Two Gates, and Ten Ways the One Vehicle Differs from the Three
Establishing the One Vehicle — the Gate of Distinguishing Marks建立一乘・分相門
Fazang begins by cutting the One Vehicle in half. One half — the ocean of a buddha's own realization — cannot be spoken of at all. The other half, the "cause-share" that is Samantabhadra's own domain, can be spoken of, and everything in the thirty-four parts that follow is spoken from inside it. The first thing said from there is a claim of rank: the One Vehicle taught in the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, Fazang's "Separate Teaching," is not simply another name for the one vehicle of the Lotus Sūtra's burning-house parable. It stands over and above the three carts and the fourth cart both — and Fazang offers ten separate proofs, drawn sentence by sentence from the Lotus parable itself, for why.
Translation Method
The Huayan Yisheng Jiaoyi Fenqi Zhang 華嚴一乘教義分齊章 — usually shortened to the Wujiao Zhang 五教章, the "Essay on the Five Teachings" — is Fazang's 法藏 (643–712) own summa of Huayan doctrine, composed at Chang'an's Great Recommending-Fortune Monastery 大薦福寺 and preserved as Taishō no. 1866, volume 45. Fazang was the school's third patriarch and its most systematic mind: where the Avataṃsaka Sūtra itself teaches almost entirely through narrative and vision — Sudhana's pilgrimage, Vairocana's assemblies, Maitreya's tower — this treatise teaches through argument. It is the first purely doctrinal, non-narrative Huayan work on this site, and it stands behind everything the narrative chapters already translated here — Entering the Dharma-Realm, the Chapter on Pure Conduct, and the Vows of Samantabhadra — as well as behind Vasubandhu's own commentary on the sūtra's "Ten Grounds" chapter, translated here as the Treatise on the Sūtra of the Ten Grounds. Those pages show what the doctrine looks like lived out in a pilgrimage or unfolded ground by ground; this treatise shows the skeleton underneath.
Because Fazang wrote this treatise as his own systematic exposition, it has no premodern commentary the way a sūtra or a root-verse treatise typically does — no Kuiji, no Jizang, no Zhiyi standing behind it, explaining it. Fazang himself is the authoritative voice. Every reading note across this collection's thirty-four parts is therefore Ru-Yi Meditation Center's own, offered plainly as such rather than attributed to any named exegete, and aimed at a reader meeting Huayan's technical vocabulary for the first time.
Classical text is set in the left-hand column below, our English in the right, in whatever chunks a numbered point or an argumentative unit naturally forms. See also this site's note on translation method.
- Two names, one already spoken for 別教・同教
- Fazang's master division of the whole One Vehicle is into the Separate Teaching 別教 — the Avataṃsaka's own One Vehicle, standing entirely apart from the three vehicles — and the Common Teaching 同教, the sense in which the One Vehicle is shared with, and can be approached through, the three-vehicle teachings, including the Lotus Sūtra's own one vehicle. This is deliberately different terminology from the Tiantai school's own 別教/通教 ("the distinct teaching" and "the shared teaching"), already used on this site's Fahua Xuanyi pages for Zhiyi's four-teaching scheme. The two pairs of Chinese terms are not the same pair, do not classify the same things, and this collection keeps them apart in English as well: "the Separate Teaching" and "the Common Teaching" belong to Fazang alone.
- A five-teaching scheme that shares its summit's name with a rival
- Part 5 introduces Fazang's own five teachings, capped by the Perfect Teaching 圓教 — his name for the Huayan teaching itself, at the very top of his scheme. Zhiyi's Tiantai scheme, translated on this site's Fahua Xuanyi pages, also calls its own summit "the Perfect Teaching," using the same two Chinese characters. This is not a translation collision to be smoothed over — it is a genuine historical rivalry, two schools reaching for the identical honorific to crown two different systems, each claiming it for itself. We keep the shared English name and flag the collision at Part 5, where it first matters.
- Ten gates, thirty-four parts
- Fazang divides his own treatise into 十門, Ten Gates, running from "Establishing the One Vehicle" through to "The Principle Itself" at the close. The base text's physical division into four fascicles 卷 does not line up with these gate boundaries, so this collection's thirty-four parts follow the Ten Gates rather than the fascicle breaks; a note flags the one part where a fascicle boundary falls mid-part.
