The Last Nine Precepts, and the Sūtra's Own Ending
This chapter completes the forty-eight minor precepts — from who may receive the precepts, through the qualifications of a precept-conferring teacher, to the sūtra's own closing exhortation. Chapter 1 of this translation opened by explaining that what survives as "the Brahma Net Sutra" is a single chapter excerpted, by request, from a work said to have run to over a hundred fascicles. Thirteen chapters later, this is that same single chapter's own end.
1. Milestone: Minor Precept 40 — Not Discriminating Who May Receive the Precepts
佛言：「佛子！與人受戒時，不得簡擇一切國王、王子、大臣、百官，比丘、比丘尼，信男、信女，婬男、婬女，十八梵天、六欲天子，無根、二根、黃門、奴婢，一切鬼神，盡得受戒。應教身所著袈裟，皆使壞色，與道相應，皆染使青、黃、赤、黑、紫色，一切染衣，乃至臥具，盡以壞色。身所著衣，一切染色。若一切國土中國人所著衣服，比丘皆應與其俗服有異。若欲受戒時，師應問言：『汝現身不作七逆罪耶？』菩薩法師不得與七逆人現身受戒。七逆者：出佛身血，殺父，殺母，殺和上，殺阿闍梨，破羯磨轉法輪僧，殺聖人。若具七遮，即現身不得戒。餘一切人，盡得受戒。出家人法，不向國王禮拜，不向父母禮拜，六親不敬，鬼神不禮，但解師語，有百里千里來求法者，而菩薩法師，以惡心而不即與授一切眾生戒者，犯輕垢罪。」
The Buddha said: "Disciples of the Buddha — when conferring the precepts on others, you should not discriminate among kings, princes, ministers, officials, monks, nuns, laymen, laywomen, those given to lust, the eighteen Brahma heavens, the six heavens of desire, those lacking sexual faculties or possessing both, those born without full faculties, servants, or any spirit at all — every one of them may fully receive the precepts. You should teach them that the robe worn on the body should always be a broken, subdued color, in keeping with the path — dyed blue, yellow, red, black, or purple, every dyed robe, down to one's own bedding, should all be of such a broken color. Whatever clothing one wears should be dyed in this way. Wherever a monastic lives, their robes should always be visibly different from the ordinary dress of that country. When someone wishes to receive the precepts, the teacher should ask them: 'In this present life, have you committed any of the seven heinous acts?' A bodhisattva teacher should not confer the precepts on someone who has committed one of the seven heinous acts in this present life. The seven heinous acts are: shedding a buddha's blood, killing one's father, killing one's mother, killing one's preceptor, killing one's teacher, disrupting the harmony of the sangha at a formal proceeding, and killing a sage. If someone has committed any one of these seven, they cannot receive the precepts in this present life. Everyone else may fully receive them. It is the way of a renunciant not to bow to a king, not to bow even to one's own parents, not to pay homage to close relatives, and not to bow to spirits — only understanding what their own teacher says. If someone comes a hundred or a thousand miles seeking the dharma, and a bodhisattva teacher, out of an unwholesome mind, does not readily confer the precepts on any being who seeks them, this is a light offense."
The list of who may receive the precepts is strikingly broad for its era, explicitly naming categories many contemporaneous social systems excluded outright. What actually disqualifies someone is not identity but a specific act — one of the seven heinous acts, each a deliberate deed rather than a status a person is born into.
