Ten Doors, Each Opening Into Emptiness
Vairocana Buddha now answers Flower Light King's request, one mind at a time: the first ten of the forty mind-gates, from the mind of giving up through the summit mind that closes this stage. Each of the ten opens as a recognizable virtue — generosity, discipline, patience, diligence, concentration, wisdom, vowing, guarding, joy — and each one closes the same way, dissolving that very virtue into the samādhi of emptiness that was, on this sutra's own account, always its true nature.
A note on this chapter's difficulty. The classical Chinese in this section is among the most compressed and elliptical in the entire Buddhist canon — a telegraphic, almost code-like style that has long been recognized, including in modern scholarship on this sutra, as unusually resistant to a clean literal rendering. Our translation reads for sense across each passage as a whole rather than clause by clause, and our reading notes describe the pattern we find running through all ten minds rather than claiming certainty about every individual phrase. As explained when this chapter's project began, Elder Master Wei Sung's own commentary on this specific passage is not part of the free archive we have access to, so these reading notes are Ru-Yi's own, cross-checked against the BDK Tripiṭaka translation for terminology.
1. Milestone: The Mind of Giving Up (捨心) — Renunciation That Finds Nothing Left to Renounce
The first mind opens with the most concrete possible generosity — giving away nations, wealth, even one's own body — and ends by dissolving the very distinction between a self who gives and a thing that is given.
爾時盧舍那佛言：「千佛諦聽！汝先言云何義者？發趣中，若佛子！捨心者，一切捨。國土城邑田宅、金銀明珠、男女己身有為諸物，一切捨，無為無相。我人知見假會合成，主者造作我見，十二因緣無合無散無受者。十二入、十八界、五陰，一切一合相，無我我所相。假成諸法，若內一切法外一切法，不捨不受。菩薩爾時名如假，會觀現前故，捨心入空三昧。
At that time Vairocana Buddha said: "Buddhas of a thousand worlds, listen carefully. You have asked what these forty names actually mean. Within development: disciples of the Buddha, one who has the mind of giving up gives up everything without exception — nations, cities, fields and dwellings, gold, silver, and bright pearls, and every conditioned thing belonging to male or female or to one's own body: all of it given up, leaving no conditioned mark behind. Seeing that the notions of self and other are only a provisional coming-together, that whatever seems to act as their maker is only a fabricated view of self, that the twelve links of dependent origination neither truly combine nor truly separate and have no one who genuinely experiences them, and that the twelve sense-fields, the eighteen elements, and the five aggregates are all a single provisional combination without any real self or anything belonging to a self — all phenomena, being merely provisional, whether reckoned as inner or outer, are then neither given up nor grasped at all. A bodhisattva at this point is said to be like an illusion; because this contemplation of reality now stands directly present, the mind of giving up enters the samādhi of emptiness."
The mind of giving up begins exactly where a reader expects — the classical list of what generosity gives away, from kingdoms down to one's own body — but the passage does not stop at outward renunciation. It pushes straight through to the philosophical ground beneath it: if the self doing the giving and the object being given are both, on close examination, only provisional combinations of conditions rather than solid, independent things, then genuine giving-up is not really the transfer of an object from one fixed self to another at all. It is the direct seeing-through of both self and object as empty of any fixed, independent nature — which is why the passage can say, without contradiction, that ultimately "nothing is given up and nothing is grasped." This is the pattern each of the ten minds in this chapter will repeat: a familiar virtue named first, then carried all the way to the same destination, the samādhi of emptiness.
2. Milestone: The Mind of Discipline (戒心) — Precepts That Need No External Teacher
The second mind describes discipline not as an externally imposed rule but as something arising directly from one's own nature — the same claim Chapter 1 already made about the Mind Ground itself.
「若佛子！戒心者，非非戒、無受者，十善戒無師說法。欺盜乃至邪見無集者，慈良清直正實正見捨喜等，是十戒體性。制止八倒，一切性離，一道清淨。
Disciples of the Buddha, one who has the mind of discipline: theirs is a discipline with no one separate who receives it, the ten wholesome precepts taught without need of any outside teacher at all. Deceit, theft, and false view, down to every last unwholesome tendency, have no one who genuinely accumulates them; kindness, uprightness, integrity, sincerity, right view, non-attachment, and joy, and so forth, are themselves the very substance of these ten precepts. This mind restrains the eight inverted views, so that every false nature is left behind, and a single, pure path alone remains.
