A Hundred Years Inside One Day
The reflections among the mountains are applied: this samādhi neither breaks the world's arrangement nor abolishes what things are. Then a street conjuror shows a crowd a hundred years in an afternoon, and the afternoon is not shortened by it.
Neither Inside Nor Outside
Six denials in a row, and each of them refuses a way of siding with either the world or its emptiness.
佛子！菩薩摩訶薩亦復如是，住此妙光廣大三昧，不壞世間安立之相，不滅世間諸法自性；不住世界內，不住世界外；於諸世界無所分別，亦不壞於世界之相；觀一切法一相無相，亦不壞於諸法自性；住真如性，恒不捨離。
Child of the Buddha! A bodhisattva mahāsattva is likewise: abiding in this vast samādhi of Wondrous Light, they do not break down the established characteristics of the world, nor do they abolish the own-nature of the world's dharmas; they do not abide inside worlds, nor do they abide outside them; they make no discrimination among worlds, and yet do not destroy the characteristics of a world; they contemplate all dharmas as of one characteristic, which is no characteristic, and yet do not destroy the own-nature of dharmas; and they abide in the nature of suchness and never depart from it.
佛子！譬如幻師善知幻術，住四衢道作諸幻事，於一日中一須臾頃，或現一日，或現一夜，或復現作七日七夜、半月一月、一年百年，隨其所欲皆能示現城邑聚落、泉流河海、日月雲雨、宮殿屋宅，如是一切靡不具足；不以示現經年歲故，壞其根本一日一時；不以本時極短促故，壞其所現日月年歲；幻相明現，本日不滅。
Child of the Buddha! It is like a conjuror who knows his art well, standing where four roads meet and performing his conjurings: within a single day, in the space of a single moment, he may display a day, or display a night, or display seven days and seven nights, half a month, a month, a year, a hundred years; and according to what he wishes he can display cities and towns and villages, springs and streams and rivers and seas, sun and moon and cloud and rain, palaces and houses — all of it complete, with nothing lacking. He does not, by displaying the passing of years, break the single day and single hour that underlie it; and he does not, because the actual time is so very brief, break the days and months and years he has displayed. The conjured appearances stand out clearly, and the day itself is not destroyed.
住四衢道 — standing where four roads meet. The detail places the whole comparison in a market: a public performance, in daylight, with a crowd who know they are watching a trick. Nothing about it is occult, and that is the reason the sūtra keeps returning to conjuring rather than to dreams for its hardest points.
幻相明現，本日不滅 — the conjured appearances stand out clearly, and the day itself is not destroyed. Both halves are asserted without preference. This is the same pairing as the dust-mote and the world in Part 480 — the mote not swelling, the world not shrinking — transposed from space into time.
Worlds Inside a World
The application is a full inventory of what comes in with the worlds — elements, oceans, mountains, cities, the palaces of every kind of being, the three realms, karma and rebirth — and the insistence that neither the many nor the one is spoiled.
菩薩摩訶薩亦復如是，入此妙光廣大三昧，現阿僧祇世界入一世界。其阿僧祇世界一一皆有地、水、火、風、大海、諸山、城邑、聚落、園林、屋宅、天宮、龍宮、夜叉宮、乾闥婆宮、阿脩羅宮、迦樓羅宮、緊那羅宮、摩睺羅伽宮，種種莊嚴皆悉具足。欲界、色界、無色界，小千世界、大千世界，業行果報，死此生彼，一切世間所有時節——須臾、晝夜、半月一月、一歲百歲、成劫壞劫、雜染國土、清淨國土、廣大國土、狹小國土，如是一切，菩薩皆能如實知，不以彼世界多故壞此一世界，不以此世界一故壞彼多世界。
A bodhisattva mahāsattva is likewise: entering this vast samādhi of Wondrous Light, they display asaṃkhyeyas of worlds entering into a single world. Each of those asaṃkhyeyas of worlds has its earth, water, fire and wind, its great oceans, its mountains, its cities and towns and villages, its groves and parks, its houses and dwellings, its palaces of the devas, of the nāgas, of the yakṣas, of the gandharvas, of the asuras, of the garuḍas, of the kiṃnaras and of the mahoragas, complete in every kind of adornment. The desire realm, the form realm and the formless realm; the lesser chiliocosm and the great chiliocosm; the fruits and recompense of karmic action, dying here and being born there; and all the divisions of time there are in any world — a moment, day and night, a half-month, a month, a year, a hundred years, the kalpa of forming and the kalpa of dissolving; lands defiled and lands pure, lands vast and lands narrow — all of this the bodhisattva knows exactly as it is; and they do not, because those worlds are many, break this one world, nor, because this world is one, break those many worlds.
一切世間所有時節 — all the divisions of time there are in any world. The list of what enters runs from the four elements through architecture and populations, and then, without a break in the grammar, into hours and years and kalpas. Time is inventoried alongside mountains, as one more thing a world contains and brings with it.
Part 499 Complete
This continues chapter twenty-seven, 十定品, The Ten Concentrations, in fascicle forty. Part 500 gives the reasons — a series of names earned by knowing that all dharmas are without self, without a living being, without a person, without any mind-born entity — and then the bodhisattva who sees themselves practicing in countless assemblies without leaving where they are, and the conjuror whose conjured ground does not destroy the real ground.