Rising from Samādhi
Sudhana watches the vision from Part 23 for as long as six months at a stretch before Sāgaradhvaja finally rises. Sudhana asks what the samādhi is even called — and the answer names it as one Dharma-gate among a hundred million more that the very figure who displayed it cannot begin to explain.
As Long as Six Months, Watching
爾時，善財一心觀察海幢比丘，念彼三昧法門；思惟不可思議菩薩境界；思惟無量無作現在莊嚴普門法門；觀察法界莊嚴智慧；依佛智住，出菩薩力，建菩薩願力，增廣菩薩諸行。如是正立觀察，一日一夜，乃至七日七夜；半月一月，乃至六月六日；過此以後，海幢比丘從三昧起。
爾時，善財歎未曾有，合掌白言：「甚奇。大聖！如此三昧，最為甚深；如此三昧，最為廣大；如此三昧，境界無量；如此三昧，不可思議神力自在；如此三昧，不可稱量；如此三昧，慧光明淨；如此三昧，阿僧祇莊嚴以為莊嚴；如此三昧，境界不可壞；如此三昧，無有退轉；如此三昧，普照十方一切世界；如此三昧，具有無量義趣方便。大聖！其有菩薩入此三昧，能為一切除滅眾苦，永絕地獄、餓鬼、畜生，一切楚毒，遠離諸難；令天人趣悉得寂靜；令眾生歡喜，常樂甚深禪定境界，厭離有為，超出三界；發菩提心，長養智慧功德因緣，長養彌廣無上大悲；生大願力，照菩薩道；智慧莊嚴大波羅蜜，究竟出生大乘境界；智慧遍照普賢所行，得菩薩諸地智慧光明；具一切菩薩清淨願行，證一切智境。大聖！此三昧者，名為何等？」
At that time Sudhana, single-mindedly contemplating the monk Sāgaradhvaja, held in mind the Dharma-gate of that very samādhi; he reflected on the bodhisattva's own inconceivable domain; reflected on the boundless, uncontrived, presently-adorned, universal-gate Dharma-gate; contemplated the Dharma-realm's own adorned wisdom; abiding by reliance on the Buddha's own wisdom, giving rise to the bodhisattva's own strength, establishing the bodhisattva's own power of vow, broadening the bodhisattva's own every practice. Standing thus in right contemplation, he continued for a day and a night, even for seven days and seven nights; for half a month, a month, even for six months and six days — and only after this did Sāgaradhvaja rise from his samādhi.
At that time Sudhana, praising this as something never before encountered, joined his palms and said: "How extraordinary, great sage! This samādhi is supremely profound; this samādhi is supremely vast; this samādhi's own domain is beyond measure; this samādhi's own spiritual power is sovereign beyond conceiving; this samādhi cannot be weighed or measured; this samādhi's own light of wisdom is bright and pure; this samādhi is adorned with adornment beyond number; this samādhi's own domain cannot be destroyed; this samādhi never once regresses; this samādhi universally illumines every world in the ten directions; this samādhi is endowed with boundless meaning and skillful means. Great sage, whatever bodhisattva enters this samādhi is able to extinguish every kind of suffering for every being, forever cutting off the hells, the hungry ghosts, and the animal realm, and every torment within them, forever removed from every peril; causing the destinies of gods and humans to attain tranquility entirely; causing sentient beings to rejoice, constantly delighting in the domain of profound meditative absorption, growing weary of and turning away from every conditioned thing, transcending the three realms; raising the mind of awakening, nurturing the causes and conditions of wisdom and merit, nurturing an ever-broader, unsurpassed great compassion; giving rise to the power of great vows, illumining the bodhisattva path; wisdom adorning the great pāramitās, reaching the very end and giving rise to the domain of the Great Vehicle; wisdom universally illumining the practice of Samantabhadra, attaining the light of wisdom of every bodhisattva ground; endowed with every bodhisattva's own pure vow and practice, realizing the domain of omniscience. Great sage, what is this samādhi called?"
The stretch of time this page states plainly — up to six months and six days of unbroken contemplation before Sāgaradhvaja even rises — is worth pausing on for what it implies about the pace of this pilgrimage. Twelve years already passed before Sudhana reached Vimukta in Part 21; here, a single encounter's own visionary content may occupy up to half a year of Sudhana's continuous attention before its teacher so much as speaks. The narrative compresses years and months into a handful of sentences, but the events those sentences describe do not happen quickly for the person living through them.