"Taught without need of any outside teacher" echoes Chapter 1's own central claim almost exactly: buddha-nature, and the precepts that protect it, are not acquired from outside but recognized as already present. Read this way, the ten wholesome precepts named here — refraining from killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, divisive speech, harsh speech, idle speech, greed, ill will, and wrong view — are not a code imposed on a resistant mind from without, but a description of what a mind already free of the eight inverted views naturally does. The passage's own logic mirrors the mind of giving up: discipline, followed all the way through, turns out to be another name for the same clear seeing.
3. Milestone: The Mind of Patience (忍心) — Where Even "Patience" Cannot Be Found
The third mind takes patience through the same trajectory: beginning as literal endurance of harm, and ending with the striking claim that patience itself, examined closely enough, cannot actually be located as any fixed thing at all.
「若佛子！忍心者，有無相慧體性，一切空空忍、一切處忍，名無生行忍，一切處得名如苦忍。無量行一一名忍，無受無打、無刀杖瞋心，皆如如。無一一諦一相、無無相，有無有相，非非心相、緣無緣相，立住動止、我人縛解，一切法如，忍相不可得。
Disciples of the Buddha, one who has the mind of patience: theirs is the very substance of a wisdom without any fixed mark — patience with emptiness in every respect, patience exercised in every circumstance, called the patience of engaging with what is genuinely unborn; patience attained in every circumstance is likewise called the patience that bears suffering exactly as it is. Every one of these countless practices alike bears the name "patience": whether struck or receiving nothing at all, no thought of anger toward blade or staff arises — all of it held in the very same suchness. There is no single fixed truth and no single fixed mark, nor a mark of marklessness either; being and non-being are not fixed marks; mental appearances are neither wholly denied nor affirmed; conditions bear no mark of being conditions at all. Whether standing still or moving, whether self and other are bound or released — all phenomena are simply thus; the very mark of patience itself, in the end, cannot be found.
The everyday sense of patience — bearing an insult, a blow, even a weapon raised against oneself without anger — is stated plainly enough at the center of this passage. But the passage frames that endurance on both sides with something more radical: patience is called a wisdom without fixed marks before this everyday sense is even introduced, and the passage closes by saying the mark of patience itself "cannot be found." Read alongside the first two minds, this is not a contradiction but the same move made a third time: a real, practiced virtue is shown to rest on, and ultimately dissolve into, the direct seeing that nothing involved — the harm, the one enduring it, or the endurance itself — has any fixed, independent nature to grasp onto in the first place.
4. Milestone: The Mind of Diligence (進心) — Climbing the Mountain of the Unborn
The fourth mind reframes effort itself: diligence is not exertion aimed at some future goal, but a sustained practice, in every posture and every moment, of seeing through the provisional nature of things.
「若佛子！進心者，若四威儀，一切時行伏空假會法性、登無生山，而見一切有無如有如無。大地青黃赤白一切入，乃至三寶智性、一切信進道，空、無生、無作、無慧。起空入世諦法亦無二相，續空心通達進分善根。
Disciples of the Buddha, one who has the mind of diligence: in all four postures — walking, standing, sitting, and lying down — and at every moment, they practice subduing attachment to the provisionally combined nature of phenomena through emptiness, climbing the very mountain of the unborn, and thereby see that being and non-being alike are simply as they appear, whether seeming to exist or not. The earth in its blue, yellow, red, and white forms, every sense-object without exception, and even the wisdom-nature of the Three Jewels themselves, and every faith advancing along the path — all are emptiness, unborn, uncreated, beyond even wisdom itself as a fixed thing to hold onto. Rising from emptiness to enter the conventional truth of the world is likewise without duality; sustaining this same mind of emptiness, one penetrates through to the wholesome roots that carry diligence forward.
"In all four postures, at every moment" is a classical formula for continuous practice — nothing is set aside as an off-duty interval from cultivation. What is striking here is what fills that continuous effort: not visible striving toward some future attainment, but a steady seeing-through of ordinary sense-objects, and even the Three Jewels themselves considered as fixed things, as equally empty of independent nature. Diligence, on this reading, is sustained attention rather than sustained strain — effort spent on not losing sight of emptiness, in any posture, at any moment, rather than effort spent chasing a distant goal.
5. Milestone: The Mind of Concentration (定心) — A Samādhi Ordinary Beings and Sages Share Alike
The fifth mind makes an unusually democratic claim: this particular samādhi is not reserved for the already-advanced. Its own underlying nature corresponds equally to an ordinary, unrealized being and to a fully accomplished sage.
