Like a Seal Producing Its Own Imprint
Sudhana's own extended contemplation closes: extinguishing wrong delusion, he understands every dharma as empty, yet transcends every mark without ever contradicting the dharma of a seed giving rise to a sprout — knowing that everything arises from causes and conditions, exactly like a seal producing its own imprint, a mirror its own image, lightning, a dream, an echo, an illusion.
Emptiness That Never Contradicts the Seed-and-Sprout Dharma
「滅邪癡惑，了諸法空，悉無自在；超出諸相，入無相際，而亦不違種生芽法，悉知一切從因緣生，如因印故而生印像，如鏡中像、如電、如夢、如響、如幻，各隨因有。一切諸法，亦復如是，隨業受報，以善方便，潤澤諸法。」
Extinguishing wrong delusion and confusion, he understood every dharma as empty, all without any sovereign self; transcending every mark, he entered the boundary of marklessness, yet without contradicting the dharma of a seed giving rise to a sprout, fully knowing that everything arises from causes and conditions, just as a seal produces its own imprint, like a reflection in a mirror, like lightning, like a dream, like an echo, like an illusion, each existing according to its own cause. Every dharma is likewise so, according with karma and receiving its own retribution, moistening every dharma through skillful means.
The seed-and-sprout dharma named here as never contradicted, even by the deepest emptiness and marklessness, is this passage's own resolution of a tension that could otherwise seem to threaten the entire teaching on karma this collection has built across fifty prior teachers: if all dharmas are empty and markless, does causation still function? Fazang reads the seal's own imprint — produced by the seal yet not identical to it, real in its effect yet without any independent substance of its own — as this whole approach's own final answer, closing Sudhana's contemplation just before he crosses the tower's own threshold.
Part 279 Complete — Sudhana's Approach to the Tower Concludes
This entire stretch of contemplation, from Sudhana's arrival through his deepest reflections on emptiness and dependent origination, is now complete. Part 280 turns to what happens next — Sudhana rising from his bow, circling the tower ten times in reverence, and beginning a further, even more extensive reflection on the tower's own true nature.
Continue to Part 280 →