Blossoming Tree Flower, and a Light at Sunset

Fazang glosses this teacher's name on two levels at once: 初舉法勸修中三：先指後位、次頌前法、三善財得利益。初中，開敷樹花者，若約位，此地是有行有開發無相住故名也；約事，此天在香樹樓閣中故立此名 — "first, raising the Dharma to urge cultivation, in three parts: first, indicating the next position; second, reciting the prior Dharma in verse; third, the benefit Sudhana gains from it. Within the first: 'Blossoming Tree Flower' — taken in terms of her own position, this ground has both active practice and an open development that has not yet settled into signlessness, hence the name; taken in terms of circumstance, this deva dwells within a pavilion of fragrant trees, hence the name is given this way as well." Notably, Fazang folds Sudhana's own closing hymn to the previous teacher — already translated at the close of this collection's Part 89 — into this teacher's own opening structure, exactly as he did at the boundary before it: the moment Sudhana turns to leave one teacher is already, in the commentary's own architecture, the beginning of the encounter with the next.

Of the light released at sunset, he writes plainly: 先明安樂眾生行。光救夜中眾生，謂日沒等夜中放光，是夜天之義，令免世嶮路，求一切智道 — "first, revealing the practice of bringing peace and happiness to sentient beings. Light rescuing beings in the night — releasing light as night falls at sunset — is the very meaning of 'night-deva,' causing beings to be freed from the world's own perilous roads and to seek the path of every wisdom." The image itself is exact and ordinary: flowers closing as the sun goes down, and a traveler, distracted by a day spent wandering gardens, suddenly needing light to find the way home before dark.

Fazang divides this list in two, and then names the Dharma-gate that results: 二又善男子下明利益眾生行，初化放逸眾生令修知足行、次授與十波羅蜜令破十障，釋成歡喜行可知；二我已成下立法名，依上三義遂立此名 — "second, beginning with 'and, good son,' reveals the practice of benefiting sentient beings: first, transforming indolent beings, causing them to cultivate contentment; second, bestowing the ten pāramitās to break the ten obstructions, thereby accomplishing the practice of joy, which may be understood accordingly; second, beginning with 'I have already accomplished,' establishes the Dharma-gate's own name, founded on these three meanings above." Those three meanings — bringing peace to beings (the sunset light), benefiting beings (this list), and the contentment it produces — together give the Dharma-gate its full name, which Fazang also records in its Sanskrit-derived form: 天竺本名生廣喜處知足光明菩薩解脫 — "in the Indian original, the Bodhisattva Liberation of the Place Giving Rise to Vast Joy, the Light of Contentment."

The list itself maps each affliction to a precise counterpart drawn from the ten pāramitās — giving for stinginess, precepts for their breach, patience for anger, diligence for indolence, meditation for a disordered mind, wisdom for folly — before closing on three broader categories: those attached to the three realms, those whose merit has been worn thin by accumulated karma, and those simply lacking wisdom. Nothing in the list treats any affliction as disqualifying; each one is simply named, and immediately answered.