「若佛子！定心者，寂滅無相。無相人爾時入內空，值道心眾生，不見緣不見無相，無量行無量心三昧。凡夫聖人無不入三昧，體性相應一切，以定力故。我人作者受者，一切縛見性是障因緣，散風動心，不寂而滅空空，八倒無緣。假靜慧觀，一切假會念念滅，受一切三界果罪性，皆由定滅而生一切善。
Disciples of the Buddha, one who has the mind of concentration: theirs is stillness and cessation, without any fixed mark. Such a markless person then enters an inner emptiness, encountering beings whose minds are set upon the path, seeing neither a fixed condition nor a fixed marklessness, in a samādhi of countless practices and countless states of mind. There is no ordinary being and no sage alike who does not enter this same samādhi, since its very substance corresponds equally to all of them, through the power of concentration itself. Views of self, of a maker, and of an experiencer, and every binding view of a fixed nature, are themselves the very cause of obstruction; the scattering wind that stirs the mind, once no longer left unstilled, dissolves into a genuine emptiness beyond even emptiness itself, and the eight inverted views lose any condition to arise from. Through this still contemplation of wisdom, every provisional combination of phenomena perishes moment by moment; whatever karmic fruit and nature of wrongdoing is experienced throughout the three realms is entirely dissolved by the power of this concentration, and every wholesome quality is thereby brought forth.
The claim that "there is no ordinary being and no sage alike who does not enter this same samādhi" is worth pausing on, since it repeats Chapter 1's own paradox about the Mind Ground — not decreased in an ordinary person, not increased in a sage. Here the same point is made about a specific practice of stillness rather than about buddha-nature in the abstract: the capacity for this concentration is not something only the advanced possess, since its underlying substance is described as corresponding equally to both. What differs between an ordinary being and a sage, on this reading, is simply whether the "scattering wind" of self-view has actually been stilled — not whether the ground for stillness was ever available to begin with.
6. Milestone: The Mind of Wisdom (慧心) — Wisdom That Precedes Its Own Obstruction
The sixth mind places wisdom first among the qualities it discusses, then describes the very ignorance that obstructs it as itself lacking any fixed, locatable nature — which is precisely why wisdom is able to dissolve it.
「若佛子！慧心者，空慧非無緣，知體名心，分別一切法。假名主者，與道通同，取果行因、入聖捨凡、滅罪起福，縛解盡是體性功用。一切見常樂我淨煩惱，慧性不明故。以慧為首，修不可說觀慧，入中道一諦。其無明障慧，非相非來、非緣非罪、非八倒。無生滅慧，光明焰為照，樂虛方便轉變神通，以智體性所為慧用故。
Disciples of the Buddha, one who has the mind of wisdom: theirs is a wisdom of emptiness that is not without any basis — knowing the very substance of things is what is called mind, discerning every phenomenon clearly. Whatever is provisionally named as an agent is, in truth, one and the same as the path itself: taking up the fruit while practicing its cause, entering sagehood while leaving the ordinary behind, dissolving wrongdoing while giving rise to blessing — bondage and release alike are simply the functioning of this same underlying substance. Every view that clings to permanence, pleasure, self, and purity is itself an affliction, arising only because the true nature of wisdom has not yet become clear. Taking wisdom as the very first thing, one cultivates a contemplative wisdom beyond all words, and enters the single truth of the middle way. The very ignorance that obstructs this wisdom bears no fixed mark, comes from nowhere fixed, has no fixed condition, and is not wrongdoing or any of the eight inverted views in any fixed sense. This wisdom, beyond arising and ceasing, shines like a blazing flame of light, delighting in emptiness while skillfully manifesting spiritual powers, since this is precisely the functioning of wisdom flowing from this same true nature.
The passage names "permanence, pleasure, self, and purity" — the four classical inverted views wrongly applied to conditioned things — as themselves simply what ignorance looks like before wisdom clarifies it, rather than as separate obstacles wisdom must fight from outside. And then, in the very same breath, it insists that this ignorance "bears no fixed mark" and "comes from nowhere fixed." Put those two claims together and the passage is making a specific point: wisdom does not defeat ignorance the way one force overpowers another, since ignorance was never a solid thing occupying real ground to begin with. Wisdom simply sees clearly what was already the case — which is why it can be called, in the same sentence, both first among practices and beyond arising and ceasing altogether.
7. Milestone: The Mind of Vowing (願心) — A Vow Sustained Across a Hundred Kalpas
The seventh mind returns to the vast timescale Vairocana used to describe his own path in Chapter 2, showing how a single sustained aspiration, carried without interruption, becomes the very root from which Buddhahood's immeasurable merit grows.
