Root and Branch Fused, and the Benefit of the Teaching
Fusing Root and Branch, and What Each Teaching Confers融本末・教義攝益
Two gates opened Part 1 and Part 2 — distinguishing marks, then inclusion. Here Fazang closes them into a single seamless whole, using a fourfold statement to show that the One Vehicle and the three vehicles are, without residue, one dharma-realm. That finishes Gate One of ten. Gate Two then asks a harder-edged question of every teaching Fazang has been discussing: not just what it says, but what it actually delivers — what "meaning" a given "teaching" truly confers, and on whom.
The Text
1. Fusing Root and Branch 融本末
The sixth and final layer of the Common Teaching's treatment of the vehicles takes everything counted in Part 2 — one, two, three, four, five, measureless — and gathers it back into a single dharma-realm without seam.
二融本末者。此同文說諸乘等會融無二同一法界。有其二門。一泯權歸實門。即一乘教也。二攬實成權門。則三乘教等也。初則不壞權而即泯故。三乘即一乘而不礙三。後則不異實而即權故。一乘即三乘而不礙一。是故一三融攝體無二也。問若爾二門俱齊。如何復說有權實耶。答義門異故權實恒存。理遍通故全體無二。何者謂權起必一向賴於實。是故攬實實不失。實現。未必一向藉於權。故泯權權不立。是故三乘即一雖具存壞竟必有盡。一乘即三雖具隱顯竟恒無盡。由此鎔融有其四句。一或唯一乘。謂如別教。二或唯三乘。如三乘等教。以不知一故。或亦一亦三。如同教。四或非一非三。如上果海。此四義中。隨於一門皆全收法體。是故諸乘或存或壞。而不相礙也。準思可解。餘釋乘明體等。並如別說。上來明建立一乘竟。
Second, fusing root and branch: this same text speaks of all the vehicles as gathered and fused, without duality, into one and the same dharma-realm. It has two gates. One, the gate of dissolving the expedient and returning to the real — this is the teaching of the One Vehicle. Two, the gate of drawing on the real to form the expedient — this is the teaching of the three vehicles and the rest.
In the first, without destroying the expedient, it is simply dissolved — hence the three vehicles simply are the One Vehicle, without this obstructing the three. In the second, without differing from the real, it simply is the expedient — hence the One Vehicle simply is the three vehicles, without this obstructing the one. This is why the one and the three, fused and mutually including each other, share a single substance without duality.
Question: if so, and the two gates are equally valid, how can one still speak of an expedient and a real? Answer: because the aspects of meaning differ, expedient and real each continue to hold their own; because the principle interpenetrates universally, the whole substance is without duality. How so? Because the arising of the expedient must, in every case, depend on the real — hence, when the real is drawn upon, the real is not lost. But the manifesting of the real need not, in every case, be borrowed through the expedient — hence, when the expedient is dissolved, the expedient does not remain standing. This is why the three vehicles simply being the one, though it involves both their continuing and their being done away with, must in the end come to an exhaustion; whereas the One Vehicle simply being the three, though it involves both concealment and revealing, remains forever inexhaustible.
Out of this fusing, four statements arise. One, it may be only the One Vehicle — as with the Separate Teaching. Two, it may be only the three vehicles — as with the three-vehicle teachings and the rest, since they do not know the One. Three, it may be both the one and the three at once — as with the Common Teaching. Four, it may be neither the one nor the three — as with the ocean of fruition described above. Within these four meanings, whichever single gate one takes up gathers in the entire substance of the Dharma completely; this is why the various vehicles, whether continuing or done away with, do not obstruct one another. This may be understood by reflecting on it accordingly; other explanations of the vehicles' own substance and the rest are given elsewhere. The above completes the clarification of establishing the One Vehicle.
