Only the Vajra Path Ends It
The verse compresses the eleven thickets into a handful of stanzas, and in doing so says something the prose did not — that the undergrowth of views is nothing but false imagining, has no place at all, is merely pushed back by meditative absorption, and is finished only on the vajra path.
What the Ninth Ground Knows
Two stanzas for the entry, then the dharmas, then mind and affliction and karma and the faculties — each thicket given four lines and no more.
爾時，金剛藏菩薩欲重宣其義而說頌曰：
「無量智力善觀察，最上微妙世難知，普入如來祕密處，利益眾生入九地。
總持三昧皆自在，獲大神通入眾剎，力智無畏不共法，願力悲心入九地。
住於此地持法藏，了善不善及無記，有漏無漏世出世，思不思議悉善知。
若法決定不決定，三乘所作悉觀察，有為無為行差別，如是而知入世間。
Then Vajragarbha Bodhisattva, wishing to state this meaning again, spoke in verse, saying:
"With measureless powers of wisdom they contemplate well what is highest and most subtle and hard for the world to know; entering universally the secret places of the Tathāgata, and benefiting beings, they enter the ninth ground. Sovereignly free in the dhāraṇīs and the samādhis, obtaining great spiritual penetration and entering into every land, with the powers and wisdom and fearlessnesses and unshared dharmas, and with the strength of vows and a heart of compassion, they enter the ninth ground. Abiding on this ground they uphold the treasury of Dharma, comprehending the wholesome, the unwholesome and the indeterminate, what has outflows and what has none, the worldly and the world-transcending, the conceivable and the inconceivable — knowing all of it well. Whether a dharma is fixed or unfixed, and all that the three vehicles do, they contemplate; the differences in the conduct of the conditioned and the unconditioned — knowing all this, they enter the world.
若欲知諸眾生心，則能以智如實知，種種速轉壞非壞，無質無邊等眾相。
煩惱無邊恒共伴，眠起一義續諸趣，業性種種各差別，因壞果集皆能了。
諸根種種下中上，先後際等無量別，解性樂欲亦復然，八萬四千靡不知。
If they wish to know the minds of beings, they can know them with wisdom exactly as they are — the many kinds, turning swiftly, perishing and not perishing, without substance, without bound, and every such aspect. Afflictions are boundless and constantly keep one company; dormant and arisen are one in meaning, and they continue one through the destinies. The natures of karma are of many kinds, each differing from the others; that the cause perishes and yet the fruit is gathered — all of it they comprehend. The faculties are of many kinds, low and middling and high, differing measurelessly in their earlier and later times; understandings and natures and what is delighted in are likewise, and of eighty-four thousand of them there is not one they do not know.
因壞果集 — the cause perishes and yet the fruit is gathered. The prose gave this at greater length in Part 465, as the aspect in which karma's own nature dies in an instant while its fruit accumulates in order. The verse's four characters are the whole problem of moral continuity without a self, and it does not pretend to solve it — it lists it among what the ninth ground knows.
The Seat, and What Falls on It
Then views, birth, the three groups — and the Dharma-seat, given four similes in a single stanza, of which the last is the one that matters: a dragon spreading cloud and pouring rain.
眾生惑見恒隨縛，無始稠林未除翦，與志共俱心並生，常相羈繫不斷絕。
但唯妄想非實物，不離於心無處所，禪定境排仍退轉，金剛道滅方畢竟。
六趣受生各差別，業田愛潤無明覆，識為種子名色芽，三界無始恒相續。
惑業心習生諸趣，若離於此不復生；眾生悉在三聚中，或溺於見或行道。
Beings are bound and followed constantly by confusion and views; the beginningless thicket has not been cut away; it goes together with their intent and is born along with their mind, forever tethering them and never breaking off. Yet it is nothing but false imagining and not a real thing; it is not apart from mind and has no place at all; the domain of meditative absorption pushes it back and still it turns again, and only by the extinguishing of the vajra path is it finished at last. The taking of birth in the six destinies differs in each; karma is the field, craving soaks it, ignorance covers it, consciousness is the seed and name-and-form the sprout, and the three realms continue on beginninglessly. Confusion, karma, and the habits of mind give birth in the destinies; were one apart from these, there would be no birth again. Beings are all within the three groups — some drowned in views, and some walking the path.
住於此地善觀察，隨其心樂及根解，悉以無礙妙辯才，如其所應差別說。
處於法座如師子，亦如牛王寶山王，又如龍王布密雲，霔甘露雨充大海。
善知法性及奧義，隨順言辭能辯說，總持百萬阿僧祇，譬如大海受眾雨。
Abiding on this ground they contemplate well, and according to what each mind delights in and to their faculties and understanding, with unhindered and wondrous eloquence they expound differently as befits each one. Upon the Dharma-seat they are like a lion, and like a bull-king and a king of jewel-mountains, and like a dragon-king spreading dense cloud and pouring down a rain of nectar that fills the ocean. Knowing well the nature of dharmas and their deepest meaning, they can speak with eloquence, according with the words of each; a million asaṃkhyeyas are held in their retention, as the great ocean receives all the rains.
禪定境排仍退轉，金剛道滅方畢竟 — the domain of meditative absorption pushes it back and still it turns again; only by the extinguishing of the vajra path is it finished at last. 排 is a physical word, to shove aside. This is the verse's most useful addition to the whole chapter: absorption suppresses the thicket rather than clearing it, and the honest admission of that is placed here, in a ground devoted to knowing what people are actually like.
譬如大海受眾雨 — as the great ocean receives all the rains. Note the reversal within two lines. In the stanza before, the Dharma-master was the dragon whose rain fills the ocean; here he is the ocean receiving every rain. Retention and expounding are the same capacity described from either side.
Part 471 Complete
This continues Sādhumatī, the Ground of Excellent Wisdom, the ninth of the Ten Grounds, in fascicle thirty-eight. Part 472 finishes the verse and closes both the ninth ground and fascicle thirty-eight — the Dharma taught to a whole trichiliocosm like cloud spreading, the hair-tip assemblies retained as the earth holds every seed, the questions of the ten directions answered in one voice, and the ground named at last as the place where a bodhisattva of great wisdom walks.