「若佛子！願心者，願大求、一切求，以果行因故。願心連願，心連相續，百劫得佛。滅罪求求，至心無生，空一願觀，觀入定照，無量見縛以求心故解脫，無量妙行以求心成，菩提無量功德以求為本。初發求心、中間修道，行滿願故佛果便成。觀一諦中道，非照非界非沒。生見見，非解慧。是願體性，一切行本原。
Disciples of the Buddha, one who has the mind of vowing: theirs is the great aspiration, the aspiration for all things, since one practices the cause precisely by already taking up the fruit. Vow links to vow, mind continues into mind without interruption, until Buddhahood is attained after a hundred kalpas. Seeking again and again to dissolve all wrongdoing, with utmost sincerity and no attachment to any arising at all, one contemplates the single vow of emptiness, and this contemplation enters a settled, illuminating clarity: countless views and bonds are released precisely because of this aspiring mind, and countless wondrous practices are accomplished precisely because of this same mind — bodhi's own immeasurable merit takes this aspiration as its very root. From the first arising of this seeking mind through the middle course of cultivating the path, once practice is fulfilled and the vow complete, the fruit of Buddhahood is thereby accomplished. Contemplating the single truth of the middle way, it is neither a fixed illumination, nor a fixed realm, nor a fixed extinguishing. Where a view arises, it is simply seen through as a view, never mistaken for genuine wisdom itself. This is the very substance of the vowing mind, the root and source of every practice.
"One practices the cause precisely by already taking up the fruit" is a compact statement of a theme running through this whole chapter: cause and effect are not treated here as two separate moments in time, one now and one later, but as inseparable from the very start. A vow genuinely sustained without interruption is not merely a plan for future Buddhahood — it is already Buddhahood's own root and cause operating in the present, which is why the passage can describe a hundred kalpas of continuous vowing and immediate, present dissolution of wrongdoing in the very same breath, without treating these as belonging to two different stages of the path.
8. Milestone: The Mind of Guarding (護心) — Protecting the Three Jewels by Guarding Nothing Fixed
The eighth mind describes guarding the Three Jewels against externalist views — yet insists this guarding, at its root, has no fixed object to protect at all, since what it protects is empty of any independent nature to begin with.
「若佛子！護心者，護三寶、護一切行功德。使外道八倒惡邪見不嬈正信，滅我縛、見縛無生，照達二諦觀心現前。以護根本無相護，護空無作無相，以心慧連入無生，空道智道皆明光，明光護觀入空，假分分幻化，幻化所起如無，如無法體集散不可護，觀法亦爾。
Disciples of the Buddha, one who has the mind of guarding: theirs is the guarding of the Three Jewels, and the guarding of the merit of every practice — so that the eight inverted views and the evil, false views of externalist teachings can never disturb genuine faith, so that the bondage of self-view and the bondage of fixed views are extinguished at their unborn root, and the contemplation of the two truths stands directly manifest in the mind. This guarding, at its very root, is a guarding without any fixed mark — a guarding of emptiness that is itself uncreated and markless — through which mind and wisdom together enter the unborn, and the path of emptiness and the path of wisdom both shine with the same clear light. This clear light of guarding contemplation enters emptiness itself, seeing every provisional division of things as mere illusion; and since even what arises as illusion is, in truth, nothing at all, and the very substance of phenomena, whether gathering or dispersing, cannot actually be found to guard in the first place, this same insight applies equally to the contemplation of every other phenomenon as well.
There is a real paradox at the center of this passage, and it appears to be deliberate: genuine guarding of the Three Jewels turns out to rest on seeing that there is, ultimately, nothing fixed there to guard — no solid "self" under attack from externalist views, and no solid object that could be damaged by them. This is not a reason to stop guarding; if anything, the passage suggests the opposite, that only this kind of guarding — free of any anxious grasping at a fixed thing to protect — can actually extinguish the bondage of self-view "at its unborn root" rather than merely holding an external threat temporarily at bay.
9. Milestone: The Mind of Joy (喜心) — Delight in Another's Happiness, Undivided From Stillness
The ninth mind describes sympathetic joy — delight in someone else's happiness — as inseparable from the same still contemplation of emptiness running through every other mind in this chapter.