2. Milestone: Minor Precept 41 — The Qualifications of a Precept-Conferring Teacher
「若佛子！教化人起信心時，菩薩與他人作教誡法師者，見欲受戒人，應教請二師：和上、阿闍梨。二師應問言：『汝有七遮罪不？』若現身有七遮，師不應與受戒。無七遮者，得受。若有犯十戒者，應教懺悔，在佛菩薩形像前，日夜六時，誦十重四十八輕戒。若到禮三世千佛，得見好相。若一七日、二三七日，乃至一年，要見好相。好相者，佛來摩頂，見光、見華，種種異相，便得滅罪。若無好相，雖懺無益，是人現身亦不得戒，而得增受戒。若犯四十八輕戒者，對首懺，罪滅，不同七遮。而教誡師，於是法中，一一好解。若不解大乘經律，若輕若重，是非之相，不解第一義諦，習種性、長養性、不可壞性、道種性、正性，其中多少，觀行出入，十禪支一切行法，一一不得此法中意。而菩薩為利養故，為名聞故，惡求多求，貪利弟子，而詐現解一切經律，為供養故，是自欺詐，亦欺詐他人。故與人受戒者，犯輕垢罪。」
"Disciples of the Buddha — when leading someone to a genuine faith, a bodhisattva who serves as another person's teacher of instruction, on seeing someone who wishes to receive the precepts, should have them request two teachers: a preceptor and a master of ceremony. These two teachers should ask: 'Have you committed any of the seven grave hindrances?' If, in this present life, they have committed one of the seven, the teachers should not confer the precepts on them. If they have not, they may receive them. If someone has violated one of the ten precepts, they should be taught to repent — reciting the ten grave and forty-eight minor precepts before an image of the Buddha or a bodhisattva, at all six periods of day and night, until they venerate the thousand buddhas of the three times and obtain an auspicious sign. This may take one week, two or three weeks, or even a full year — until the sign is obtained. An auspicious sign means the Buddha comes and touches their crown, or they see light, or see flowers, or some other unusual sign — and by this, their offense is dissolved. Without such a sign, repentance alone is of no benefit; that person, in this present life, still cannot receive the precepts, though they may continue to increase their practice toward receiving them. But if someone has broken one of the forty-eight minor precepts, confessing before another person is enough to dissolve the offense — this is not the same as the seven grave hindrances. A teacher of instruction should thoroughly understand every part of this teaching. If they do not understand the great vehicle's scriptures and discipline — what is light and what is grave, what is right and what is wrong — if they do not understand the ultimate truth, the nature that is cultivated, the nature that is nurtured, the indestructible nature, the nature of the path, and the true nature itself, along with the depth of contemplative practice, the entry and exit of the ten branches of meditative absorption, and every practice within this teaching — and yet, for the sake of personal gain and reputation, wrongly and excessively seeks students out of greed, falsely claiming to understand all of the scriptures and discipline for the sake of receiving offerings, they deceive themselves as much as they deceive others. To confer the precepts on someone under these conditions is a light offense."
This raises the stakes of precept 18's warning against fraudulent teaching one step further: there, the harm was to one's own students; here, the same fraud compromises another person's actual ordination — whether they have genuinely received the precepts at all becomes contingent on whether their teacher was honest about their own understanding.
3. Milestone: Minor Precept 42 — Not Teaching the Precepts to Unsuitable Audiences
「若佛子！不得為利養故，於未受菩薩戒者前，若外道惡人前，說此千佛大戒。邪見人前，亦不得說。除國王，餘一切不得說。是惡人輩，不受佛戒，名為畜生，生生不見三寶，如木石無心，名為外道，邪見人輩，木頭無異。而菩薩於是惡人前，說七佛教戒者，犯輕垢罪。」
"Disciples of the Buddha — you should not, for the sake of personal gain, speak of this great precept of the thousand buddhas before someone who has not received the bodhisattva precepts, or before an outsider or an evildoer. Nor should you speak of it before someone of mistaken views. Excepting a king, you should not speak of it to anyone in these categories. Such people, not having received the Buddha's precepts, are no different from animals — lifetime after lifetime they will not encounter the Three Jewels, as insensate as wood or stone; being of outside paths and mistaken views, they are no different from a block of wood. If a bodhisattva speaks of the teaching and precepts of the seven buddhas before such a person, this is a light offense."
The single named exception — a king — is a practical concession to the political reality this text was written into: rulers held real power over Buddhist institutions, and access to them could not simply be refused on doctrinal grounds, whatever their private state of mind.