The Text
1. The Two Shares of the One Vehicle 性海果分・緣起因分
The treatise opens mid-sentence, as its own first line announces: Fazang is picking up a project already named in a lost preface — unfolding, in ten gates, the teaching and meaning of the One Vehicle contained in the Buddha's ocean-seal absorption. The very first move is a division that will govern everything that follows.
初明建立一乘者。然此一乘教義分齊。開為二門。一別教。二同教。初中二。一性海果分。是不可說義。何以故。不與教相應故。則十佛自境界也。故地論云。因分可說果分不可說者是也。二緣起因分。則普賢境界也。此二無二全體遍收。其猶波水。思之可見。
First, clarifying the establishment of the One Vehicle: the teaching and meaning proper to this One Vehicle open out into two gates. One, the Separate Teaching. Two, the Common Teaching. Within the first there are two aspects. One, the fruition-share of the ocean of nature — this is a meaning that cannot be spoken of. Why is that? Because it does not correspond to any teaching; it is the very domain of the ten buddhas themselves. Hence the Daśabhūmika-śāstra says: "The cause-share can be spoken of; the fruition-share cannot be spoken of" — this is what is meant. Two, the cause-share of dependent origination — this is the domain of Samantabhadra. These two are not two; each, in its entire substance, includes the other completely, the way wave and water do. Reflect on it, and it can be seen.
Everything Fazang goes on to argue, for the rest of this treatise, is spoken from the second of these two shares — the "cause-share," Samantabhadra's own domain, where dependent origination can be described, debated, and taught. The first share, "the fruition-share of the ocean of nature," is what a buddha has actually realized, and Fazang states flatly that it cannot be spoken of, because speech and teaching belong to causes and conditions, not to the domain of the ten buddhas 十佛 themselves. This is not false modesty. It is a structural admission built into the opening sentence of the whole treatise: everything that follows, however systematic and confident it sounds, is a description of the path toward buddhahood and of how that path unfolds — not a description of buddhahood's own content.
The quotation "the cause-share can be spoken of; the fruition-share cannot be spoken of" comes from the Daśabhūmika-śāstra 十地論, Vasubandhu's commentary on the "Ten Grounds" chapter of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, translated in full on this site as the Treatise on the Sūtra of the Ten Grounds. Fazang leans on that treatise's authority from his very first citation onward — a sign of how directly this whole doctrinal edifice grows out of the older, more exegetical Yogācāra-adjacent tradition around the Ten Grounds.
Wave and water is Fazang's own image for how the two shares relate, and it recurs throughout Huayan literature: a wave is nothing but water in motion, water is what every wave is made of, and yet "wave" and "water" pick out genuinely different things to talk about. So too the fruition-share and the cause-share — two names, two domains of discourse, one single reality underneath.
2. Ten Proofs, from the Cause-Share 分相門・十說
Within Samantabhadra's domain — the domain that can be spoken of — Fazang makes one further division, into the gate of distinguishing marks and the gate of inclusion. This part covers the first of the two. It is where Fazang goes to the Lotus Sūtra's most famous parable and reads it against the grain of how the Lotus itself is usually taken.
就普賢門復作二門。一分相門。二該攝門。分相門者。此則別教一乘別於三乘。如法華中宅內所指門外三車誘引諸子令得出者。是三乘教也。界外露地所授牛車是一乘教也。然此一乘三乘差別。諸聖教中略有十說。
Within the gate of Samantabhadra, two further gates are made. One, the gate of distinguishing marks. Two, the gate of inclusion. As for the gate of distinguishing marks: this is where the One Vehicle as its own Separate Teaching is distinguished from the three vehicles. As in the Lotus Sūtra, where inside the burning house the father points to the three carts outside the gate in order to lure his sons out and get them to escape — these are the teaching of the three vehicles. The ox-cart bestowed on the bare ground outside the border is the teaching of the One Vehicle. Now, as for the distinction between this One Vehicle and the three vehicles, the sagely teachings give, in brief, ten accounts.
The parable, for readers meeting it here first: a father's children are playing inside a house that has caught fire and do not know it. He cannot make them understand the danger, so he calls out that he has three wonderful carts waiting for them outside — a goat-cart, a deer-cart, and an ox-cart — one for each of their different tastes. The children run out to get them. Once they are safely outside, on the open ground beyond the gate, he gives every one of them the same thing: a single, vastly greater cart, drawn by a great white ox, adorned beyond anything he described. In the Lotus Sūtra's own reading, the three promised carts stand for the three vehicles — śrāvaka, pratyekabuddha, and bodhisattva — and the single cart actually given stands for the one Buddha-vehicle that was the Buddha's real intention all along, one vehicle disguised as three for pedagogical necessity.
