Sudhana Attains the Dharma-Gate Himself
In a turn this pilgrimage has rarely made explicit before, the text states plainly that Sudhana does not merely learn of this teacher's Dharma-gate — he attains it directly, entering boundless samādhis and dhāraṇīs of his own before he has even finished praising her. His hymn of fourteen stanzas closes the sixth teacher of the Ten Grounds, the Ground of Manifest Presence.
Fourteen Stanzas
爾時，善財得此甚深妙德自在音聲法門，入菩薩無量無邊諸三昧海，出生無量無邊陀羅尼海，得菩薩神通諸明光耀，入諸辯海，長養一切甚深法海；欲讚歎彼妙德守護諸城夜天，以偈頌曰：
「智慧海成滿， 永度生死海，
長壽智慧藏， 普照於十方。
了達內外法， 皆悉如虛空，
無礙清淨慧， 究竟於三世。
念念能分別， 無量無有邊，
一切諸境界， 而心無所著。
無量大悲心， 度脫眾生海，
明淨智慧眼， 了眾生無性。
深入佛法海， 窮盡其原底，
種種巧方便， 化度諸群生。
普於一切法， 了達其真性，
修習薩婆若， 令眾悉清淨。
天是調御師， 究盡一切智，
充滿諸法界， 說法化眾生。
順盧舍那願， 無礙度眾生，
安住至處道， 普見十方佛。
天心甚深妙， 除滅煩惱熱，
清淨如虛空， 離垢無染著。
攝取於三世， 佛剎諸如來，
一切菩薩眾， 一切群生類。
一念分別知， 剎那及羅婆，
晝夜月半月， 乃至無量劫，
十方諸群生， 有色及無色，
有想無想等， 知死此生彼。
除滅一切眾， 虛妄顛倒想，
善知語言法， 顯現菩提道。
出盧舍那願， 一切佛法海，
無礙法身心， 隨應現眾生。」
時，善財童子以偈讚歎彼夜天已，頭面禮足，遶無數匝，敬心辭退。
At that time Sudhana, having attained this Dharma-gate of Profound Sublime Virtue, Sovereign Sound, entered the bodhisattva's own boundless, unbounded ocean of every samādhi, gave rise to the boundless, unbounded ocean of every dhāraṇī, attained the bodhisattva's own transcendent powers and every radiant brilliance, entered the ocean of every eloquence, and nurtured the whole profound ocean of every dharma; wishing to praise this night-deva Sublime Virtue, Guardian of Every City, he spoke this hymn in verse:
"The ocean of wisdom fulfilled entirely, forever crossing beyond the ocean of birth-and-death;
the treasury of long-lived wisdom, universally illumining the ten directions.
Understanding every dharma, inner and outer, all of them like space itself;
unobstructed, pure wisdom, reaching the very end of the three times.
Within every single thought-moment, able to discern the boundless, unbounded state of all things,
yet the mind attached to nothing.
A mind of boundless great compassion, delivering the ocean of sentient beings;
the bright, pure eye of wisdom, understanding that sentient beings have no fixed nature.
Entering deeply into the ocean of the buddha-Dharma, exhausting it to its very source and depths;
every kind of skillful means, transforming and delivering every kind of being.
Universally, within every dharma, understanding its own true nature;
cultivating all-wisdom, causing every being to become entirely pure.
This deva is the tamer and guide, reaching the very end of every wisdom;
filling every Dharma-realm, expounding the Dharma to transform sentient beings.
According with Vairocana's own vow, unobstructedly delivering sentient beings;
abiding securely in the path that reaches every place, universally beholding the buddhas of the ten directions.
This deva's own mind, profound and sublime, extinguishes the fever of affliction;
pure as space itself, stainless and unattached.
Gathering in the three times, every buddha-land and every tathāgata;
every bodhisattva assembly, every kind of living being.
Within a single thought-moment, discerning and knowing a kṣaṇa, and a lava;
day and night, a month and a half-month, up to boundless kalpas;
every kind of being of the ten directions, with form and without form, with perception and without perception,
knowing their dying here and being born there.
Extinguishing every being's own false and inverted thoughts,
well knowing the Dharma of language, manifesting the path of bodhi.
Giving rise to Vairocana's own vow, and the whole ocean of every buddha's own Dharma;
an unobstructed Dharma-body and mind, manifesting according to what is fitting before sentient beings."
At that time Sudhana the Boy, having praised that night-deva in verse, reverently bowed his head at her feet, circled her countless times, and, with a reverent heart, took his leave.
Fazang's own commentary closes its named analysis of this teacher at "the Ground of Manifest Presence is concluded," the point reached at the end of Part 88 — so what follows here, Sudhana's own attainment and his fourteen-stanza hymn, falls outside his section-by-section gloss, and this note offers a plain reading rather than a citation.
What the opening lines state is worth pausing on directly: Sudhana does not simply listen, bow, and move on, as he has done at the close of every teacher before this one. The text says outright that he "attained this Dharma-gate," entering boundless samādhis and dhāraṇīs of his own, before a single word of his hymn has been spoken. This pilgrimage has, until now, kept a consistent asymmetry between Sudhana and his teachers — he receives their teaching, praises their attainment, and departs still a student, the gap between what they have realized and what he carries forward left implicit. Here that gap narrows, if only for a moment: hearing this Dharma-gate does not merely inform him of what she has found — it hands it to him directly. Whether this marks a threshold in his own progress, or is simply this Dharma-gate's own particular character — a teaching about speech and awakening so direct it transmits itself the instant it is truly heard — the text does not say; but it is stated plainly enough that it deserves to be read as exactly what it says, not smoothed into the more familiar pattern of witness and departure.
One technical pair in the eleventh stanza is worth unpacking for a reader unfamiliar with it: 剎那 (kṣaṇa) and 羅婆 (lava) are both units of time in classical Indian and Buddhist reckoning, built one from the other — a kṣaṇa is the smallest measurable instant, and a lava is a fixed multiple of kṣaṇas, itself still far too brief for ordinary perception to register directly. Left transliterated here rather than paraphrased, the pair preserves the sense of time subdivided in increasingly fine units, set against the very same stanza's own closing scale of "boundless kalpas." The single line moves, without pause, from the finest graduations of measurable time to the largest — a scale this teacher's own account, with its ninety-eight buddhas and two full kalpas, has already spent seven parts demonstrating in narrative form.
Part 89 Complete
This closes Parts 84–89 together, and with them the night-deva Sublime Virtue, Guardian of Every City, sixth teacher of the Ten Grounds — the Ground of Manifest Presence. Her episode opened with Sudhana beholding her manifest in eleven kinds of body at once, moved through six roles she plays in guiding beings and ten practices by which she contemplates the Dharma-realm, ten thousand dhāraṇīs and twenty-three clauses balancing broad and brief teaching, a wheel-turning king who became a monk and was revealed as Samantabhadra himself, ninety-eight buddhas of a single kalpa named in unbroken sequence, and closed with the striking claim that she alone has awakened from the long sleep of birth-and-death — before Sudhana himself, in a rare turn, attained her Dharma-gate directly. Sudhana is sent onward, within this same bodhimaṇḍa, to the night-deva named Blossoming Tree Flower.
Continue to Part 90 — Blossoming Tree Flower →