Enter in the East, Rise in the West
Ten ways of entering concentration, and every one of them ends somewhere else. Then a body seated on a lotus the size of a world, with worlds inside the body; and to show that this need not be baffling, an asura king who does something comparable while remaining greedy, angry and proud.
Ten Ways In and Out
The list is a set of paired opposites and nothing else, and the paradox is left entirely unexplained: the direction of entering is never the direction of emerging.
佛子！此菩薩摩訶薩有十種入三昧差別智。何者為十？所謂：東方入定西方起，西方入定東方起，南方入定北方起，北方入定南方起，東北方入定西南方起，西南方入定東北方起，西北方入定東南方起，東南方入定西北方起，下方入定上方起，上方入定下方起。是為十。
Child of the Buddha! This bodhisattva mahāsattva has ten kinds of differentiating knowledge in entering samādhi. What are the ten? Namely: entering concentration in the east and rising in the west; entering in the west and rising in the east; entering in the south and rising in the north; entering in the north and rising in the south; entering in the northeast and rising in the southwest; entering in the southwest and rising in the northeast; entering in the northwest and rising in the southeast; entering in the southeast and rising in the northwest; entering below and rising above; and entering above and rising below. These are the ten.
「佛子！此菩薩摩訶薩有十種入大三昧善巧智。何者為十？佛子！菩薩摩訶薩以三千大千世界為一蓮華，現身遍此蓮華之上結跏趺坐，身中復現三千大千世界，其中有百億四天下，一一四天下現百億身，一一身入百億百億三千大千世界，於彼世界一一四天下現百億百億菩薩修行，一一菩薩修行生百億百億決定解，一一決定解令百億百億根性圓滿，一一根性成百億百億菩薩法不退業。然所現身非一非多，入定、出定無所錯亂。
"Child of the Buddha! This bodhisattva mahāsattva has ten kinds of skillful knowledge in entering the great samādhi. What are the ten? Child of the Buddha! A bodhisattva mahāsattva takes a great trichiliocosm as a single lotus, and manifests a body pervading that lotus, seated cross-legged upon it; and within that body a great trichiliocosm appears again, in which there are ten billion sets of four continents; in each set of four continents ten billion bodies appear; each single body enters ten billion times ten billion great trichiliocosms; in each set of four continents in those worlds ten billion times ten billion bodhisattvas appear cultivating practice; each single bodhisattva's cultivation gives rise to ten billion times ten billion decisive understandings; each decisive understanding brings ten billion times ten billion faculties and natures to fullness; and each faculty and nature accomplishes ten billion times ten billion non-regressing deeds of the bodhisattva's Dharma. And yet the bodies so manifested are neither one nor many, and in entering concentration and leaving it there is no confusion at all.
東方入定西方起 — entering concentration in the east and rising in the west. The formula reads as a riddle and is a precise description of what the chapter has been showing since Part 492: someone whose body is the dharma-realm has no single place from which to sit down. Where one enters is a location; where one rises is wherever is fitting.
然所現身非一非多 — and yet the bodies so manifested are neither one nor many. The whole cascade is qualified by this before the passage moves on. It is the guard against reading the multiplication as a feat of arithmetic; nothing has been added up, because there was never a countable unit to begin with.
Rāhu, Who Manages It While Angry
The comparison is deliberately unflattering to no one. An asura king magnifies his body two hundred times and keeps everything about himself intact — and he is not a holy being.
佛子！如羅睺阿脩羅王，本身長七百由旬，化形長十六萬八千由旬，於大海中出其半身，與須彌山而正齊等。佛子！彼阿脩羅王雖化其身長十六萬八千由旬，然亦不壞本身之相，諸蘊、界、處悉皆如本，心不錯亂，不於變化身而作他想，於其本身生非己想，本受生身恒受諸樂，化身常現種種自在神通威力。
Child of the Buddha! Consider Rāhu, king of the asuras. His own body is seven hundred yojanas tall, and the form he conjures is a hundred and sixty-eight thousand yojanas tall; rising from the great ocean he shows half his body, and it stands exactly level with Mount Sumeru. Child of the Buddha! Although that asura king transforms his body to a hundred and sixty-eight thousand yojanas, he does not thereby destroy the character of his own body: his aggregates, elements and sense-fields all remain as they were; his mind is not thrown into confusion; he does not take the transformed body to be someone else, nor does he think of his own body as not his; the body he was born with constantly enjoys its pleasures, while the conjured body constantly displays every kind of sovereign spiritual power and might.
佛子！阿脩羅王有貪、恚、癡，具足憍慢，尚能如是變現其身；何況菩薩摩訶薩能深了達心法如幻，一切世間皆悉如夢，一切諸佛出興於世皆如影像，一切世界猶如變化，言語音聲悉皆如響，見如實法，以如實法而為其身，知一切法本性清淨，了知身心無有實體，其身普住無量境界，以佛智慧廣大光明淨修一切菩提之行！
Child of the Buddha! The asura king has greed, hatred and delusion, and is fully possessed of arrogance, and even he can transform and manifest his body in this way. How much more so a bodhisattva mahāsattva, who can penetrate deeply that the dharmas of mind are like a conjuring, that every world is entirely like a dream, that all the buddhas' appearing in the world is like a reflected image, that all worlds are like transformations, and that speech and sound are all like echoes; who sees dharmas as they truly are and takes dharmas as they truly are for their body; who knows all dharmas to be intrinsically pure and comprehends that body and mind have no substantial reality; whose body abides universally in measureless domains; and who, with the vast radiance of the buddhas' wisdom, purely cultivates every practice of awakening!
不於變化身而作他想，於其本身生非己想 — he does not take the transformed body to be someone else, nor does he think of his own body as not his. The two errors are named exactly, and both are errors about ownership. Rāhu's competence is psychological rather than magical: he is not confused about which body is which, and the sūtra makes that the transferable part.
阿脩羅王有貪、恚、癡…尚能如是 — the asura king has greed, hatred and delusion, and even he can do this. The argument runs from the lesser case upward, and its force depends on the asura being disreputable. What a bodhisattva has that he lacks is not power but the knowledge that follows: dream, reflection, echo — and a body made of dharmas as they truly are.
Part 497 Complete
This continues chapter twenty-seven, 十定品, The Ten Concentrations, in fascicle forty. Part 498 closes the first samādhi with the monk contemplating his own body as impure, matched to the bodhisattva who contemplates the Dharma-body and sees every world enter into it while remaining attached to none; and then Samantabhadra begins the second, the samādhi of Wondrous Light.