4. Milestone: Minor Precept 43 — The Consequences of Deliberately Violating the Precepts
「若佛子！信心出家，受佛正戒，故起心毀犯聖戒者，不得受一切檀越供養，亦不得國王地上行，不得飲國王水。五千大鬼常遮其前，鬼言大賊。若入房舍城邑宅中，鬼復常掃其腳跡。一切世人罵言佛法中賊。一切眾生眼不欲見。犯戒之人，畜生無異，木頭無異。若毀正戒者，犯輕垢罪。」
"Disciples of the Buddha — one who goes forth with sincere faith and receives the Buddha's true precepts, and then deliberately gives rise to a mind that violates these noble precepts, should not accept offerings from any patron, should not even walk upon a king's land, and should not drink a king's water. Five thousand great spirits will constantly block their path, calling them a great thief. Should they enter a dwelling, a city, or a house, spirits will follow behind, sweeping away their footprints. Everyone in the world will revile them as a thief within the Buddha's own teaching, and no being will wish to look upon them. One who violates the precepts is no different from an animal, no different from a block of wood. If you violate the true precepts in this way, this is a light offense."
The vivid folk imagery here — spirits sweeping away footprints, blocking a path — belongs to a genre of devotional and didactic writing meant to dramatize social and spiritual consequences vividly, not to make a literal claim about the mechanics of the unseen world. The underlying claim is more sober than the imagery: deliberately breaking a sincerely made vow costs something real, even if what it costs cannot be itemized the way the images suggest.
5. Milestone: Minor Precept 44 — Reverently Preserving the Scriptures
「若佛子！常應一心受持讀誦大乘經律，剝皮為紙，刺血為墨，以髓為水，析骨為筆，書寫佛戒。木皮、穀紙、絹素、竹帛，亦應悉書持。常以七寶、無價香花，一切雜寶，為箱囊，盛經律卷。若不如法供養者，犯輕垢罪。」
"Disciples of the Buddha — you should constantly, with a single mind, uphold, recite, and hold to the great vehicle's scriptures and discipline — even peeling one's own skin for paper, drawing one's own blood for ink, using one's own marrow for water, and splitting one's own bone for a pen, in order to write out the Buddha's precepts. Whether on tree bark, grain paper, silk, or bamboo strips, these should always be written out and preserved. Use the seven treasures, priceless incense and flowers, and every kind of rare treasure to make boxes and cases to hold the scriptures and discipline. If you fail to make offerings to them in this proper manner, this is a light offense."
The same extreme, body-based imagery from precept 16's teaching on ascetic honesty reappears here, now applied to the physical preservation of the text itself. Beneath the hyperbole sits a genuine historical fact: East Asian Buddhist communities invested enormous, real labor in hand-copying and preserving scripture for over a thousand years — the effort this precept describes in extremity was, in ordinary form, actually carried out.
6. Milestone: Minor Precept 45 — Exhorting Every Being Toward Awakening
「若佛子！常起大悲心，若入一切城邑舍宅，見一切眾生，應當唱言：『汝等眾生，盡應受三歸、十戒。』若見牛馬豬羊一切畜生，應心念口言：『汝是畜生，發菩提心。』而菩薩入一切處，山林川野，皆使一切眾生發菩提心。是菩薩若不教化眾生者，犯輕垢罪。」
"Disciples of the Buddha — constantly give rise to great compassion. On entering any city or dwelling, seeing any being, you should proclaim: 'All of you beings should receive the three refuges and the ten precepts.' On seeing cattle, horses, pigs, sheep, or any animal, you should think, and say aloud: 'You are an animal — give rise to the mind of awakening.' A bodhisattva, entering any place at all — forest, mountain, river, or field — should lead every being there to give rise to the mind of awakening. If a bodhisattva fails to teach and transform beings in this way, this is a light offense."
This precept is close kin to Session 4's Chapter of Pure Conduct, which turned every ordinary encounter of a single day into a wish for all beings. Here the same instinct is aimed outward as direct address rather than silent wish — even an animal encountered on the road is spoken to, however briefly, as a being capable of awakening.