Fazang's move across the ten proofs that follow is to insist this single ox-cart, the one actually given outside the gate, is not the same as either the "ox-cart" named among the three carts at the gate, or the vehicle that the Lotus itself calls "the one Buddha-vehicle." For Fazang, that Lotus-vehicle is real, but it belongs to the Common Teaching — the sense in which the One Vehicle can be reached through, and is continuous with, the three vehicles. What the ten proofs are building toward is a further, higher vehicle: the Separate Teaching's own One Vehicle, which the Avataṃsaka Sūtra alone teaches, standing above the Lotus's reconciliation of three-into-one the way the fourth cart's own furthest horizon stands above the cart itself. This is, in effect, Fazang's argument for Huayan's supremacy over the Lotus Sūtra — mounted, pointedly, using the Lotus's own most celebrated story.
3. First Proof — Expedient and Real 一・權實差別
The first proof turns on a question a careless reader of the parable might never think to ask: if the ox-cart really was waiting outside the gate all along, exactly as promised, why do the children have to ask for it again once they get there?
一權實差別。以三中牛車亦同羊鹿。權引諸子務令得出。是故臨門三車。俱是開方便門。四衢道中別授大白牛車。方為示真實相。若彼三中牛車。亦是實者。長者宅內引諸子時。指彼牛車秪在門外。此應亦出即得見車。如何出竟至本所指車所住處而不得故。後更索耶。亦不可說界外索車但是二乘。以經不說彼求牛車人。出門即得彼牛車故。又不說彼索先許車唯二乘故。是故經中諸子得出至露地已。各白父言。父先所許玩好之具。羊車鹿車牛車願時賜與。以此得知三車同索。此中三車約彼三乘所求果說。以是元意所標趣故。問二乘各得小果。何以界外更索耶。答依小乘。云有教有行果。今依大乘。云昔日但有言教無實行果故。故云三車空無。若望自宗並皆得果。若不得者如何出世。今言俱不得者。以望一乘故。是故以實映權則方便相盡。故皆無得也。為欲迴彼三乘人入一乘故。是故大乘亦說迴也。若不爾者。彼求牛車人既出界外不同凡夫。非求羊鹿不同二乘。未得露地大白牛車不同一乘。若非彼三中大乘。更是何色人也。以至自位究竟處故。後皆進入別教一乘。問臨門三車為實不實耶。答實不實。何以故。是方便故。由是方便引子得出非不實。由是方便引故非是實。此二無二唯一相也。
One, the distinction between the expedient and the real. Among the three carts at the gate, the ox-cart too is the same as the goat- and deer-carts: an expedient device to lure the sons out and make sure they escape. Hence the three carts at the gate are, every one of them, a gate opened as an expedient means; it is only at the crossroads that the great white-ox cart is separately bestowed, and only there that the mark of the real is shown. If the ox-cart among the three at the gate were also real, then when the elder was inside the house luring his sons out and pointed to that ox-cart as being right outside the gate, they should have gotten out and seen the cart at once. Why, once they had come all the way out to the very place he pointed to, did they not find it there — so that they had to ask for it again afterward? Nor can it be said that the asking for a cart once outside the border belongs only to the two lesser vehicles, since the sūtra never says that those seeking an ox-cart got that ox-cart the moment they came out the gate, nor does it say that only the two lesser vehicles are the ones who ask for the cart previously promised. This is why, in the sūtra, once the sons have gotten out and reached the bare ground, they each say to their father: "Of the playthings you promised us before, please now bestow the goat-cart, the deer-cart, and the ox-cart." From this we know that all three carts are asked for together. Here the three carts are spoken of in terms of the fruits sought by each of the three vehicles, since that was the original intention being pointed to.
Question: the two lesser vehicles each attain their own lesser fruit — why, then, do they ask again once outside the border? Answer: judged by the standard of the Lesser Vehicle, it is said that there is both teaching and the fruit of practice. Judged by the standard of the Great Vehicle, it is said that in the past there was only verbal teaching and no real fruit of practice — hence it is said that the three carts are empty, without substance. Judged from within its own tenet, each vehicle does indeed attain a fruit — how else could one leave the world at all? But it is said here that none of them attain anything, because this is judged from the standpoint of the One Vehicle: once the real illuminates the expedient, the mark of the expedient means is used up, and so all are said to attain nothing. This is done in order to turn those of the three vehicles back into the One Vehicle — which is why the Great Vehicle, too, speaks of "turning back." Were it not so, then those who sought the ox-cart, having already come out beyond the border, would no longer be ordinary worldlings; not seeking the goat- or deer-cart, they would not be the two lesser vehicles either; yet not having obtained the great white-ox cart on the bare ground, they would not yet be the One Vehicle. If they are not the Great Vehicle among those three, then what sort of person could they possibly be? It is because they have arrived at the very furthest point of their own position that all of them afterward enter into the One Vehicle as its own Separate Teaching.
