The Conjuror Not Taken In
The second concentration closes on the figure it has used throughout, turned one last way. The conjuror does not live inside his own illusions and is not fooled by them either; and the bodhisattva, having reached the far shore, does not reckon that there is a self doing the reaching.
Space and the World, Not Two Places
A conjuring has nowhere to happen except a place, and a place is not somewhere apart from what happens in it. The same holds, the sūtra says, of open space and the world.
如世幻者，不於處外而現其幻，亦不於幻外而有其處。菩薩摩訶薩亦復如是，不於虛空外入世間，亦不於世間外入虛空。何以故？虛空、世間無差別故，住於世間亦住虛空。菩薩摩訶薩於虛空中能見、能修一切世間種種差別妙莊嚴業，於一念頃悉能了知無數世界若成若壞，亦知諸劫相續次第；能於一念現無數劫，亦不令其一念廣大。
As a conjuror in the world does not display his conjuring outside of some place, nor is there a place apart from the conjuring, so it is with a bodhisattva mahāsattva: they do not enter the world from outside of open space, nor enter open space from outside of the world. Why is this so? Because open space and the world are without difference, and abiding in the world they abide in open space as well. Within open space a bodhisattva mahāsattva can see and can cultivate all the various differentiated works that wondrously adorn the world; in the space of a single thought they can comprehend the forming and dissolving of numberless worlds, and know the sequence in which the kalpas succeed one another; and they can display numberless kalpas within a single thought without thereby making that thought large.
亦不令其一念廣大 — without thereby making that thought large. The formula that governed the dust-mote and the world is applied here to a moment of mind. Numberless kalpas appear in it, and it stays the size a thought is. Nothing is being stretched to accommodate anything.
Reaching the Far Shore Without a Self
The last movement piles the word 幻 seven times in three lines, and then removes the one thing that could still be standing outside the illusion — the one who has understood it.
菩薩摩訶薩得不思議解脫幻智，到於彼岸；住於幻際，入世幻數，思惟諸法悉皆如幻；不違幻世，盡於幻智，了知三世與幻無別，決定通達，心無邊際。如諸如來住如幻智，其心平等；菩薩摩訶薩亦復如是，知諸世間皆悉如幻，於一切處皆無所著、無有我所。
A bodhisattva mahāsattva obtains the inconceivable liberated wisdom of conjuring and reaches the far shore; they abide at the limit of the conjuring and enter into the world's reckoning of conjurings, contemplating that all dharmas are entirely like a conjuring; they do not go against the conjured world, and they exhaust the wisdom of conjuring; they comprehend that the three times are not different from a conjuring, penetrate this decisively, and their mind has no bound. As the Tathāgatas abide in the wisdom that is like conjuring and their minds are the same throughout, so it is with a bodhisattva mahāsattva: they know that all worlds are entirely like a conjuring, and in every place they are attached to nothing and have nothing as their own.
如彼幻師作諸幻事，雖不與彼幻事同住，而於幻事亦無迷惑；菩薩摩訶薩亦復如是，知一切法到於彼岸，心不計我能入於法，亦不於法而有錯亂。是為菩薩摩訶薩第二妙光明大三昧善巧智。
Just as that conjuror who performs his conjurings does not dwell together with those conjured things, and yet is not deceived by them either, so it is with a bodhisattva mahāsattva: knowing all dharmas, they reach the far shore, and their mind does not reckon that there is an "I" who is able to enter into dharmas, nor is there any confusion for them within dharmas. This is the bodhisattva mahāsattva's skillful knowledge in the second great samādhi, Wondrous Light.
雖不與彼幻事同住，而於幻事亦無迷惑 — he does not dwell together with those conjured things, and yet is not deceived by them either. Both halves are needed, and the second is the harder. A performer who despised his own act would be as mistaken as an audience taken in by it; what is described is someone standing in the market doing the work with his eyes open.
心不計我能入於法 — their mind does not reckon that there is an "I" who is able to enter into dharmas. The final sentence of the samādhi removes the practitioner from the account of the practice. Everything the chapter has described as entering, displaying and abiding is left standing, and the one supposedly doing it is quietly withdrawn.
Part 501 Complete — Fascicle 40 Complete
The second of the ten great samādhis, Wondrous Light, is finished, and with it fascicle forty. Part 502 opens fascicle forty-one and 十定品第二十七之二 with the third, the samādhi of Spiritual Penetration in Going in Order Throughout All the Buddha-Lands — in which a bodhisattva passes beyond numberless worlds to the east and enters concentration there, in an instant or over a hundred thousand years, and the divisions of a day become the measure of it.