The Lion's Roar of No-Self
The verse that closes the fifth ground opens with the strangest imagery in the chapter. The whole apparatus of practice is turned into equipment for war and then into the parts of an animal — the bases of power become feet, compassion becomes eyes, wisdom becomes teeth — and what this creature roars is that there is no self.
Armed, Adorned, and Roaring
Three stanzas of metaphor, and they do not agree with each other on purpose. The first is a battlefield, the second a body dressed for ceremony, the third a lion — and all three are the same list of practices seen three ways.
爾時，金剛藏菩薩欲重宣其義而說頌曰：
「菩薩四地已清淨，思惟三世佛平等，戒心除疑道非道，如是觀察入五地。
念處為弓根利箭，正勤為馬神足車，五力堅鎧破怨敵，勇健不退入五地。
慚愧為衣覺分鬘，淨戒為香禪塗香，智慧方便妙莊嚴，入總持林三昧苑。
如意為足正念頸，慈悲為眼智慧牙，人中師子無我吼，破煩惱怨入五地。
Then Vajragarbha Bodhisattva, wishing to state this meaning again, spoke in verse, saying:
"The bodhisattva, having purified the fourth ground, considers the sameness of the buddhas of the three times — the precepts and the mind, the removal of doubt, what is the path and what is not — and contemplating thus, enters the fifth ground. The foundations of mindfulness are their bow and the faculties its keen arrows; right effort is their horse and the bases of power their chariot; the five strengths are a firm cuirass that breaks the enemy — valiant and unretreating, they enter the fifth ground. Conscience is their robe and the factors of awakening their garland; pure precepts are their incense and absorption their anointing perfume; wisdom and skillful means are their wondrous adornment — and they enter the grove of dhāraṇī and the garden of samādhi. The bases of spiritual power are their feet and right mindfulness their neck; loving-kindness and compassion are their eyes and wisdom their fangs — a lion among humankind, they roar the roar of no-self, breaking the enemy that is the afflictions, and enter the fifth ground.
人中師子無我吼 — a lion among humankind, they roar the roar of no-self. The lion's roar is the standard image for a buddha's fearless proclamation, and what is roared here is the one doctrine that would seem to leave no one to do the roaring. The verse puts them together without apology: the fearlessness and the absence of a self are not in tension, because it is precisely having nothing to defend that makes the roar possible.
Note how the three stanzas disagree. In the first the practices are weapons and a person rides into battle behind them; in the second they are clothing, garland, and perfume, and the person is dressed for a ceremony; in the third they are body parts, and there is no separation between the practitioner and the practice at all. Read in order, the metaphors move from having equipment, to wearing it, to being it.
入總持林三昧苑 — entering the grove of dhāraṇī and the garden of samādhi. Set against the battlefield two lines earlier, this is the same ground described as somewhere one walks for pleasure. The second ground called the ten wholesome courses a 法園苑, a pleasure garden of Dharma; the image returns here for the states of concentration.
The Truths, and Those Who Cannot Look
The verse now retraces the ground's content — the fourteen truths, the honest limit on how they are known, and then the long look at beings that produced the compassion of Parts 434 and 435.
菩薩住此第五地，轉修勝上清淨道，志求佛法不退轉，思念慈悲無厭倦。
積集福智勝功德，精勤方便觀上地，佛力所加具念慧，了知四諦皆如實。
善知世諦勝義諦，相諦差別成立諦，事諦生盡及道諦，乃至如來無礙諦。
如是觀諦雖微妙，未得無礙勝解脫，以此能生大功德，是故超過世智慧。
A bodhisattva abiding on this fifth ground turns to cultivate the supreme and pure path; their will seeks the buddha-dharma and does not turn back; and they consider loving-kindness and compassion without ever wearying. Gathering merit and wisdom, surpassing virtues, by diligence and skillful means they contemplate the grounds above; sustained by the Buddha's power and complete in mindfulness and discernment, they comprehend the four truths, all of them as they truly are. They know well the truth of the world and the truth of ultimate meaning, the truth of characteristics, of difference, and of establishment, the truth of things as they are, of arising, of exhaustion, and of the path, and on up to the unobstructed truth of a tathāgata. Though contemplating the truths in this way is subtle and wondrous, they have not yet gained the unobstructed and supreme liberation; and yet by this they are able to give rise to great merit, and so they surpass the wisdom of the world.
既觀諦已知有為，體性虛偽無堅實，得佛慈愍光明分，為利眾生求佛智。
觀諸有為先後際，無明黑闇愛纏縛，流轉遲迴苦聚中，無我無人無壽命。
愛取為因受來苦，欲求邊際不可得，迷妄漂流無返期，此等可愍我應度。
蘊宅界蛇諸見箭，心火猛熾癡闇重，愛河漂轉不暇觀，苦海淪湑闕明導。
Having contemplated the truths, they know that what is conditioned is in its very nature false and counterfeit, with nothing solid in it; they obtain a share of the radiance of a buddha's loving pity, and for the benefit of beings they seek a buddha's wisdom. Contemplating the earlier and the later limits of everything conditioned — the black darkness of ignorance, the binding of craving, the turning and lingering within the heap of suffering — they find no self, no person, and no life-span. Craving and grasping are the cause by which the suffering to come is undergone; seek the furthest edge of desire and it cannot be found; adrift in delusion with no appointed return — these are to be pitied, and I should deliver them. The house of the aggregates, the snakes of the elements, the arrows of views; the fire of the mind fiercely blazing and the darkness of delusion heavy; carried and turned about on the river of craving with no leisure to look; sunk in the ocean of suffering and wanting a bright guide.
如是觀諦雖微妙，未得無礙勝解脫 — though contemplating the truths in this way is subtle and wondrous, they have not yet gained the unobstructed and supreme liberation. The verse keeps the qualification the prose made in Part 434, and does not soften it in the compression. What follows is the more interesting half: 以此能生大功德, by this they are able to give rise to great merit. Knowledge that is admittedly not final is still said to produce something real.
愛河漂轉不暇觀 — carried and turned about on the river of craving, with no leisure to look. The clause is verbatim from the reflections of Part 418, and its reappearance in the closing verse marks it as this ground's central diagnosis. A ground whose predominant pāramitā is meditative absorption ends by describing everyone else's condition as an inability to hold still long enough to see.
Part 438 Complete
This continues Sudurjayā, the fifth of the Ten Grounds. Chapter 26 concludes fascicle thirty-six in Part 439, as the verse finishes — the resolve that everything done is for beings' deliverance, the worldly arts run through again in compressed form, and three final similes: gold burnished with fine jewel, the constellations held in the sky by wind, and a lotus that touches water without being wetted by it.