The fourfold statement closing this passage — only one; only three; both one and three; neither one nor three — is a form Fazang will use repeatedly across this treatise (it returns, in a different application, at Part 24's discussion of the three natures). It is not a way of hedging between four possible answers; each of the four names a genuinely different, equally valid standpoint, and "the entire substance of the Dharma" is fully present within any single one of them taken on its own terms. "As with the ocean of fruition described above" quietly reaches back to Part 1's opening division — the fruition-share of the ocean of nature, which cannot be spoken of at all, and therefore falls under neither "one" nor "three," since both are ways of speaking.
The asymmetry Fazang draws out — the three vehicles' identity with the One must eventually be exhausted, while the One Vehicle's identity with the three remains forever inexhaustible — restates, in more abstract terms, the same asymmetry from Part 1's Lotus parable: the three carts are used up and discarded once the children are safely out, but the great cart's own capacity to include host and retinue, world upon world, is never used up by being given. Exhaustible expedients versus an inexhaustible reality is one of this treatise's most persistent structural patterns.
2. Gate Two Opens — Teaching and Meaning, Shown and Combined 教義攝益・示相開合
The first Gate — establishing the One Vehicle — is now complete. Fazang opens the second of his ten gates by asking what exactly "teaching" and "meaning" mean for each of the three positions already established: the Separate Teaching, the ordinary three-vehicle teachings, and the Common Teaching.
第二教義攝益者。此門有二。先辨教義分齊。後明攝益分齊。初中又二。先示相。後開合。初中有三義。一者如露地牛車自有教義。謂十十無盡主伴具足。如華嚴說。此當別教一乘。二者如臨門三車自有教義。謂界內示為教得出為義。仍教義即無分。此當三乘教。如餘經及瑜伽等說。三者以臨門三車為開方便教。界外別授大白牛車。方為示真實義。此當同教一乘。如法華經說。
Second, as for teaching, meaning, and benefit: this gate has two parts. First, distinguishing the boundaries of teaching and meaning; second, clarifying the boundaries of the benefit conferred. Within the first there are, again, two: first, showing the marks; second, opening and combining. Within the first there are three meanings.
One, as with the ox-cart on the bare ground, which has its own teaching and meaning — namely, tens upon tens, inexhaustible, with host and retinue fully present, as the Avataṃsaka teaches. This corresponds to the One Vehicle as its own Separate Teaching. Two, as with the three carts at the gate, which have their own teaching and meaning — namely, what is shown within the border is the teaching, and what is escaped to is the meaning, yet teaching and meaning here are not actually distinguished into two separate stages. This corresponds to the three-vehicle teachings, as other sūtras and the Yogācārabhūmi and the like teach. Three, taking the three carts at the gate as an expedient teaching opened up, while the great white-ox cart separately bestowed outside the border is what shows the real meaning — this corresponds to the One Vehicle as the Common Teaching, as the Lotus Sūtra teaches.
Three positions, three relationships between "teaching" and "meaning." For the Separate Teaching, teaching and meaning are simply identical and inexhaustible at once — the Avataṃsaka's own cart is both the pointer and the destination, fully present from the start. For the ordinary three-vehicle path, teaching and meaning are collapsed the other way: the promise made inside the burning house and the escape actually achieved are treated as a single undifferentiated event, with no gap opened between them at all. Only for the Common Teaching — the Lotus Sūtra's own scheme — does a real gap open up between an expedient teaching (the three carts) and a distinct, later-disclosed meaning (the one great cart). This is why "the Common Teaching" is the position that actually needs the vocabulary of "expedient" and "real" that Fazang has been using throughout: it alone stages meaning as something initially withheld and then revealed.
3. Opened Apart, or Combined Together 開合・別總
Fazang now runs the same three positions through a full combinatorial grid: teaching and meaning, present or absent, for the three vehicles and for the One Vehicle, taken separately and then together.
二開合者有二。先別。後總。別中一乘三乘各有三句。三乘三句者或具教義。約三乘自宗說。或唯教非義。約同教一乘說。或俱非教義。約別教一乘說。為彼所目故也。一乘三句者。或具教義。約自別教說。或唯義非教。約同教說。或俱非教義。唯約三乘教說。隱彼無盡教義故。後總者。或教義俱教。以三乘望一乘故。或教義俱義。以一乘望三乘故。或具此三句約同教說。或皆具教義。各隨自宗差別說矣。
Second, as for opening apart and combining together, there are two: first, separately; second, together. Within the separate treatment, both the three vehicles and the One Vehicle each have three statements.
