Worked Gold, and the Maṇi Jewel
The fourth ground's gold is no longer being refined — it has been made into something. That is the first of two similes here, and the second adds what the first cannot say: a jewel that shines by itself, and that weather cannot touch. Then the ground's station, its attainments, and the beginning of the verse that gathers it all up.
Two Similes, and What Predominates
Each ground has had its goldsmith. This one has finished with the furnace and moved to the workbench — and then the sūtra adds a second image, because there is something about this ground the gold cannot carry.
佛子！譬如金師鍊治真金作莊嚴具，餘所有金皆不能及；菩薩摩訶薩亦復如是，住於此地所有善根，下地善根所不能及。如摩尼寶清淨光輪能放光明，非諸餘寶之所能及，風雨等緣悉不能壞；菩薩摩訶薩亦復如是，住於此地，下地菩薩所不能及，眾魔煩惱悉不能壞。
Child of the Buddha! It is like a goldsmith who refines true gold and works it into ornaments: no other gold can match it. So it is with the bodhisattva mahāsattva — the wholesome roots they have while abiding on this ground, the wholesome roots of the lower grounds cannot match. And it is like a maṇi jewel whose pure ring of light is able to send out radiance: no other jewel can match it, and no condition of wind or rain can damage it. So it is with the bodhisattva mahāsattva — abiding on this ground, the bodhisattvas of the lower grounds cannot match them, and the hosts of Māra and the afflictions cannot damage them.
此菩薩於四攝中，同事偏多；十波羅蜜中，精進偏多；餘非不修，但隨力隨分。
In this bodhisattva, among the four means of gathering, working alongside others predominates; among the ten pāramitās, effort predominates. It is not that they fail to cultivate the others, but they do so according to their strength and according to their share.
Across four grounds the goldsmith has done four things: put gold in the fire, put it in alum, refined it without loss of weight, and now made it into ornaments. The progression is from purification to use. What was being cleaned is now an object with a purpose, which is what a ground given over to the thirty-seven factors of awakening ought to produce.
The maṇi jewel then supplies what gold cannot. Gold is worked by a craftsman and shines by reflection; a maṇi jewel emits its own light and is impervious to weather. The two similes together say that this bodhisattva's goodness is both made and self-luminous — and the clause that matters is the last, 眾魔煩惱悉不能壞. On earlier grounds the afflictions were being thinned; here they can no longer do damage.
Note which of the four means of gathering has come forward. Giving on the first ground, kind speech on the second, beneficial conduct on the third, and now 同事, working alongside — the very one that Part 410 said was not yet thoroughly practiced. The four are being mastered in order, and the hardest is the one that requires entering another person's situation and staying in it.
The Suyāma King, and the Verse Begins
The station rises again, and the fault it addresses is precisely the one this ground removed. Then the attainments — which have stopped being counted in thousands — and the first stanzas of the closing verse.
「佛子！是名：略說菩薩摩訶薩第四焰慧地。菩薩住此地，多作須夜摩天王，以善方便能除眾生身見等惑，令住正見。布施、愛語、利行、同事——如是一切諸所作業，皆不離念佛，不離念法，不離念僧，乃至不離念具足一切種、一切智智。復作是念：『我當於一切眾生中為首、為勝、為殊勝、為妙、為微妙、為上、為無上，乃至為一切智智依止者。』
"Child of the Buddha! This is called, spoken in brief, the bodhisattva mahāsattva's fourth ground, Arciṣmatī, the Blazing Ground. A bodhisattva abiding on this ground most often becomes a king of the Suyāma heaven, able by skillful means to remove from beings the confusion of the view of the body and the rest, and to settle them in right view. Giving, kind speech, beneficial conduct, and working alongside others — in all such deeds as these they never depart from the recollection of the Buddha, never depart from the recollection of the Dharma, never depart from the recollection of the Saṅgha, and so on up to never departing from the recollection of being fully endowed with all modes and with all-knowing wisdom itself. And they think further: 'Among all sentient beings I ought to be the foremost, the best, the most excellent, the wondrous, the subtly wondrous, the superior, the unsurpassed — and so on up to being that upon which all-knowing wisdom itself relies.'
是菩薩若發勤精進，於一念頃，得入億數三昧，得見億數佛，得知億數佛神力，能動億數世界，乃至能示現億數身，一一身億數菩薩以為眷屬；若以菩薩殊勝願力自在示現，過於此數，百劫、千劫乃至百千億那由他劫不能數知。」
Should this bodhisattva rouse diligent effort, in the space of a single thought they enter koṭis of samādhis, come to see koṭis of buddhas, come to know the spiritual power of koṭis of buddhas, are able to shake koṭis of worlds, and so on up to being able to manifest koṭis of bodies, each single body having koṭis of bodhisattvas as its retinue. And if by the surpassing power of a bodhisattva's own vows they display themselves with sovereign freedom, it goes beyond this number — a hundred kalpas, a thousand kalpas, on up to a hundred thousand million nayutas of kalpas could not count it or know it."
爾時，金剛藏菩薩欲重宣其義而說頌言：
「菩薩已淨第三地，次觀眾生世法界，空界識界及三界，心解悉了能趣入。
始登焰地增勢力，生如來家永不退，於佛法僧信不壞，觀法無常無有起。
觀世成壞業有生，生死涅槃剎等業，觀前後際亦觀盡，如是修行生佛家。
Then Vajragarbha Bodhisattva, wishing to state this meaning again, spoke in verse, saying:
"The bodhisattva, having purified the third ground, next contemplates the realm of beings, the world, and the dharma-realm, the realm of space, the realm of consciousness, and the three realms; understanding them all in mind, they are able to enter. First ascending the Blazing Ground, their strength increases; born into the family of the Tathāgata, they never turn back; their faith in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Saṅgha is unbroken; and they contemplate dharmas as impermanent, without arising. They contemplate the forming and dissolving of worlds, that birth comes to be through deeds, and birth-and-death and nirvāṇa, the deeds of lands and the rest; they contemplate the earlier limit and the later, and contemplate exhaustion as well — practicing thus, they are born in the family of the buddhas.
能除眾生身見等惑，令住正見 — removing from beings the confusion of the view of the body and the rest, and settling them in right view. Each ground's king works on the fault the bodhisattva has just finished removing from themselves. Part 430 had them parting from everything the view of the body leads; the station that follows is defined by doing that for others. The pattern has held since the first ground, where a king who had given everything away removed the stain of stinginess.
The counting has changed. Grounds one through three gave a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand; this one gives 億數, koṭis — no longer a specific power of ten but simply a word for a very large number. The scale has passed the point where the escalation is worth tracking precisely, which is itself the information.
Part 431 Complete
This continues Arciṣmatī, the fourth of the Ten Grounds. Chapter 26 continues in Part 432, which closes the ground, as the verse runs through the whole training once more — the four foundations of mindfulness, the four right efforts, the bases of power, faculties, powers, the seven factors and the eightfold path — and states what the fourth ground parts from, naming the view of the body as the head of sixty-two views, before Vajragarbha sets the ground down.