One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Even Boundless Vehicles
The hymn continues: those who cultivate the vast mind, endowed with every treasury of merit, drawing near to the buddhas, hear the sound of the Great Vehicle. In a single world, some hear the sound of a single vehicle; some hear of two, three, four, or five, even boundless vehicles. The practice of wisdom differs from one to the next, yet liberation itself knows no difference at all — exactly like the nature of space, which bears no varying characteristic. The tathāgata's own subtle voice has this very same nature: according to whoever needs to be transformed, what each one hears differs entirely. The buddha, through his own past practice, attained a single subtle voice, with no mind of this or that, and yet able to respond to everyone.
Liberation Itself Knows No Difference, Like the Nature of Space
「或修廣大心， 具諸功德藏，
親近諸佛者， 聞說大乘聲。
或有一世界， 聞說一乘音，
或二三四五， 乃至無量乘。
智慧行有異， 解脫無差別，
猶如虛空性， 無有若干相。
如來微妙音， 其性亦如是，
隨所應化者， 所聞各不同。
佛以過去行， 得一微妙音，
無心於彼此， 而能應一切。」
"Those who cultivate the vast mind, endowed with every treasury of merit,
Drawing near to the buddhas, hear the sound of the Great Vehicle.
In a single world, some hear the sound of a single vehicle,
Some hear of two, three, four, or five, even boundless vehicles.
The practice of wisdom differs from one to the next, yet liberation itself knows no difference at all,
Exactly like the nature of space, which bears no varying characteristic.
The tathāgata's own subtle voice has this very same nature:
According to whoever needs to be transformed, what each one hears differs entirely.
The buddha, through his own past practice, attained a single subtle voice,
With no mind of this or that, and yet able to respond to everyone."
This stanza's frank acknowledgment that "in a single world, some hear... one vehicle... some two, three, four, or five, even boundless vehicles" directly addresses a real point of doctrinal tension within Mahāyāna literature — the relationship between the One Vehicle (ekayāna) teaching, associated above all with texts such as the Lotus Sūtra, and the more familiar division into the vehicles of the śrāvaka, pratyekabuddha, and bodhisattva. Fazang reads this hymn's own solution as characteristically non-polemical: rather than declaring one counting scheme correct and others provisional, it treats the very number of vehicles perceived as itself another instance of the perceiver's own variable capacity, exactly as the earlier stanzas treated the buddha's own body-size and lifespan — "liberation itself knows no difference," regardless of how many vehicles a given world's beings happen to count on the way there.
Part 447 Complete
This teaching on the many vehicles and the single voice is now given in full. Part 448 turns to the eighty-four thousand rays of light pouring from the buddha's own mouth, universally illuminating every world and dispelling every affliction there.
Continue to Part 448 →