One Gate Among a Hundred Million
「善男子！此三昧名普眼捨得，又名清淨光明般若波羅蜜境界，又名清淨莊嚴普門。善男子！修習般若波羅蜜故，得此三昧；得此三昧時，即得百萬阿僧祇三昧。」
「大聖！此三昧，唯有此功德境界，復有餘耶？」
「善男子！此三昧者，分別一切世界，無所障礙；究竟一切世界，無所障礙；遊行一切世界，無所障礙；莊嚴一切世界，無所障礙；修治一切世界，無所障礙；嚴淨一切世界，無所障礙；見一切佛，無所障礙；觀一切佛功德，無所障礙，知一切佛自在神力，無所障礙；究竟一切佛力，無所障礙；度一切佛功德大海，無所障礙；雨一切佛淨妙法雲，無所障礙；度一切佛法，無所障礙；得一切佛轉法輪智，不可破壞，無所障礙；得一切佛清淨大眾海之源底，無所障礙；隨順普入十方世界，無所障礙；隨順觀察十方佛法，無所障礙；大悲攝取十方眾生，無所障礙；大慈充滿十方世界，無所障礙；見十方佛，心無厭足，無所障礙；隨順遍入眾生大海，無所障礙；了知眾生一切根海，無所障礙；分別一切諸眾生海，無所障礙。善男子！我唯知此清淨光明般若波羅蜜三昧法門，云何能說諸大菩薩究竟之行？諸大菩薩，皆悉深入智慧大海，善能分別清淨法界；智慧究竟一切法趣，慧光無量，充滿一切；得大陀羅尼自在光明，一切三昧圓滿清淨，出生一切自在通明，深入一切無盡辯海，雷震一切諸地音聲，悉能救護一切眾生。我尚不能說彼所行，況其功德？顯其境界、說其境界、照其法門、明其積聚諸功德藏、說其正道諸三昧流平等智慧？善男子！於此南方，有一住處，名曰海
"Good son, this samādhi is named Universal Eye, Renouncing and Attaining; it is also named the Domain of the Pure, Radiant Perfection of Wisdom; and it is also named the Universal Gate, Purely Adorned. Good son, through cultivating the perfection of wisdom, I attained this samādhi; and at the moment of attaining this samādhi, I attained, together with it, a million samādhis beyond number."
"Great sage, does this samādhi hold only this merit and this domain, or is there yet more?"
"Good son, this samādhi is: discerning every world, without any obstruction; reaching the very end of every world, without any obstruction; wandering through every world, without any obstruction; adorning every world, without any obstruction; cultivating and mending every world, without any obstruction; adorning and purifying every world, without any obstruction; seeing every buddha, without any obstruction; contemplating the merit of every buddha, without any obstruction; knowing the sovereign spiritual power of every buddha, without any obstruction; reaching the very end of every buddha's strength, without any obstruction; crossing the great ocean of every buddha's merit, without any obstruction; raining down the cloud of every buddha's pure, sublime Dharma, without any obstruction; crossing every buddha-dharma, without any obstruction; attaining every buddha's own indestructible wisdom for turning the Dharma-wheel, without any obstruction; attaining the very source of the ocean of every buddha's own pure great assembly, without any obstruction; according with and universally entering the worlds of the ten directions, without any obstruction; according with and contemplating the Dharma of every buddha in the ten directions, without any obstruction; through great compassion gathering in sentient beings of the ten directions, without any obstruction; through great kindness filling the worlds of the ten directions, without any obstruction; beholding every buddha of the ten directions, one's mind never wearying of it, without any obstruction; according with and entering entirely the great ocean of sentient beings, without any obstruction; fully understanding the ocean of every sentient being's own faculties, without any obstruction; and discerning the entire ocean of every sentient being, without any obstruction.
"Good son, I know only this Dharma-gate of the samādhi of the pure, radiant perfection of wisdom — how could I possibly explain the great bodhisattvas' own ultimate practice? The great bodhisattvas, every one of them, enter deeply into the great ocean of wisdom, skillfully able to discern the pure Dharma-realm; their wisdom reaching the very end of every dharma's own direction, their light of wisdom boundless, filling everything; attaining the sovereign light of the great dhāraṇīs, every samādhi perfected and pure, giving rise to every kind of sovereign spiritual brightness, entering deeply into the inexhaustible ocean of every eloquence, their voices thundering across every ground — able to rescue and protect every sentient being entirely. I am not even able to describe their own practice — how much less their merit? To make manifest their domain, to expound their domain, to illumine their Dharma-gate, to make clear the treasury of merit they have accumulated, to expound the equal wisdom of every samādhi flowing along their true path? Good son, to the south of here there is a dwelling-place, called Sea —"
Fazang divides Sāgaradhvaja's closing speech into questions and answers, one round on the samādhi's own name, a second on whether it holds more than what has already been shown — and reads both rounds as building toward the same deliberate deflation. The samādhi bears three names — Universal Eye, Renouncing and Attaining; the Domain of the Pure, Radiant Perfection of Wisdom; the Universal Gate, Purely Adorned — and produces, on its own attainment, a million further samādhis besides. And yet Sāgaradhvaja's own closing words return, twice over, to a single formula he cannot escape: 我唯知此...云何能說諸大菩薩究竟之行 — "I know only this... how could I possibly explain the great bodhisattvas' own ultimate practice?" This is the same gesture of humility Part 22 already named and classified — deferring to depth within one's own gate that one cannot fully know oneself — now performed by a figure whose own single gate has just displayed fourteen classes of teacher and thirty-two clouds of Dharma covering the whole of existence. If a display this vast is still, in its own bearer's words, only "one" gate among "a million," the sheer scale of what remains beyond it is the real content of this closing admission — not modesty for its own sake, but an honest measure of how much farther the pilgrimage still has to go.
Part 24 Complete
This closes Part 24, and the whole of Sāgaradhvaja's teaching: the samādhi's three names, its unobstructed domain over every world and every buddha, and its own bearer's admission that even this vast a display is one gate among countless more he cannot describe. Sudhana is sent onward, south, to the grove Universal Adornment at Sea Tide, and the laywoman Relinquishment.
Continue to Part 25 — Relinquishment, at Sea Tide →