From Faith, the Most Correct Awakening
Sudhana understands that karmic cause always yields its own fruit, and that faith itself is the seed of the most correct awakening. Each specific practice is then traced to its own precise cause: offerings through understanding a buddha's own merit, transformation-bodies through reverence, every buddha-dharma through cultivated goodness, every pāramitā through prajñā, and every bodhisattva practice through dedication.
Each Practice, Its Own Precise Cause
「隨諸業因，而受果報，知從信心，成等正覺。因解佛功德，供養諸佛；因恭敬心，出佛化身；因修善根，起諸佛法；因般若波羅蜜，起一切波羅蜜；因堅固願，起諸佛法；因諸迴向，起一切菩薩行。」
According with every karmic cause, one receives its own fruit and retribution, knowing that from faith one attains the most correct awakening. Through understanding a buddha's own merit, one makes offerings to every buddha; through a reverent mind, one brings forth a buddha's own transformation-body; through cultivating roots of goodness, one raises up every buddha-dharma; through prajñā-pāramitā, one raises up every pāramitā; through firm vows, one raises up every buddha-dharma; through every dedication, one raises up every bodhisattva practice.
Six clauses in a row each pair a single cause with a single, specific effect — merit-understanding with offerings, reverence with transformation-bodies, prajñā specifically with the other pāramitās rather than generically with practice — a level of causal precision Fazang reads as itself a teaching: no practice arises from a vague, undifferentiated cause, but each from its own exact condition, mirroring the dependent-origination principle Sudhana has just contemplated the tower itself as demonstrating.
Part 277 Complete
These precise causal pairings are now given in full. Part 278 continues with Sudhana's understanding of dedication itself — neither permanent nor annihilated, neither arising nor ceasing — and his penetration into dependent origination.
Continue to Part 278 →