The Luminous Ground Opens
The third ground begins the way the second did — flowers in the air, praise for what has just been taught, and a request for what comes next. Then the ground itself, and its character is immediately different. Where Vimalā was discipline, Prabhākarī begins in contemplation, looking hard at everything conditioned until revulsion doubles and the mind turns elsewhere.
The Third Ground
The assembly's praise names what the second ground was — the wise one's dharma of discipline — and their request names what they hope the third will contain. It is a longer list than they have asked for before, running through all six pāramitās and the path of compassion besides.
第三地
佛子得聞此地行，菩薩境界難思議，靡不恭敬心歡喜，散華空中為供養，
讚言：「善哉大山王，慈心愍念諸眾生，善說智者律儀法，第二地中之行相。
是諸菩薩微妙行，真實無異無差別，為欲利益諸群生，如是演說最清淨。
一切人天供養者，願為演說第三地，與法相應諸智業，如其境界希具闡！
大仙所有施戒法，忍辱精進禪智慧，及以方便慈悲道，佛清淨行願皆說！」
The Third Ground
The children of the Buddha, hearing of the practice of this ground — the bodhisattva's domain, hard to conceive — every one of them reverent and glad in mind, scattered flowers in the air as an offering, and praised him, saying: "Excellent, great king of mountains! With a loving mind you take pity on all beings, and well have you spoken the wise one's dharma of discipline, the characteristics of practice within the second ground. This subtle and wondrous practice of the bodhisattvas is true, without difference and without distinction; wishing to benefit the multitude of beings, you have expounded it thus, most purely. You to whom all humans and gods make offerings — we beg you to expound the third ground, the works of wisdom that accord with the Dharma; we long for its domain to be set forth in full! The great seer's own dharmas of giving and of discipline, of patience, of effort, of meditation and of wisdom, and the path of skillful means, of loving-kindness and compassion, and the pure practice of a buddha — we beg you to speak of all of it!"
時，解脫月復請言：
「無畏大士金剛藏，願說趣入第三地，柔和心者諸功德！」
Then Vimuktacandra asked once again, saying:
"Fearless great being, Vajragarbha! We beg you to speak of entering upon the third ground, and of all the merits of one whose mind is gentle and harmonious!"
爾時，金剛藏菩薩告解脫月菩薩言：「佛子！菩薩摩訶薩已淨第二地，欲入第三地，當起十種深心。何等為十？所謂：清淨心、安住心、厭捨心、離貪心、不退心、堅固心、明盛心、勇猛心、廣心、大心。菩薩以是十心，得入第三地。
Then Vajragarbha Bodhisattva said to Vimuktacandra Bodhisattva: "Child of the Buddha! A bodhisattva mahāsattva who has already purified the second ground and wishes to enter the third should give rise to ten kinds of profound mind. What are the ten? Namely: a pure mind, a mind settled and abiding, a mind of revulsion and relinquishment, a mind free of greed, a mind that does not turn back, a firm mind, a mind bright and flourishing, a valorous mind, a broad mind, and a great mind. By these ten minds a bodhisattva gains entry into the third ground.
Vimuktacandra's request asks for the merits of 柔和心者 — one whose mind is gentle and harmonious. It is an unexpected way to name what is coming. The ground about to be described begins in unsparing contemplation of decay and ends in meditative absorption; gentleness is not the obvious word for it. But the ten minds that enter it include 厭捨, revulsion and relinquishment, and 明盛, bright and flourishing, in the same breath — and something has to hold those together.
Note the shape of the ten. Two of them, 廣心 and 大心, close the list for the third ground in a row, exactly as they closed the second ground's ten. What changes from ground to ground is the eight in front.
As They Truly Are
The third ground opens by looking. What it looks at is everything made — and the first list is temporal, dismantling the idea that a conditioned thing has any moment it can be said to occupy.
「佛子！菩薩摩訶薩住第三地已，觀一切有為法如實相。所謂：無常、苦、不淨、不安隱，敗壞、不久住，剎那生滅，非從前際生，非向後際去，非於現在住。
"Child of the Buddha! A bodhisattva mahāsattva who abides on the third ground contemplates all conditioned dharmas as they truly are — that is to say: impermanent, suffering, impure, and never secure; decaying and not long enduring, arising and ceasing in an instant; not born out of a former limit, not going toward a later limit, and not abiding in the present.
又觀此法無救、無依，與憂、與悲，苦惱同住，愛憎所繫，愁慼轉多，無有停積，貪、恚、癡火熾然不息，眾患所纏，日夜增長，如幻不實。
They contemplate further that these dharmas are without rescue and without refuge; that they dwell together with grief, with sorrow, and with suffering and torment; that they are bound up with love and hate, and that distress in them steadily increases with nothing ever coming to rest; that the fires of greed, hatred, and delusion blaze in them without ceasing; that they are entangled in every affliction, growing by day and by night, and are unreal, like an illusion.
見如是已，於一切有為倍增厭離，趣佛智慧，見佛智慧不可思議、無等無量、難得無雜、無惱無憂，至無畏城，不復退還，能救無量苦難眾生。
Having seen this, their revulsion toward everything conditioned redoubles, and they turn toward a buddha's wisdom. They see that a buddha's wisdom is inconceivable, unequalled and measureless, hard to obtain and unmixed, without torment and without grief; that it reaches the fearless city and never turns back again, and that it is able to rescue measureless beings in suffering and difficulty.
非從前際生，非向後際去，非於現在住 — not born out of a former limit, not going toward a later limit, not abiding in the present. Set beside 剎那生滅, arising and ceasing in an instant, this is stronger than a statement that conditioned things are brief. A thing that arises and ceases in an instant has no duration to be located in, and so cannot be said to come from the past, head into the future, or occupy now. Impermanence, pressed hard enough, stops being about how long things last.
The second contemplation is not a repetition in a different key; it moves from what conditioned things are to what it is like to be among them. 無有停積 — nothing ever coming to rest, nothing accumulating — is the phrase that does the work. Suffering here is not any particular pain but the absence of any place where things settle.
倍增厭離 — revulsion redoubled — is what the looking produces, and the sūtra does not leave it there. The same sentence turns immediately toward a buddha's wisdom, and every quality then named is the negative of something just said about the conditioned: unmixed against entangled, without grief against dwelling with grief, never turning back against nothing coming to rest. The revulsion is not the point. It is what makes the alternative visible.
Part 421 Complete
This opens Prabhākarī, the Luminous Ground, third of the Ten Grounds. Chapter 26 continues in Part 422 as the bodhisattva, having seen both the boundless benefit of a tathāgata's wisdom and the boundless faults of the conditioned, gives rise to ten kinds of pity toward beings — for those who are alone and without refuge, those in poverty, those burning in the three poisons — and then reasons backward from the wish to deliver them, through unobstructed liberating wisdom and the light of wisdom that neither acts nor arises, to the one thing all of it depends upon.