Question: are the three carts at the gate real, or not real? Answer: both real and not real. Why? Because they are an expedient means. Inasmuch as this expedient device did lead the sons out, it is not unreal; inasmuch as it was only an expedient device doing the leading, it is not real either. These two are not two — they are a single mark.
The turning move here is Fazang's own reading of a plot hole. Ordinary readers of the parable take the promised ox-cart and the given ox-cart as one and the same object, simply revealed to be more magnificent than described. Fazang instead treats the gap between "promised" and "given" as doctrinally significant: the children ask again for something they were told was already theirs, which proves the first ox-cart was never the real one. It was a name borrowed for an expedient purpose, exactly as disposable as the goat- and deer-carts once it has done its work of getting the children out the door.
迴, "turning back" (sometimes rendered "turning the mind toward" in later parts, when it is the two lesser vehicles specifically who turn toward the Great Vehicle), names the whole logic of the parable for Fazang: expedient teachings are not abandoned as false but redirected, their own practitioners carried forward into a vehicle they did not know they were heading for. The line "the Great Vehicle, too, speaks of turning back" is a small but pointed claim — that even ordinary Mahāyāna teaching, not only this treatise's own scheme, already contains the seed of this reading.
4. Second and Third Proofs — Teaching versus Meaning, and What Is Clarified 二・教義差別 三・所明差別
二教義差別。以臨門牛車亦同羊鹿。但有其名。以望一乘俱是教故。是故經云。以佛教門出三界苦。亦不可說以佛教言但約二乘。以經不揀故。彼求牛車人尋教至義。亦同二乘俱不得故。三所明差別。以彼一乘非是界內先許三車。是故界外四衢道中授諸子時。皆云非本所望。是故經云。是時諸子各乘大車得未曾有非本所望。亦不可說非本所望言但約二乘。以經不揀故。聖言無失故。良以。門內所許今皆無得。露地牛車本非悕冀故。今得之言非本所望也。
Two, the distinction between teaching and meaning. The ox-cart at the gate, too, is the same as the goat- and deer-carts, in name only, since — judged against the One Vehicle — all three are merely "teaching." Hence the sūtra says: "By the gate of the Buddha's teaching they escape the suffering of the three realms" — and it cannot be said that "the Buddha's teaching" here refers only to the two lesser vehicles, since the sūtra draws no such distinction. Those who sought the ox-cart, following the teaching in hope of reaching its meaning, fail to attain it, exactly as the two lesser vehicles do.
Three, the distinction in what is clarified. Because that One Vehicle is not the three carts previously promised while still within the border, it is therefore said, without exception, when the cart is bestowed on the sons at the crossroads outside the border: "not what was originally hoped for." Hence the sūtra says: "At that time the sons each rode the great cart, gaining what they had never had before, not what they had originally hoped for." Nor can it be said that "not what was originally hoped for" refers only to the two lesser vehicles, since the sūtra draws no such distinction, and a sage's words make no mistake. The reason is this: what was promised within the gate is, in every case, now not obtained at all, while the ox-cart on the bare ground was never what had been longed for in the first place — hence the statement, "what is now obtained is not what was originally hoped for."
Fazang treats "teaching" 教 and "meaning" 義 as two different things a cart, or a doctrine, can supply: teaching is the pointer, the verbal promise; meaning is what the pointer actually delivers. The three carts at the gate supply teaching without meaning — a name with nothing behind it yet. This distinction between teaching and meaning becomes the organizing question of Part 3's Gate Two, and returns throughout the treatise whenever Fazang wants to ask not just what a passage says, but what work it is actually doing.
