Sudhana's Hymn, and a Ground Overcome
Sudhana closes his time with the night-deva Tranquil Sound in ten stanzas of his own, praising her body that clings to nothing, her wisdom that knows the world as a dream, the buddha as a flash of lightning, and every dharma as an echo — and still expounds the Dharma without grasping at any of it. This closes the fifth teacher of the Ten Grounds, the Ground of Difficulties Overcome.
Ten Stanzas: A World Like a Dream, a Buddha Like Lightning
爾時，善財讚歎寂靜音夜天，以偈頌曰：
「我受知識教， 來詣天神所，
見無量淨身， 安處天寶座。
虛妄取諸相， 染著一切法，
無智眾生等， 不能知境界。
清淨妙色身， 一切諸天眾，
無量劫諦觀， 其心無厭足。
遠離於五陰， 一切無所著，
超出世疑惑， 顯現自在力。
不染內外法， 無礙心不動，
明淨智慧眼， 見佛自在力。
身為正法藏， 心是無礙智，
成佛智慧光， 普照諸群生。
分別說心業， 莊飾諸世間，
知心業自性， 現身等眾生。
知世悉如夢， 了佛如電光，
一切法如響， 令眾無所著。
念念悉除滅， 三世眾生惑，
不取三世相， 而能演說法。
一切佛剎海， 一切諸佛海，
無量眾生海， 無著修法門。」
時，善財童子頭面敬禮彼夜天足，遶無數匝，敬心辭退。
At that time Sudhana, praising the night-deva Tranquil Sound, spoke this hymn in verse:
"I received the good friend's teaching, and came to the deva's own place;
I beheld her boundless pure body, dwelling at ease upon a heavenly jeweled throne.
Grasping falsely at every mark, attached to every dharma —
sentient beings without wisdom are unable to know this state.
Her pure and sublime form-body — every heavenly being,
throughout boundless kalpas, gazing at it intently, their minds never wearied.
Far removed from the five aggregates, attached to nothing at all,
transcending the doubts and confusions of the world, she manifests her own sovereign power.
Unstained by any dharma, inner or outer, her unobstructed mind unmoving,
with the bright, pure eye of wisdom, she beholds the buddha's own sovereign power.
Her body is the treasury of the true Dharma, her mind is unobstructed wisdom;
the light of a buddha's own wisdom, universally illumining every kind of being.
Discerning and expounding the karma of the mind, adorning every world;
knowing the very nature of the mind's own karma, she manifests bodies equal in number to sentient beings.
Knowing that the world is entirely like a dream, understanding that the buddha is like a flash of lightning,
that every dharma is like an echo, she causes every being to be attached to nothing.
Within every single thought-moment, extinguishing entirely the confusion of sentient beings of the three times,
not grasping at the marks of the three times, yet still able to expound the Dharma.
The whole ocean of every buddha-land, the whole ocean of every buddha, the boundless ocean of every sentient being —
she cultivates this Dharma-gate unattached to any of it."
At that time Sudhana the Boy reverently bowed his head at that night-deva's feet, circled her countless times, and, with a reverent heart, took his leave.
Fazang marks the referral that immediately precedes this hymn — Sudhana already sent onward, within the same bodhimaṇḍa, to the night-deva Sublime Virtue, Guardian of Every City — as the point where this teacher's own portion of the commentary closes outright: 第五仰推中，先舉所推，謂善知時處；後非己知。難勝地竟 — "in the fifth part, deferring upward, first is cited what is deferred to — namely, rightly knowing the time and place [of the next teacher]; after this, what remains is simply not her own to know. The Ground of Difficulties Overcome is concluded." Sudhana's own closing hymn, translated here in full, is not itself the subject of further named commentary — it is the pilgrimage's own settled form, repeated at the close of teacher after teacher: reverent praise, sung in verse, before the bow, the circling, and the leave-taking that carries Sudhana onward.
Read on its own terms, this hymn moves through the same progression this teacher's whole episode has already traced twice before — from the deva's own pure body, through her freedom from the five aggregates and her unmoving mind, to a final image that names the ground beneath everything she has taught: the world like a dream, the buddha like lightning, every dharma like an echo — and yet, unattached to any of this, "still able to expound the Dharma." The Ground of Difficulties Overcome, per its own name, is precisely this: the difficulty of holding worldly and ultimate truth together without either one collapsing into the other, overcome.
Part 83 Complete
This closes Parts 77–83 together, and with them the night-deva Tranquil Sound, fifth teacher of the Ten Grounds — the Ground of Difficulties Overcome. Her episode opened with nine minds purifying the ocean of every sentient being and thirty-three gates of relief matched to the ten perfections; moved through twenty-four manifold aspects of the bodhisattva's own state and ten beholdings of Vairocana dissolved into a sevenfold refusal of arising; answered what skillful means this Dharma-gate employs through thirty-two gates, twenty-three of them similes declared, in the end, to fall short of the thing itself; and traced her own root back through a kalpa named Universal Illumination Banner — ten rebirths meeting ten buddhas at a single bodhimaṇḍa, an eleven-layered chain of Dharma-gates generating themselves without end, and an arrival, at last, in this very Bhadrakalpa and this very assembly. She closed by declaring that the ancient world of her story still exists at this very moment. Sudhana is sent onward, within this same bodhimaṇḍa, to the night-deva named Sublime Virtue, Guardian of Every City.
Continue to Part 84 — Sublime Virtue, Guardian of Every City →