"How, Amid Birth-and-Death, Unstained?"
Sudhana bows to Gopā and asks a chain of paradoxes, each pairing an ultimate truth against the practice that seems to contradict it: how a bodhisattva moves through birth-and-death unstained, transcends the śrāvaka and pratyekabuddha's own ground without abandoning the bodhisattva's own path, knows sentient beings to be empty yet never stops transforming them, and practices wholesome karma while knowing there is, ultimately, no karmic retribution at all.
Seven Paradoxes, One Question
爾時，善財五體投地，敬禮瞿夷，禮已，合掌於一面住，白言：「大聖！我已先發阿耨多羅三藐三菩提心，而未知菩薩云何行生死中而無所染？覺了一切諸法實相，超出聲聞、緣覺之地，住如來地而不捨離菩薩所行？修菩薩行不離佛地，超出世間，法身圓滿，應世受生，普現種種諸方便身？知法無性，示現一切眾生之身，解甚深法，以妙音聲而為說法？知眾生空而能不捨化諸世間？知一切佛不生不滅而能供養，心無退轉？知無業報而行善業，無有休息？」
At that time, Sudhana threw his whole body to the ground, reverently bowing to Gopā; having bowed, he stood with palms joined to one side, and said: "Great sage, I have already, before this, raised the mind of unsurpassed, perfect, complete awakening, yet I do not yet know: how does a bodhisattva move amid birth-and-death, and yet remain unstained by it? Awakening to and understanding the true mark of every dharma, transcending the ground of the śrāvaka and the pratyekabuddha, abiding in the tathāgata's own ground, yet not relinquishing or departing from the bodhisattva's own practice? Cultivating the bodhisattva's own practice without departing from the buddha's own ground, transcending the world, the Dharma-body perfect and complete, responding to the world by taking rebirth, universally manifesting every kind of skillful-means body? Knowing that dharmas have no fixed nature, yet manifesting the bodies of every sentient being, understanding the profound Dharma, yet expounding it with a sublime, subtle voice? Knowing sentient beings to be empty, yet able, without relinquishing them, to transform every world? Knowing every buddha to be neither arising nor ceasing, yet able to make offerings to them, the mind never retrogressing? Knowing there is no karmic retribution, yet practicing wholesome karma, without ever resting?"
Every clause in Sudhana's question follows the same structure: an ultimate truth stated first, then a practice that would seem, on its face, to contradict it. Emptiness and continued transformation; no arising or ceasing and yet ongoing offerings; no karmic retribution and yet unceasing wholesome action. This is the question this whole final Ground exists to answer — not how to choose between the ultimate and the conventional, but how a bodhisattva holds both without either canceling the other. Gopā, as the teacher of the Dharma-Cloud Ground itself, is being asked to speak to the single hardest problem the entire path has been building toward.
Part 144 In Progress
Sudhana's question is complete. Part 145 turns to Gopā's answer: ten dharmas that fulfill the bodhisattva's own conduct of Indra's Net, the universal light of wisdom.
Continue to Part 145 →