5. Fourth Proof — The Measure of Virtues 四・德量差別
四德量差別。謂宅內指外。但云牛車不言餘德。而露地所授七寶大車。謂寶網寶鈴等無量眾寶而莊嚴等。此即體具德也。又彼但云牛不言餘相。此云白牛肥壯多力其疾如風等。用殊勝也。又云。多諸儐從而侍衛等。行眷屬也。此等異相並約同教一乘。以明異耳。又彼三中牛車唯一。以彼宗明一相方便無主伴故。此則不爾。主伴具足攝德無量。是故經云。我有如是七寶大車。其數無量。無量寶車非適一也。此顯一乘無盡教義。此義廣說如華嚴中。此約別教一乘以明異耳。
Four, the distinction in the measure of virtues. Within the house, pointing outside, the father speaks only of an "ox-cart" and mentions no other virtue; but the great cart of the seven jewels bestowed on the bare ground is adorned with jeweled nets, jeweled bells, and measureless other jewels — this is its very substance being endowed with virtues. Again, within the house he speaks only of an ox and mentions no other mark, whereas outside it is said the ox is white, sturdy, and mighty, its speed like the wind — this is its function being surpassingly excellent. And it is further said that many attendants accompany and guard it — this is its retinue in motion. These distinguishing marks are all spoken of in terms of the One Vehicle as the Common Teaching, clarifying the difference in that sense. Furthermore, among the three carts at the gate the ox-cart is only a single one, because that tenet clarifies a single characteristic as an expedient means, without host and retinue. Here it is not so: host and retinue are both fully present, and the virtues gathered in are measureless — hence the sūtra says: "I have carts of the seven jewels such as these, their number measureless" — meaning the measureless jeweled carts are not merely one. This reveals the inexhaustible teaching and meaning of the One Vehicle, a meaning set out at length in the Avataṃsaka Sūtra itself. This distinction is drawn in terms of the One Vehicle as its own Separate Teaching.
主伴具足, "host and retinue fully present," is one of Huayan's central images for how reality actually hangs together: nothing stands alone as sheer "host" with everything else reduced to background. Whatever occupies the center of attention is the host; everything else arrayed around it, supporting and reflecting it, is the retinue — and the two roles are constantly reversible, since the very thing that is retinue from one vantage becomes host from another. Fazang finds this pattern hidden inside the parable's own numbers: the three-cart teaching gives exactly one ox-cart, alone and unaccompanied, while the One Vehicle's cart comes with an innumerable retinue and is itself one of an innumerable fleet of identical great carts. A single, solitary object can never be "host and retinue fully present" — only a system in which everything reflects and includes everything else can. This is the same pattern behind Indra's Net, worked out much later in the treatise, and it is already visible in the sūtra's own account of the pilgrim Sudhana meeting fifty-three interlocking teachers, each one occupying the position of "host" for exactly as long as Sudhana is in front of them.
6. Fifth Proof — Assigned Position on the Ten Grounds 五・約寄位差別
五約寄位差別。如本業經仁王經及地論梁攝論等皆以初二三地寄在世間。四地至七地寄出世間。八地已上寄出出世間。於出世間中。四地五地寄聲聞法。六地寄緣覺法。七地寄菩薩法。八地已上寄一乘法。若大乘即是一乘者。七地即應是出出世。又不應一乘在於八地。是故當知法華中三乘之人。為求三車出至門外者。則三乘俱是出世。自位究竟也。即是此中四地以去。至七地者是也。四衢別授大白牛車者。此在出世之上故。是出出世一乘法。即是此中八地已上一乘法也。問若爾何故梁攝論云二乘善名出世。從八地已上乃至佛地名出出世。既不言三乘是出世。如何作如說耶。答既四五二地為聲聞。第六地為緣覺。八地已去為出出世。彼第七地是何人耶。是故當知彼云二乘善名出世。即大小二乘也。以聲聞緣覺俱名為小故二乘名通。具如下說。
Five, the distinction drawn in terms of assigned position. According to the Sūtra of the Bodhisattva's Original Acts, the Sūtra of Benevolent Kings, the Daśabhūmika-śāstra, the Liang-dynasty Mahāyānasaṃgraha, and the like, the first, second, and third grounds are all assigned to the mundane; the fourth ground through the seventh are assigned to the supramundane; and the eighth ground and above are assigned to the supra-supramundane. Within the supramundane, the fourth and fifth grounds are assigned to the dharma of the śrāvaka, the sixth ground to the dharma of the pratyekabuddha, and the seventh ground to the dharma of the bodhisattva; the eighth ground and above are assigned to the dharma of the One Vehicle. Now if the Great Vehicle were simply identical with the One Vehicle, the seventh ground ought already to be supra-supramundane, and the One Vehicle ought not to be located at the eighth ground alone. One should therefore know: those of the three vehicles in the Lotus Sūtra who sought the three carts and got out to the gate are, all three, at the level of the supramundane, the furthest point of their own position — this corresponds to what is here called the fourth ground onward through the seventh. Those to whom the great white-ox cart is separately bestowed at the crossroads are above the supramundane, and so belong to the supra-supramundane dharma of the One Vehicle — this corresponds to what is here called the eighth ground and above, the dharma of the One Vehicle.
