The Fifth Ground Complete
The verse ends the Ground Difficult to Conquer by returning to the passage that made it distinctive — the arts of the world, learned for other people's sake — and then adds one image the prose did not have. A lotus grows in water and is not wetted by it, and that is how this bodhisattva moves through everything they have just learned. With this, fascicle thirty-six ends.
The Arts Again, in Verse
Part 436's long inventory returns compressed into four stanzas, and the compression makes its logic plainer: every item is followed, sooner or later, by the same reason.
如是知已勤精進，所作皆為度眾生，名為有念有慧者，乃至覺解方便者。
習行福智無厭足，恭敬多聞不疲倦，國土相好皆莊嚴，如是一切為眾生。
為欲教化諸世間，善知書數印等法，亦復善解諸方藥，療治眾病悉令愈。
文詞歌舞皆巧妙，宮宅園池悉安隱，寶藏非一咸示人，利益無量眾生故。
日月星宿地震動，乃至身相亦觀察，四禪無色及神通，為益世間皆顯示。
Knowing thus, they practice with diligent effort, and all that they do is for the deliverance of beings; they are called one who is mindful and one who has discernment, and so on up to one who is awake, who understands, and who is skilled in means. Practicing merit and wisdom, they are never satisfied; reverent and much-learned, they never weary; buddha-lands, the marks and the excellent features, they adorn them all — and all of this is for beings. Wishing to teach and transform the worlds, they know well writing, arithmetic, seals and the rest; and they understand medicines well, curing every illness so that all are healed. In composition, in song and in dance they are skilled and subtle; palaces and dwellings, gardens and pools they make secure; the hoards of treasure, not one alone, they show to others — all for the benefit of measureless beings. The sun, the moon and the constellations, the shaking of the earth, and even the marks of the body they contemplate as well; the four dhyānas, the formless states, and the spiritual powers — for the world's benefit they reveal all of them.
Four stanzas, and three of them end with the same clause in different words: 如是一切為眾生, 利益無量眾生故, 為益世間皆顯示. The learning is never allowed to stand on its own for more than three lines before the reason is restated. Whatever else the fifth ground is, it is the ground that refuses to let competence become its own justification.
The Lotus in the Water
Three similes close the ground. The first two are the prose's, restated. The third is new, and it answers a question the prose left open — how someone who has mastered the world's arts avoids being absorbed by them.
智者住此難勝地，供那由佛亦聽法，如以妙寶磨真金，所有善根轉明淨。
譬如星宿在虛空，風力所持無損動，亦如蓮華不著水，如是大士行於世。
住此多作兜率王，能摧異道諸邪見，所修諸善為佛智，願得十力救眾生。
彼復修行大精進，即時供養千億佛，得定動剎亦復然，願力所作過於是。
如是第五難勝地，人中最上真實道，我以種種方便力，為諸佛子宣說竟。」
The wise one abiding on this Ground Difficult to Conquer makes offerings to nayutas of buddhas and listens to the Dharma; and as true gold is burnished with a fine jewel, all their wholesome roots grow brighter and purer. Just as the constellations stand within open space, held up by the force of wind and taking neither harm nor shaking; and just as a lotus is not wetted by the water — so does this great being move within the world. Abiding here they most often become a Tuṣita king, able to crush the wrong views of other paths; the good that they cultivate is all for a buddha's wisdom, and they vow to obtain the ten powers and rescue beings. Cultivating great effort further still, at once they make offerings to a thousand koṭis of buddhas; their attainment of samādhi and their shaking of lands are likewise, and what is done by the power of vows exceeds even this. Such is the fifth ground, Sudurjayā, the Ground Difficult to Conquer, the supreme and true path among humankind; and by every kind of skillful power I have now finished proclaiming it for the children of the Buddha."
亦如蓮華不著水，如是大士行於世 — just as a lotus is not wetted by the water, so does this great being move within the world. The image is placed exactly where it is needed. A ground that has just required its practitioner to master medicine, music, town planning, astrology and the locations of ore has an obvious hazard, and the lotus is the answer to it: the plant is not protected from the water by distance. It grows in the water. What keeps it dry is a property of its own surface.
Note that the three similes describe three different kinds of not-being-affected. Gold takes a polish from what touches it; the constellations are held steady by the very thing that might have blown them away; the lotus is in contact and remains unwetted. The fifth ground's relation to the world is being described from three angles, and none of them is withdrawal.
Vajragarbha's closing formula continues to shed its qualifications. The first ground ended with 少分, a small portion; the third with "explained according to its meaning"; here it is simply 宣說竟 — I have finished proclaiming it. Nothing about the difficulty has changed, but the reticence with which he began the chapter has been spent.
Fascicle 36 Complete
This completes fascicle thirty-six and Sudurjayā, the Ground Difficult to Conquer — the fascicle having carried two whole grounds, the fourth and the fifth. Chapter 26 continues in fascicle thirty-seven with 十地品第二十六之四, opening the sixth ground, Abhimukhī, the Ground of Direct Presence (現前地), which is entered by contemplating ten kinds of sameness among all dharmas, beginning with their being without characteristics.