Gold Burnished with Beryl
The sixth ground's gold is polished with a gem this time, and the result is not only brighter but quieter. The second simile is the one that fits the ground best — moonlight, which cools whatever it falls on and which no wind can tear down. Then the station, and the beginning of the verse that gathers the ground up.
Brighter, and More Quiet
Six grounds of goldsmithing have now given six operations. This one adds a word the others did not have — the gold does not only become brighter but 轉復寂滅, more quiescent — and then the moon takes over.
譬如真金，以毘瑠璃寶數數磨瑩，轉更明淨；此地菩薩所有善根亦復如是，以方便慧，隨逐觀察，轉更明淨，轉復寂滅，無能映蔽。譬如月光，照眾生身，令得清涼，四種風輪所不能壞；此地菩薩所有善根亦復如是，能滅無量百千億那由他眾生煩惱熾火，四種魔道所不能壞。此菩薩，十波羅蜜中，般若波羅蜜偏多；餘非不修，但隨力隨分。
It is like true gold burnished again and again with a beryl gem, growing brighter and purer still; the wholesome roots of a bodhisattva on this ground are likewise — by the wisdom of skillful means they follow and contemplate them, so that these grow brighter and purer still, and more quiescent still, and nothing at all is able to outshine them. It is like moonlight, which shines upon the bodies of beings and makes them cool, and which the four wind-circles are unable to destroy; the wholesome roots of a bodhisattva on this ground are likewise — they are able to extinguish the blazing fire of the afflictions in measureless hundreds of thousands of millions of nayutas of beings, and the four paths of Māra are unable to destroy them. In this bodhisattva, among the ten pāramitās, the pāramitā of wisdom predominates. It is not that they fail to cultivate the others, but they do so according to their strength and according to their share.
「佛子！是名：略說菩薩摩訶薩第六現前地。菩薩住此地，多作善化天王，所作自在，一切聲聞所有問難無能退屈，能令眾生除滅我慢、深入緣起。布施、愛語、利行、同事——如是一切諸所作業，皆不離念佛，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，乃至為一切智智依止者。』此菩薩若勤行精進，於一念頃，得百千億三昧，乃至示現百千億菩薩以為眷屬；若以願力自在示現，過於此數，乃至百千億那由他劫不能數知。」
"Child of the Buddha! This is called, spoken in brief, the bodhisattva mahāsattva's sixth ground, Abhimukhī, the Ground of Direct Presence. A bodhisattva abiding on this ground most often becomes a king of the Nirmāṇarati heaven, sovereign in what they do; no question or challenge from any śrāvaka is able to make them retreat or falter, and they are able to cause beings to remove conceit and to enter deeply into dependent arising. Giving, kind speech, beneficial conduct, and working alongside others — in all such deeds as these they never depart from the recollection of the Buddha, 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 and the best, and so on up to being that upon which all-knowing wisdom itself relies.' Should this bodhisattva practice with diligent effort, in the space of a single thought they attain a hundred thousand koṭis of samādhis, and so on up to displaying a hundred thousand koṭis of bodhisattvas as their retinue; and if by the power of vows they display themselves with sovereign freedom, it goes beyond this number, on up to a hundred thousand koṭis of nayutas of kalpas being unable to count it or know it."
轉更明淨，轉復寂滅 — brighter and purer still, and more quiescent still. Every previous ground's gold got brighter; this is the first to get quieter as well. It is the right addition for a ground whose work was contemplation, and it changes what the brightness means: not display, but the kind of clarity that comes with stillness. 無能映蔽 — nothing can outshine it — then follows from the quiet rather than from the shine.
The moon is the better of the two similes for this ground, and the sūtra knows it. Moonlight is cool where sunlight is hot; what it does to a body is take heat away, which is precisely what the passage says these wholesome roots do to the burning of the afflictions. And it cannot be destroyed by wind because there is nothing of it for a wind to catch.
一切聲聞所有問難無能退屈 — no question or challenge from any śrāvaka can make them retreat or falter. This is the plain form of what Part 444 called 不懼異論, and it is worth noting whose questions are named. Not Māra's, not a heretic's, but a śrāvaka's — someone within the tradition, asking in good faith and asking well. Those are the questions that would actually be hard.
The Verse Begins
The closing verse restates the ten kinds of sameness in a single stanza, then moves to the world's arising and to the emptiness of causes — and states the sixth ground's most delicate balance in one line.
爾時，金剛藏菩薩欲重宣其義而說頌曰：
「菩薩圓滿五地已，觀法無相亦無性，無生無成本清淨，無有戲論無取捨，
體相寂滅如幻等，有無不二離分別，隨順法性如是觀，此智得成入六地。
明利順忍智具足，觀察世間生滅相，以癡闇力世間生，若滅癡闇世無有。
觀諸因緣實義空，不壞假名和合用，無作無受無思念，諸行如雲遍興起。
不知真諦名無明，所作思業愚癡果，識起共生是名色，如是乃至眾苦聚。
Then Vajragarbha Bodhisattva, wishing to state this meaning again, spoke in verse, saying:
"The bodhisattva, having perfected the fifth ground, contemplates that dharmas are without characteristics and without nature; unarisen, unmade, and originally pure; without frivolous discourse and without grasping or rejecting; their substance and characteristics quiescent, like an illusion and the rest; existence and non-existence not two, apart from all discrimination. Contemplating thus in accord with the nature of dharmas, this wisdom is accomplished and they enter the sixth ground. Complete in the wisdom of the bright and keen forbearance of conformity, they contemplate the characteristics of the world's arising and ceasing: by the power of the darkness of delusion the world is born, and if that darkness is extinguished the world is not. They contemplate that causes and conditions are, in their true meaning, empty — without destroying the provisional names and the workings of combination; there is no doer, no one who undergoes, and no one who thinks, and formations arise everywhere like clouds. Not knowing the true truth is called ignorance; the intentional deeds so done are the fruit of delusion; what arises together with consciousness is name-and-form — and so on, up to the whole heap of suffering.
觀諸因緣實義空，不壞假名和合用 — they contemplate that causes and conditions are in their true meaning empty, without destroying the provisional names and the workings of combination. This single line holds the position the whole sixth ground has been building. Seeing that a thing is empty does not license treating it as though it were not there; the provisional names still name, and combinations still work. What is denied is own-nature, not function.
諸行如雲遍興起 — formations arise everywhere like clouds. Clouds have no maker, no substance one could hold, and no moment one could point to as their beginning; and they are also unmistakably there, and it rains. The image belongs with the field of Part 441 and the bundle of reeds of Part 442, all of them describing something that plainly happens while having nothing behind it that does the happening.
Part 445 Complete
This continues Abhimukhī, the sixth of the Ten Grounds. Chapter 26 continues in Part 446, which closes the ground, as the verse reaches the line the sixth ground is remembered for — that the three realms depend upon mind, and that when mind is extinguished birth and death are exhausted — before running through the twelve links once more and the three gateways of liberation.