Question: if so, why does the Liang Mahāyānasaṃgraha say that the two lesser vehicles are aptly called "supramundane," while from the eighth ground up to the stage of buddhahood is called "supra-supramundane" — since it never says that the three vehicles as such are supramundane, how can this be reconciled with what has just been said? Answer: given that the fourth and fifth grounds belong to the śrāvaka and the sixth ground to the pratyekabuddha, while the eighth ground onward is supra-supramundane — then what sort of person occupies that seventh ground? One should therefore know that when it speaks of "the two vehicles aptly called supramundane," it means the greater and the lesser "two vehicles" together, since śrāvaka and pratyekabuddha are both called "lesser" and the term "two vehicles" is used broadly. This is set out fully further below.
This proof maps the Lotus parable directly onto the Ten Grounds, the ten stages of the bodhisattva path translated in full elsewhere on this site. Fazang's point is narrowly technical but doctrinally load-bearing: several older treatises already assign the seventh ground to "the bodhisattva," short of "supra-supramundane," which is reserved for the eighth ground and above. If the Great Vehicle simply were the One Vehicle, as an unreflective reading of the Lotus parable might suggest, that boundary at the eighth ground would make no sense — the bodhisattva at the seventh ground is still Great Vehicle, after all. Fazang uses the mismatch to argue that the vehicle actually given at the crossroads, above and beyond the three carts, must correspond to something higher than ordinary bodhisattva practice: the eighth ground and above, where his own One Vehicle belongs.
The "Liang Mahāyānasaṃgraha" 梁攝論 named here is Paramārtha's sixth-century translation of Asaṅga's treatise, made under the Liang dynasty — a different Chinese translation from Xuanzang's Tang-dynasty version that this site's own Mahāyānasaṃgraha collection follows. Fazang, writing after Xuanzang's translation existed, still reaches for the older Liang version here — one small sign of how thoroughly this treatise is stitched together from the whole prior century of Chinese Yogācāra scholarship, not built from Huayan materials alone.
7. Sixth and Seventh Proofs — Entrustment, and the Ripeness of Faculties 六・付囑差別 七・根緣受者差別
六付囑差別。如法華經云。於未來世若有善男子善女人。信如來智慧者。當為演說此法華經使得聞知。為令其人得佛智慧故。若有眾生不信受者。當於如來餘深法中示教利喜。汝等若能如是。則為報佛之恩。解云。餘深法者即是大乘。非一乘故稱之為餘。然非小乘是以稱深。亦不可說以彼小乘為餘深法。以法華中正破小乘。豈可歎其深耶。是故當知法華別意。正在一乘故。作此付囑也。七根緣受者差別。如此經性起品云。佛子。菩薩摩訶薩無量億那由他劫。行六波羅蜜。修習道品善根。未聞此經。雖聞不信受持隨順。是等猶為假名菩薩。解云。此明三乘菩薩根未熟故。雖如是經爾許劫修行。不信不聞此一乘經者是人當知是前法華經內餘深法中。示教利喜者是也。以望一乘究竟法。是故說彼以為假名。若望自宗亦真實也。此文意明華嚴是別教一乘不同彼也。
Six, the distinction in entrustment. As the Lotus Sūtra says: "In future ages, if there are good sons or good daughters who believe in the Tathāgata's wisdom, you should expound this Lotus Sūtra for them, so that they get to hear and know it, in order that such persons attain the Buddha's wisdom. If there are sentient beings who do not believe and accept it, you should, within the Tathāgata's other profound dharmas, instruct, benefit, and delight them. If you can do this, you thereby repay the Buddha's kindness." Explanation: "the other profound dharmas" means the Great Vehicle — called "other" because it is not the One Vehicle, yet called "profound" precisely because it is not the Lesser Vehicle. Nor can it be said that this "other profound dharma" refers to the Lesser Vehicle, since the Lotus Sūtra explicitly refutes the Lesser Vehicle — how could it then be praised as profound? One should therefore know that the special intent of the Lotus Sūtra lies precisely in the One Vehicle, and that this act of entrustment is made for that reason.
