The Moon in Every Water
Vajragarbha's verse for the eighth ground puts each of the great prose passages into four lines, and adds one image the prose did not have — sun and moon standing in the sky while their reflections appear in all the water there is. Nothing descends, and nothing is withheld.
The Forbearance, and the Rousing
Four stanzas for the attainment, one for the three similes together, and then the buddhas' speech given directly, inside quotation marks, exactly as the prose had it.
爾時，金剛藏菩薩欲重宣其義而說頌曰：
「七地修治方便慧，善集助道大願力，復得人尊所攝持，為求勝智登八住。
功德成就恒慈愍，智慧廣大等虛空，聞法能生決定力，是則寂滅無生忍。
知法無生無起相，無成無壞無盡轉，離有平等絕分別，超諸心行如空住。
成就是忍超戲論，甚深不動恒寂滅，一切世間無能知，心相取著悉皆離。
住於此地不分別，譬如比丘入滅定，如夢渡河覺則無，如生梵天絕下欲。
Then Vajragarbha Bodhisattva, wishing to state this meaning again, spoke in verse, saying:
"On the seventh ground they cultivate and refine skillful means and wisdom, gather well the dharmas that aid the path and the power of great vows, and are moreover taken up and held by the Honored One among people; and seeking surpassing wisdom, they ascend to the eighth abiding. Their merits accomplished, they are constantly kind and pitying; their wisdom is vast and expansive, equal to open space; and hearing the Dharma they are able to give rise to the power of decision — this then is the quiescent forbearance of non-arising. They know that dharmas have no aspect of arising or origination, no forming, no destruction, no exhausting and no turning; apart from existence, equal, discrimination cut off, passing beyond all activity of mind and abiding as space abides. Accomplishing this forbearance, they pass beyond frivolous discourse; most profound, immovable, constantly quiescent, and by nothing in all the world to be known; every mark of mind and every grasping is left behind. Abiding on this ground they do not discriminate — as a monk who has entered the absorption of cessation, as one who crossed a river in a dream and wakes to find it gone, as one born in the Brahmā heaven for whom the desires below are cut off.
以本願力蒙勸導，歎其忍勝與灌頂，語言：『我等眾佛法，汝今未獲當勤進。
汝雖已滅煩惱火，世間惑焰猶熾然，當念本願度眾生，悉使修因趣解脫。
法性真常離心念，二乘於此亦能得，不以此故為世尊，但以甚深無礙智。』
如是人天所應供，與此智慧令觀察，無邊佛法悉得成，一念超過曩眾行。
By the power of their original vows they receive urging and guidance; their forbearance is praised as surpassing, and consecration is bestowed, with the words: 'Our many buddha-dharmas you have not yet obtained; you ought to press on diligently. Though you have already extinguished the fire of affliction, the flames of the world's confusion are still ablaze; call to mind your original vow to ferry beings across, and cause them all to cultivate the cause and turn toward liberation. The nature of dharmas, truly constant, is apart from the thinking of mind, and those of the two vehicles can also attain to it; it is not because of this that one is a World-Honored One, but only because of a most profound and unobstructed wisdom.' Thus do those worthy of the offerings of gods and humans bestow this wisdom and cause them to contemplate; boundless buddha-dharmas are all brought to accomplishment, and a single thought surpasses all the practices of before.
歎其忍勝與灌頂 — their forbearance is praised as surpassing, and consecration is bestowed. The verse adds a word the prose withheld: 灌頂, the pouring of water on the head that makes a king. The tenth ground will make consecration its whole subject, and the verse quietly lets the eighth have a share in it.
世間惑焰猶熾然 — the flames of the world's confusion are still ablaze. The verse's argument for returning to work is not doctrinal but circumstantial. His own fire is out; other fires are burning. This is all the reason it offers, and all it needs.
Sun and Moon Standing Still
The ship on the wind, the effortless knowing, the bodies manifested — and then the new image, which explains all three at once.
菩薩住茲妙智地，則獲廣大神通力，一念分身遍十方，如船入海因風濟。
心無功用任智力，悉知國土成壞住，諸界種種各殊異，小大無量皆能了。
三千世界四大種，六趣眾生身各別，及以眾寶微塵數，以智觀察悉無餘。
菩薩能知一切身，為化眾生同彼形，國土無量種種別，悉為現形無不遍。
譬如日月住虛空，一切水中皆現影；住於法界無所動，隨心現影亦復然。
A bodhisattva abiding on this wondrous ground of wisdom obtains vast and expansive powers of spiritual penetration; in a single thought they divide their body throughout the ten directions, as a ship that has entered the sea is carried across by the wind. Their mind without effortful application, they entrust themselves to the power of wisdom, and know entirely the forming, dissolving and abiding of lands, and the many realms each differing from the other, small and great and measureless — all of it they comprehend. The four great elements of a trichiliocosm, the separate bodies of beings in the six destinies, and the dust-motes of every kind of jewel — contemplating these with wisdom, they leave nothing out. A bodhisattva is able to know every body, and for the sake of transforming beings takes on their very form; lands are measureless and differ in every kind of way, and in all of them they manifest a form, pervading them without exception. It is like the sun and the moon abiding in open space, whose reflections appear in every water there is; abiding in the dharma-realm without moving at all, they too appear as reflections according to the mind.
隨其心樂各不同，一切眾中皆現身，聲聞獨覺與菩薩，及以佛身靡不現。
眾生國土業報身，種種聖人智法身，虛空身相皆平等，普為眾生而示作。
十種聖智普觀察，復順慈悲作眾業，所有佛法皆成就，持戒不動如須彌。
十力成就不動搖，一切魔眾無能轉，諸佛護念天王禮，密跡金剛恒侍衛。
According as what each mind delights in differs, they manifest a body in every assembly; the śrāvaka, the pratyekabuddha and the bodhisattva, and the body of a buddha too — there is none they do not manifest. The body of beings, the body of the land, the body of karmic recompense, the bodies of every kind of noble one, the body of wisdom and the body of Dharma, and the aspect of the body of open space — all of them are the same, and they display and make them universally for the sake of beings. With the ten kinds of noble wisdom they contemplate universally, and in accord with loving-kindness and compassion they perform many deeds; every dharma of the buddhas is brought to accomplishment, and their keeping of the precepts is unmoving as Sumeru. The ten powers accomplished, they are unshaken; the whole host of Māra cannot turn them; the buddhas hold them in mind, the kings of the devas bow to them, and the vajra-bearers of the secret traces constantly attend and guard them.
譬如日月住虛空，一切水中皆現影 — like the sun and the moon abiding in open space, whose reflections appear in every water there is. This simile does not occur in the prose of the eighth ground, and it settles what the prose left slightly open. The reflection is not a portion of the moon sent down into the pond, and the pond does not receive less moon than the sea; what determines the reflection is entirely the water. 隨心現影 — the appearing follows the mind that looks.
持戒不動如須彌 — their keeping of the precepts is unmoving as Sumeru. It is worth noticing that a ground defined by the cessation of effort still names moral discipline among its attainments. Nothing has been permitted; what has ended is the exertion of maintaining it.
Part 463 Complete
This continues Acalā, the Immovable Ground, the eighth of the Ten Grounds, in fascicle thirty-eight. Part 464 closes the eighth ground — the merit that a million koṭis of kalpas could not finish telling, the crown on the king's head once more, the Brahmā King of a thousand worlds, and the samādhis counted in world-dust — and then the ninth ground is announced, as the Tathāgata shakes the lands of the ten directions and the devas sing again.