Daśabhūmika-vibhāṣā Śāstra.
Nāgārjuna's own extended commentary on the bodhisattva's ten grounds — the fourth of his treatises on this site, joining the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, the Twelve Gate Treatise, and the Hundred Treatise. Seventeen fascicles, thirty-five chapters, unfolding the ten grounds first named in the Daśabhūmika Sūtra itself into a full account of vows, precepts, giving, and practice — including, at Chapter 9, the Chapter of Easy Practice, the earliest scriptural source for Pure Land Buddhism's own distinction between the difficult path of self-power and the easy path of relying on a buddha's vow.
How to read this collection
The Daśabhūmika-vibhāṣā Śāstra is a commentary on the ten bodhisattva grounds first named in the Daśabhūmika Sūtra, later absorbed into the Avataṃsaka Sūtra as its own "Ten Grounds" chapter. Kumārajīva's early fifth-century translation, as it survives, covers only the first two grounds in full — the Ground of Joy and the Ground Free of Defilement — closing partway through the second ground's own fruit, with the remaining eight grounds never reached; the received text, seventeen fascicles across thirty-five named chapters, is traditionally read as an incomplete commentary for exactly this reason — vast even so, at roughly 127,000 Chinese characters. This site's translation follows the fascicle divisions of the Taishō text, one page per fascicle, each broken into several source-and-translation sections at natural argument boundaries, and is now complete through all seventeen fascicles exactly as the work has come down to us.
This treatise already anchors a term used across this site's Pure Land pages: the Ten Doubts About the Pure Land and the Rebirth Treatise (through Tanluan's commentary) both quote its Chapter 9, the Chapter of Easy Practice, as the scriptural root of the distinction between the "difficult path" (難行道) of relying on one's own power alone and the "easy path" (易行道) of relying instead on a buddha's own vow — the very distinction Shandao's Commentary on the Contemplation Sūtra, already complete on this site, builds an entire soteriology upon. This collection translates that chapter, and the treatise surrounding it, directly and in full for the first time on this site.
What each fascicle page includes
- The Chinese source text beside our English translation, verified character-for-character against the base text.
- Reading notes on historical significance, doctrinal context, and difficult passages as they first appear.
- Cross-references to this site's other translations that already quote or build upon this treatise.
The Treatise's Thirty-Five Chapters
Unlike a text organized strictly ground by ground, this treatise's thirty-five chapters range freely across vows, precepts, giving, and practice — Chapter 9, the Chapter of Easy Practice, is this treatise's own most historically consequential single chapter.
Read by Fascicle
Fascicle 1 is complete and verified. Further fascicles will appear here as they are translated.