Seven, the distinction in faculties, conditions, and the recipient. As the "Chapter on the Arising of the Nature" in this sūtra says: "Son of the Buddha, if a bodhisattva-mahāsattva practices the six pāramitās and cultivates the wholesome roots of the branches of the path for measureless koṭis of nayutas of kalpas, but has not heard this sūtra — or, having heard it, does not believe, accept, uphold, and follow it in accord — such a one is still only a bodhisattva in name." Explanation: this makes clear that, because the faculties of a bodhisattva of the three vehicles are not yet ripe, even one who has practiced for that many kalpas within a sūtra such as this one, if he does not believe in and has not heard this One Vehicle sūtra, should be understood to belong among those spoken of earlier — in the Lotus Sūtra, within "the other profound dharmas" — who are instructed, benefited, and delighted there. Judged against the ultimate dharma of the One Vehicle, such a one is therefore said to be a bodhisattva only in name; judged within his own tenet, he is genuine as well. The point of this passage is to make clear that the Avataṃsaka is the One Vehicle as its own Separate Teaching, not the same as that other teaching.
These two proofs work the same seam from opposite directions. The sixth finds, inside the Lotus Sūtra's own closing instructions, a category — "the other profound dharmas" — that the Lotus uses for whatever lies between the Lesser Vehicle it refutes and the One Vehicle it teaches; Fazang reads that gap as evidence the Lotus's "one vehicle" is not the last word. The seventh goes further and, quoting the Avataṃsaka against the Lotus, calls a bodhisattva who has practiced for immeasurable kalpas but never heard the Avataṃsaka a "bodhisattva in name only" — precisely the kind of practitioner the Lotus's "other profound dharmas" is instructing. Real, but not yet arrived. This is the sharpest edge in the ten proofs: Fazang is not merely distinguishing two teachings, he is ranking them, and doing so using each scripture's own language about itself.
8. Eighth and Ninth Proofs — Hard to Believe, and Revealed According to Capacity 八・難信易信差別 九・約機顯理差別
八難信易信差別。如此經賢首品云。一切世界群生類。尠有欲求聲聞乘。求緣覺者轉復少。求大乘者甚希有。求大乘者猶為易。能信此法甚為難。解云。以此品中正明信位終心即攝一切位及成佛等事既超三乘。恐難信受故。舉三乘對比決之。九約機顯理差別。如此經第九地初偈云。若眾生下劣。其心厭沒者。示以聲聞道。令出于眾苦。若復有眾生。諸根小明利。樂於因緣法。為說辟支佛。若人根明利。有大慈悲心。饒益諸眾生。為說菩薩道。若有無上心。決定樂大事。為示於佛身。說無盡佛法。解云。此明一乘法門主伴具足故云無盡佛法。不同三乘一相一寂等法。以此地中作大法師。明說法儀軌。是故開示一乘三乘。文義差別也。
Eight, the distinction between what is hard to believe and what is easy to believe. As the "Chapter of Worthy Head" in this sūtra says: "Among the multitudes of every kind, in every world, few wish to seek the śrāvaka vehicle; those who seek the pratyekabuddha vehicle are fewer still; those who seek the Great Vehicle are rarer yet — and even seeking the Great Vehicle remains easy, next to how hard it is to believe this Dharma." Explanation: this chapter makes clear that the culminating mind of the stage of faith already encompasses every stage, up to and including the attainment of buddhahood; since this surpasses the three vehicles, it is feared that it will be hard to believe and accept, and so the three vehicles are set up as a comparison to settle the point.
Nine, the distinction in revealing the principle according to capacity. As the opening verse of the Ninth Ground in this sūtra says: "If sentient beings are of inferior disposition, their minds sunk down and dispirited, he shows them the path of the śrāvaka, so as to bring them out of the mass of suffering. If there are sentient beings whose faculties are of only slight clarity and sharpness, who delight in the dharma of causes and conditions, he teaches them the pratyekabuddha vehicle. If a person's faculties are clear and sharp, and he has great compassion and benefits sentient beings widely, he is taught the path of the bodhisattva. If one has the mind set on the unsurpassed, resolved to delight in the great matter, he is shown the Buddha's own body, and taught the inexhaustible Dharma of the Buddha." Explanation: this makes clear that the dharma-gate of the One Vehicle has host and retinue fully present, and so is called "the inexhaustible Dharma of the Buddha" — not the same as the three vehicles' dharmas of a single characteristic and a single quiescence. Because this ground is where the bodhisattva acts as a great dharma-teacher, clarifying the protocols for expounding the Dharma, it is precisely here that the One Vehicle and the three vehicles are opened up and shown, distinguished in text and in meaning.
