One Land Becomes Boundless, Boundless Lands Become One
The hymn continues: attaining correct awakening within a single land, he universally manifests it throughout every world; he is able to manifest a single world as boundless lands. He manifests boundless lands as though they were a single world, abiding in the unsurpassed path, fully endowed with fearless power. With unobstructed wisdom he turns the twelvefold Dharma-wheel, knowing suffering, its origin, its cessation, and the path, and the twelve links of dependent origination. With the four unobstructed eloquences he proclaims every dharma: no self, and nothing that is one's own, and no inherent nature at all; no arising and no ceasing, no coming and no going — all of it exactly like empty space, and yet karma is never thereby destroyed.
Like Empty Space, Yet Karma Is Never Destroyed
「一剎成正覺， 普現諸世界，
能現一世界， 而作無量剎。
示現無量剎， 而為一世界，
安住無上道， 具足無畏力。
無礙智慧轉， 十二行法輪，
知苦習盡道， 十二支緣起。
四辯無礙智， 演說一切法，
無我無我所， 亦無有自性，
無生亦無滅， 無來亦無去，
皆悉如虛空， 而不壞諸業。」
"Attaining correct awakening within a single land, he universally manifests it throughout every world,
He is able to manifest a single world as boundless lands.
He manifests boundless lands as though they were a single world,
Abiding in the unsurpassed path, fully endowed with fearless power.
With unobstructed wisdom he turns the twelvefold Dharma-wheel,
Knowing suffering, its origin, its cessation, and the path, and the twelve links of dependent origination.
With the four unobstructed eloquences he proclaims every dharma:
No self, and nothing that is one's own, and no inherent nature at all;
No arising and no ceasing, no coming and no going —
All of it exactly like empty space, and yet karma is never thereby destroyed."
"The twelvefold Dharma-wheel" (十二行法輪) refers to the traditional twelve aspects of the four noble truths — each truth known, then to be practiced, then confirmed as accomplished, yielding three aspects per truth across four truths — here paired in the same stanza with "the twelve links of dependent origination" (十二支緣起, from ignorance through aging-and-death), a second, distinct twelvefold teaching Fazang reads as deliberately juxtaposed rather than conflated: the four truths structure the path to liberation, while the twelve links explain the mechanism of bondage the path liberates one from. The closing paradox — everything "like empty space" and yet "karma is never thereby destroyed" — states as concisely as anywhere in this sūtra the classical Madhyamaka position that emptiness does not negate conventional causality; recognizing that phenomena lack inherent existence is entirely compatible with, and indeed necessary for, taking karma with full seriousness.
Part 444 Complete
This teaching on emptiness and karma is now given in full. Part 445 turns to the tathāgata's own skillful explanation for the sake of beings, and to the great earthquake that shakes every land, every ocean, and every vajra mountain when he turns this Dharma-wheel — with no one at all feeling any fear.
Continue to Part 445 →