7. Milestone: Minor Precept 46 — Teaching From a Proper Seat
「若佛子！常行教化，起大悲心，入檀越貴人家，一切眾中，不得立為白衣說法，應白衣眾前，高座上坐。法師比丘，不得地立，為四眾說法。若說法時，法師高座，香花供養，四眾聽者下坐，如孝順父母，敬順師教，如事火婆羅門。其說法者，若不如法，犯輕垢罪。」
"Disciples of the Buddha — one who constantly teaches and transforms others out of great compassion, on entering the home of a patron or a person of standing, should never stand on the ground and teach the dharma before an assembly of laypeople — one should sit in the high seat before that lay assembly. A dharma teacher, a monastic, should never stand upon the ground while teaching the four assemblies. When teaching the dharma, the teacher should sit in the high seat, honored with incense and flowers, while the four assemblies who listen sit below — showing the same devotion as one would toward a parent, the same reverence as toward a teacher's own instruction, the same regard a fire-worshipping brahmin shows their sacred flame. If one who teaches the dharma fails to do so in this proper manner, this is a light offense."
The protocol here is not about personal status — it echoes precept 6's insistence, back in Chapter 9, on properly honoring a visiting teacher. The elevated seat is a way of physically marking the teaching itself as worth pausing for, regardless of the teacher's own social standing relative to their audience.
8. Milestone: Minor Precept 47 — Rulers Who Suppress the Dharma
「若佛子！皆以信心受佛戒者，若國王、太子、百官、四部弟子，自恃高貴，破滅佛法戒律，明作制法，制我四部弟子，不聽出家行道，亦復不聽造立形像、佛塔、經律，破三寶之罪，而故作破法者，犯輕垢罪。」
"Disciples of the Buddha — all who receive the Buddha's precepts with sincere faith — should a king, a crown prince, an official, or one of the fourfold community, relying on their own high status, destroy the Buddha's dharma and discipline, openly enacting laws restricting the fourfold community, forbidding people from going forth to practise the path, or forbidding the making of images, stūpas, or scriptures — this is an offense that destroys the Three Jewels. If you intentionally act to destroy the dharma in this way, this is a light offense."
This precept turns out to have been prescient about later Chinese history: several documented periods of state-directed suppression of Buddhism took place well after this text was translated, in exactly the form this precept describes — rulers using state power to restrict ordination and destroy religious property.
9. Milestone: Minor Precept 48 — Corruption from Within
The forty-eight minor precepts close on the sūtra's own warning that its greatest threat comes from inside the community it protects, not from outside it.
「若佛子！以好心出家，而為名聞利養，於國王百官前，說七佛戒，橫與比丘、比丘尼、菩薩弟子作繫縛事，如師子身中蟲，自食師子肉，非外道天魔能破。若受佛戒者，應護佛戒，如念一子，如事父母，而菩薩聞外道惡人以惡言謗佛戒時，如三百鉾刺心，千刀萬杖打拍其身，等無有異。寧自入地獄，經於百劫，而不用一聞惡言破佛戒之聲。而況自破佛戒，教人破法因緣，亦無孝順之心。若故作者，犯輕垢罪。如是九戒，應當學敬心奉持。」
"Disciples of the Buddha — one who goes forth with a genuinely good mind, but then, for the sake of fame and personal gain, speaks of the seven buddhas' precepts before kings and officials, and wrongly entangles monks, nuns, and bodhisattva disciples in confinement and restriction — is like a worm born within a lion's own body, feeding on the lion's own flesh; harm of this kind can never come from outsiders or demons, only from within. Whoever receives the Buddha's precepts should protect them as they would their only child, or as they would serve their own parents. And when a bodhisattva hears an outsider or an evildoer speak ill words slandering the Buddha's precepts, it should feel exactly as though three hundred spears were piercing their heart, or a thousand blades and ten thousand rods were striking their own body — there should be no difference at all. One should be willing to enter hell for a hundred kalpas rather than let even a single word of slander against the Buddha's precepts pass unchallenged — how much more so, then, should one never break the Buddha's precepts oneself, or lead another to break the dharma, lacking even filial devotion in doing so. If you intentionally do this, this is a light offense. These nine precepts should be studied and upheld with a reverent mind."
