where there is no attachment at all — namely, the unsurpassed nirvāṇa in which every obstruction is extinguished.'
又作是念：『一切眾生其心狹劣，不行最上一切智道，雖欲出離，但樂聲聞、辟支佛乘。我當令住廣大佛法、廣大智慧。』佛子！菩薩如是護持於戒，善能增長慈悲之心。
And they think further: 'The minds of all beings are narrow and inferior; they do not walk the supreme path of all-knowing wisdom, and though they wish to be delivered, they take delight only in the śrāvaka and pratyekabuddha vehicles. I should cause them to abide in the vast Dharma of the buddhas and in vast wisdom.' Child of the Buddha! It is in this way that the bodhisattva guards and upholds the precepts, and is well able to increase the mind of loving-kindness and compassion.
The prison's distinguishing feature is 自生憂怖, that its inmates generate their own grief and dread. Love and hate are what they carry in with them, and the fear is manufactured on the premises. The fetters and the thicket are named too, but the sentence order puts the self-produced suffering first.
六處空聚 — the empty settlement of the six sense-fields — revisits the village image from Part 408, and adds a word. The settlement is empty: inhabited, but with nobody actually there. Beings live in it and do not look into it, which is exactly what 不求出離 says of the aggregates in the same sentence. The problem is not that the exit is hidden. It is that no one is trying the door.
The last reflection is the one that could not have appeared in any other kind of text, and it is remarkable for what it does not say. These beings are not doing anything wrong. They want deliverance and they are pursuing it by paths that work. The bodhisattva's objection is only that they have asked for too little — and the sūtra places this alongside drowning and imprisonment as something calling for great compassion.
The section then closes by naming what all these reflections were: 護持於戒, guarding the precepts. The entire second ground has been discipline, and its stated effect is not purity but an increase of compassion. Keeping the precepts, on this account, is what makes a person able to see other people clearly enough to be moved by them.
Part 418 Complete
This continues the second of the Ten Grounds. Chapter 26 continues in Part 419 as the bodhisattva on this ground, by the power of vows, sees buddhas beyond counting and serves them with every requisite, receiving the ten wholesome courses again from them and never afterwards losing them — and the sūtra likens the long purification of giving and discipline to true gold placed in alum and refined by the proper method, which comes out free of every stain and brighter than before.