「若佛子！喜心者，見他人得樂常生喜悅。及一切物假空照寂，而不入有為、不無寂然。大樂無合，有受而化、有法而見。玄假法性，平等一觀心心行。多聞一切佛行功德、無相喜智，心心生念而靜照，樂心緣一切法。
Disciples of the Buddha, one who has the mind of joy: seeing another being attain happiness, they constantly give rise to genuine delight. And in illuminating the empty, still nature of every provisional thing, they neither fall into conditioned existence nor cease to be genuinely still. Their great joy is without anything to bind it: they experience while still transforming, they perceive while things still function according to their own nature. Contemplating the mysterious, provisional nature of phenomena with complete equanimity, every single thought and mental activity is held in this same even regard. Through extensive learning of the merit of every Buddha's own conduct, and a joy and wisdom that bear no fixed mark, thought after thought arises while remaining quietly illuminated, and this joyful mind takes every single phenomenon as its object.
This is the most immediately relatable of the ten minds — ordinary sympathetic joy at someone else's good fortune, the kind anyone might recognize without any doctrinal training at all. What the passage adds is that this joy, examined closely, is not agitation but a form of stillness: it explicitly denies that this great joy "falls into conditioned existence," while equally denying that it simply "ceases to be still." Genuine delight at another's happiness, on this reading, is not a departure from meditative calm into excitement, but calm itself taking joy as its object — which is presumably why this mind can sit comfortably between the guarding mind before it and the summit mind that closes the whole sequence after it.
10. Milestone: The Summit Mind (頂心) — Where the Ten Minds of Development Close
The tenth and final mind of this stage brings the whole sequence to its peak: every trace of self-view dissolved, every one of the sixty-two heterodox views left behind, and a being who, from this point on, is said never again to retreat from the buddha-nature already recognized within.
「若佛子！頂心者，是人最上智。滅無我輪見疑身一切瞋等，如頂觀連、觀連如頂。法界中因果，如如一道最勝上如頂。如人頂，非非身見六十二見。五眾生滅，神我主人動轉屈申，無作無受無行、不可捉縛者，是人爾時入內空，值道心眾生，不見緣不見非緣，住頂三昧寂滅定，發行趣道。性實、我人常見、八倒生，緣不二法門，不受八難幻化果，畢竟不受。唯一眾生，去來坐立、修行滅罪，除十惡、生十善，入道正人正智正行菩薩達觀現前，不受六道果，必不退佛種性中，生生入佛家，不離正信。上十天光品廣說。」
Disciples of the Buddha, one who has reached the summit mind: this person has attained the very highest wisdom. Having dissolved the wheel of no-self, doubt, embodied views, and anger and all such afflictions, their contemplation continues unbroken at this summit, and this unbroken contemplation is itself the summit. Within the entire dharma-realm, cause and effect together form a single suchness, the very highest and most excellent path — this too is the summit. Like the very crown of a person's head, it stands beyond every fixed view of embodied selfhood, and beyond all sixty-two heterodox views. The five aggregates having ceased, whatever moves, turns, bends, or stretches as though governed by a spiritual self or an inner master is now without any genuine action, any genuine experiencer, and any genuine doer — nothing here can actually be grasped or bound at all. Such a person then enters an inner emptiness, encountering beings whose minds are set upon the path, seeing neither a fixed condition nor a fixed absence of condition, abiding in the summit's own samādhi of still cessation, and setting forth in practice toward the path. The true nature of reality, and the constant views of self and other, and the arising of the eight inverted views — seen through this same gateway of non-duality — no longer accept even the fruit of the eight difficult, illusory states, refusing them utterly, to the very end. Only a single kind of being remains: one who, whether coming or going, sitting or standing, cultivates practice and dissolves wrongdoing, eliminates the ten unwholesome deeds and gives rise to the ten wholesome ones, enters the path as a genuinely upright person of right wisdom and right conduct, stands directly present in the bodhisattva's own penetrating insight, no longer receives the fruit of rebirth in any of the six destinies, and will never again retreat from the buddha-nature within — being born, life after life, directly into the Buddha's own family, never once departing from genuine faith. This is explained at length above, in the chapter on the Ten Heavenly Lights."
The word "summit" is used three separate ways in a single short passage — an unbroken contemplation that is itself the summit, the single suchness of cause and effect that is also the summit, and the literal crown of the head as an image for standing beyond every fixed view of self — and the repetition seems deliberate rather than careless: whichever way "summit" is approached, it turns out to be the same single point. What actually marks this tenth mind as a genuine culmination, rather than simply one more item in a list of ten, is the closing promise: a being who has reached it "will never again retreat from the buddha-nature within," born directly into the Buddha's own family from this point onward. This closes the Ten Minds of Development in full. The Ten Minds of Long Nurturing — beginning with loving-kindness — open in the chapter that follows.