"A worm born within a lion's own body, feeding on the lion's own flesh" is one of the most quoted single images in Chinese Buddhist literature, still invoked whenever corruption within Buddhist institutions is discussed — the precept's own closing claim is that no outside force has ever damaged the tradition as effectively as its own members acting in bad faith from within it. This closes all forty-eight minor precepts.
10. Milestone: The Sūtra's Own Closing Exhortation
With all ten grave and forty-eight minor precepts given, the sūtra closes with Śākyamuni's own final words to the assembly beneath the bodhi tree — the same scene, and nearly the same language, that opened this lower fascicle in Chapter 7.
「諸佛子，是四十八輕戒，汝等受持，過去諸菩薩已誦，未來諸菩薩當誦，現在諸菩薩今誦。諸佛子諦聽，此十重四十八輕戒，三世諸佛已誦、當誦、今誦。我今亦如是誦。汝等一切大眾，若國王王子、百官、比丘、比丘尼、信男、信女，受持菩薩戒者，應受持、讀誦、解說、書寫佛性常住戒卷，流通三世，一切眾生化化不絕，得見千佛，佛佛授手，世世不墮惡道八難，常生人道天中。我今在此樹下，略開七佛法戒，汝等當一心學波羅提木叉，歡喜奉行，如無相天王品勸學中一一廣明。三千學士時坐聽者，聞佛自誦，心心頂戴，喜躍受持。」
"Disciples of the Buddha, all of you: these are the forty-eight minor precepts, which you should uphold. Bodhisattvas of the past have already recited them; bodhisattvas of the future will recite them; bodhisattvas of the present recite them now. Disciples of the Buddha, listen closely: these ten grave and forty-eight minor precepts have already been recited, will be recited, and are being recited now, by the buddhas of the three times — and I myself now recite them in just this way. All of you in this great assembly — whether king, prince, official, monk, nun, layman, or laywoman — who uphold the bodhisattva precepts, should uphold them, recite them, explain them, and copy out this scroll of the ever-abiding precept of buddha-nature, so that it circulates without interruption across the three times, transforming being after being. Through this, you will come to see a thousand buddhas, each one reaching out a hand to you, and lifetime after lifetime you will not fall into the evil destinies or the eight difficult circumstances, but will constantly be born among gods and humans. I have now, beneath this tree, briefly opened the dharma-precept of the seven buddhas. All of you should study the prātimokṣa with a single mind, and joyfully carry it into practice — as is explained fully, point by point, in the Chapter on Encouraging Study, spoken by the Formless Heavenly King. The three thousand students present, sitting and listening at that time, on hearing the Buddha himself recite this teaching, held it upon their own hearts, and received it with joyful reverence."
Chapter 1 of this translation opened by explaining a strange fact about this sūtra: what circulates today as "the Brahma Net Sutra" is a single chapter, excerpted by explicit request at the moment of its 406 CE translation, from an original said to have run to over a hundred fascicles — a text otherwise lost to history. Three hundred people at Kumārajīva's own translation assembly asked to keep only this one chapter, the "Bodhisattva Mind Ground," as their core practice text, and eighty-one hand-copied sets went out from that single moment. Every copy of this sūtra that exists anywhere today, in every language, traces back to that one request.
Thirteen chapters of translation later, this is that same single chapter's own end — the title of the sūtra had promised "the Bodhisattva Mind Ground Precepts," and across this project's chapters, both halves of that promise have now been kept in full: the Mind Ground itself, in the forty stages of Chapters 2 through 6, and the precepts, in the fifty-eight rules of Chapters 7 through 13. The frame narrative that opened with an unexplained radiance in Chapter 2 closes here with a very small, very concrete image: three thousand ordinary students, sitting on the ground, hearing their teacher recite something all the way to its end, and holding what they heard against their own hearts.