The Ship Reaches Open Water
The seventh ground's ship was in the water and not drowning. The eighth ground's ship has cleared the coast, and the rowing simply stops. What the wind then carries it into is a knowing that counts the dust-motes of every element in every world — and none of it is worked at.
A Day, Against a Hundred Years
The comparison is exact and slightly brutal — a single day under sail outruns a hundred years of rowing, and the rowing was not wasted, since nothing but the rowing brought the ship to where the wind could take it.
佛子！譬如乘船欲入大海，未至於海，多用功力；若至海已，但隨風去，不假人力以至大海，一日所行比於未至，其未至時設經百歲亦不能及。佛子！菩薩摩訶薩亦復如是，積集廣大善根資糧，乘大乘船到菩薩行海，於一念頃以無功用智入一切智智境界，本有功用行經於無量百千億那由他劫所不能及。
Child of the Buddha! It is like boarding a ship and wishing to enter the great ocean — before reaching the sea, much labor is used; but once the sea is reached, one simply goes with the wind, and no human strength is borrowed to travel the great ocean. What is covered in a single day there, compared with the stretch not yet reached, is such that the earlier stretch, though a hundred years were spent upon it, could not equal it. Child of the Buddha! A bodhisattva mahāsattva is likewise: having gathered and accumulated the vast provisions of wholesome roots, they board the ship of the Great Vehicle and arrive at the ocean of bodhisattva practice, and in the space of a single thought, with effortless wisdom, they enter the domain of all-knowing wisdom itself — which the earlier practice of effortful application, though it passed through measureless hundreds of thousands of koṭis of nayutas of kalpas, could not reach.
不假人力 — no human strength is borrowed. The seventh ground's ship simile in Part 454 said 在水不為水所溺, in the water and not drowned by it; that ship still had a crew. Here the same vessel is on the same water, and the difference is only that the labor has become unnecessary. The two similes read as one image split across a ground-boundary.
Note 積集廣大善根資糧 — the vast provisions of wholesome roots gathered and accumulated. The provisioning is what the first seven grounds were, and the simile makes the point that provisions are consumed on a journey rather than displayed at its end.
Counting What Cannot Be Counted
The first exercise of effortless wisdom is not compassion or teaching but arithmetic — how long a world takes to form, how long to stand, how many dust-motes are in an element, in a jewel, in a body, in a land.
「佛子！菩薩住此第八地，以大方便善巧智所起無功用覺慧，觀一切智智所行境。所謂：觀世間成，觀世間壞；由此業集故成，由此業盡故壞。幾時成？幾時壞？幾時成住？幾時壞住？皆如實知。又知地界小相、大相、無量相、差別相，知水、火、風界小相、大相、無量相、差別相，知微塵細相、差別相、無量差別相。
"Child of the Buddha! A bodhisattva abiding on this eighth ground, with the effortless awakened wisdom that arises from the wisdom of great skillful means and expedient skill, contemplates the domain in which all-knowing wisdom itself moves. That is to say, they contemplate the forming of a world and the dissolving of a world — that it forms because such-and-such karma has gathered, and dissolves because such-and-such karma is exhausted. How long does it take to form? How long to dissolve? How long does it remain formed? How long does it remain dissolved? All of this they know exactly as it is. They know too the small aspect, the great aspect, the measureless aspect and the differentiated aspect of the earth element; they know the small, great, measureless and differentiated aspects of the water, fire and wind elements; and they know the subtle aspect of the dust-mote, its differentiated aspect, and its measureless differentiated aspects.
隨何世界中所有微塵聚及微塵差別相，皆如實知；隨何世界中所有地、水、火、風界各若干微塵，所有寶物若干微塵，眾生身若干微塵，國土身若干微塵，皆如實知。知眾生大身、小身各若干微塵成，知地獄身、畜生身、餓鬼身、阿脩羅身、天身、人身各若干微塵成，得如是知微塵差別智。又知欲界、色界、無色界成，知欲界、色界、無色界壞，知欲界、色界、無色界小相、大相、無量相、差別相，得如是觀三界差別智。「佛子！此菩薩復起智明，教化眾生。所謂：善知眾生身差別，善分別眾生身，善觀察所生處；隨其所應而為現身，教化成熟。
In whatever world it may be, they know exactly as they are the aggregations of dust-motes there and the differentiated aspects of those dust-motes; in whatever world it may be, they know exactly as they are how many dust-motes there are in each of the earth, water, fire and wind elements, how many dust-motes in the precious substances, how many in the bodies of beings, and how many in the body of the land. They know of how many dust-motes the great bodies and the small bodies of beings are composed; they know of how many dust-motes the bodies of hell-beings, of animals, of hungry ghosts, of asuras, of devas and of humans are composed — and in this way they attain the wisdom that knows the differentiations of dust-motes. They know too the forming of the desire realm, the form realm and the formless realm, and the dissolving of the desire realm, the form realm and the formless realm; they know the small aspect, the great aspect, the measureless aspect and the differentiated aspect of the desire realm, the form realm and the formless realm — and in this way they attain the wisdom that contemplates the differentiations of the three realms. "Child of the Buddha! This bodhisattva raises up in addition the light of wisdom by which they teach and transform beings. That is to say, they know well the differences among the bodies of beings, they discriminate well the bodies of beings, and they contemplate well the places where beings are born; and, according to what is fitting for each, they manifest a body for them, teaching them and bringing them to ripeness.
由此業集故成，由此業盡故壞 — it forms because such-and-such karma has gathered, and dissolves because such-and-such karma is exhausted. The cosmology here has no maker and no destroyer. A world is what accumulated action looks like from the outside, and its ending is not a catastrophe but the running-out of a fund.
The dust-mote passage is often read as hyperbole, but its structure is a census: elements, then valuables, then bodies, then lands, then the six kinds of being one by one. What the eighth ground gains is not a vision of vastness but an exact count of it — and this immediately after a ground where all effort ceased. The knowing is fine-grained precisely because nothing is being strained after.
Part 458 Complete
This continues Acalā, the Immovable Ground, the eighth of the Ten Grounds, in fascicle thirty-eight. Part 459 continues with the manifestation of bodies — a body shown in a thousand million world-systems at once while the body in any one buddha-land does not move, and the forms taken among śramaṇas, brahmins, kṣatriyas, householders, the deva assemblies from the Four Heavenly Kings up to Akaniṣṭha, and among śrāvakas, pratyekabuddhas, bodhisattvas and tathāgatas.