The ninth proof's four-tiered teaching — śrāvaka path for the discouraged, pratyekabuddha path for the moderately keen, bodhisattva path for the compassionate and sharp, and "the Buddha's own body" for the one whose mind is already set on the unsurpassed — is Fazang's scriptural anchor for the whole doctrine of teaching pitched to capacity, which returns as its own topic in Part 7 of this treatise (the "ten kinds of disciple"). Notice that the fourth tier is not simply "the Great Vehicle" again; it is set apart, described with the same "inexhaustible," "host and retinue" language used throughout these ten proofs for the Separate Teaching alone.
9. Tenth Proof — Root and Branch, Opened and Gathered 十・本末開合差別
十本末開合差別。如大乘同性經云。所有聲聞法辟支佛法菩薩法諸佛法。如是一切諸法。皆悉流入毘盧遮那智藏大海。此文約本末分異。仍會末歸本。明一乘三乘差別顯耳。此上十證足為龜鏡。其別教一乘所明行位因果等相。與彼三乘教施設分齊全別不同。廣在經文略如下辨。縱無教證依彼義異尚須分宗。況聖教雲披煥然溢目矣。
Ten, the distinction between root and branch, opened out and brought together. As the Mahāyāna Sūtra on the Sameness of Nature says: "The dharma of the śrāvaka, the dharma of the pratyekabuddha, the dharma of the bodhisattva, and the dharma of all buddhas — all such dharmas as these flow into the great ocean of Vairocana's treasury of wisdom." This passage distinguishes root from branch, and yet also gathers the branch back into the root, thereby clarifying and revealing the distinction between the One Vehicle and the three vehicles. These ten proofs given above are amply sufficient to serve as a mirror: the marks of practice, position, cause, and fruit that the One Vehicle as its own Separate Teaching sets forth are, in every respect, utterly different from what the three-vehicle teachings establish and delimit. This is set out at length in the sūtra text and clarified briefly below. Even without scriptural proof, the very difference in meaning between them would already require that they be distinguished as separate tenets — how much more so, when the sagely teachings unfurl like clouds, radiant and overflowing before the eye!
Root and branch 本末 is the pairing that governs the whole second half of Fazang's ten proofs, and it will return, transformed into a full technical apparatus, in Part 3's discussion of how the One Vehicle and the three vehicles are "opened" apart or "gathered" together depending on which of four standpoints one argues from. Here it appears in its simplest form: every teaching, however partial, eventually empties into the single ocean of a buddha's realized wisdom — but "eventually emptying into" is exactly the branch-to-root relationship that distinguishes something from being the root outright. The three vehicles are branches that lead back to the root; only the Separate Teaching's One Vehicle, on Fazang's account, simply is the root, spoken from inside it rather than pointing toward it from outside.
Ten proofs, seen together: (1) expedient vs. real, (2) teaching vs. meaning, (3) what is actually clarified, (4) the sheer measure of virtues, (5) position on the ten grounds, (6) whose entrustment closes the Lotus, (7) whose faculties still fall short, (8) how hard the teaching is to believe, (9) how the teaching is pitched to capacity, and (10) the relation of root to branch. No single proof is meant to stand alone — Fazang piles up ten separate angles of attack on the same conclusion precisely because the claim is a large one: that a text everyone already reads as teaching "the one vehicle" is, on his account, still only teaching the Common Teaching's approach to a One Vehicle that properly belongs to the Avataṃsaka Sūtra alone. The next part turns to the second gate promised at the start — the gate of inclusion, where Fazang will argue the opposite-sounding thesis just as carefully: that the three vehicles were never, in the end, anything other than the One Vehicle to begin with.
Part One Complete
This closes Part One: the two shares of the One Vehicle, inexpressible fruition and expressible cause; the gate of distinguishing marks; and Fazang's ten proofs, built sentence by sentence out of the Lotus Sūtra's parable of the burning house, for why his Separate Teaching's One Vehicle stands above the vehicle the Lotus itself already calls "one."
Part Two turns to the second of the two gates named at the start — the gate of inclusion — where Fazang sets out to prove something that sounds like the reverse of everything just argued: that every one of the three vehicles, considered rightly, was never anything but the One Vehicle all along.