As for the three vehicles' three statements: it may possess both teaching and meaning, spoken of in terms of the three vehicles' own tenet; or it may have only teaching and not meaning, spoken of in terms of the One Vehicle as the Common Teaching; or it may have neither teaching nor meaning, spoken of in terms of the One Vehicle as its own Separate Teaching — because, from that standpoint, it is merely what is being pointed at.
As for the One Vehicle's three statements: it may possess both teaching and meaning, spoken of in terms of its own Separate Teaching; or it may have only meaning and not teaching, spoken of in terms of the Common Teaching; or it may have neither teaching nor meaning, spoken of solely in terms of the three-vehicle teaching, because its inexhaustible teaching and meaning remain hidden from that standpoint.
As for the combined treatment: it may be that teaching and meaning together count as teaching, when the three vehicles are considered against the One Vehicle; or that teaching and meaning together count as meaning, when the One Vehicle is considered against the three vehicles; or it may possess all three of these statements at once, spoken of in terms of the Common Teaching; or it may possess teaching and meaning fully in every single case, each spoken of according to the distinctions proper to its own tenet.
This grid is easy to get lost in, so it helps to notice what it is actually doing: the same fact — that the three vehicles are an expedient means — reads completely differently depending on which standpoint asks the question. Asked from inside the three vehicles' own tenet, of course they have both teaching and meaning; nothing looks incomplete from within. Asked from the Common Teaching's standpoint, the three vehicles turn out to have taught something without yet meaning it, since their real meaning was always the still-undisclosed One. Asked from the Separate Teaching's standpoint, they collapse further still, into mere pointers with no independent standing of their own at all. Nothing about the three vehicles themselves has changed across these three readings — only the position from which "teaching" and "meaning" are being measured. This relativizing move, run so exhaustively here, is the same maneuver the whole treatise depends on whenever it ranks one teaching above another: rank is always relative to a standpoint, even when Fazang is quite confident about which standpoint is highest.
4. What Benefit Each Teaching Confers 攝益分齊
Having sorted teaching from meaning, Fazang turns to the second half of Gate Two: not what a teaching says, but what it actually delivers to the person who receives it — and whether that delivery happens all at once, or in stages.
二明攝益分齊者。於中有三。一或唯攝界內機令得出世益。即以為究竟。此約三乘當宗說。亦如瑜伽等辨。二或攝界外機。令得出出世益方為究竟。此有二種。若先以三乘令其得出。後乃方便得一乘者。此即一乘三乘和合說故屬同教攝。亦名迴三入一教。此如法華經說。若先於一乘已成解行。後於出世身上證彼法者。即屬別教一乘攝。此如小相品說。三或通攝二機令得二益。此亦有二。若先以三乘引出。後令得一乘。亦是三一和合攝機成二益。故屬同教。此如法華經說。若界內見聞。出世得法。出出世證成。或界內通見聞解行。出世唯解行。出出世唯證入。此等屬別教一乘。此如華嚴說。
Second, clarifying the boundaries of benefit conferred: this has three parts. One, it may gather in only those with faculties suited to what is within the border, causing them to attain the benefit of leaving the world, taken as final. This is spoken of in terms of the three vehicles' own tenet, and is also as the Yogācārabhūmi and the like explain.
Two, it may gather in those with faculties suited to what is beyond the border, causing them to attain the benefit of leaving the world beyond the world, taken as final. This is of two kinds. If a being is first, by means of the three vehicles, caused to escape, and only afterward, through an expedient means, comes to attain the One Vehicle, this is spoken of as the One Vehicle and the three vehicles combined, and so belongs to the Common Teaching; it is also called the teaching of "turning the three back into the one." This is as the Lotus Sūtra teaches. If, instead, one has already accomplished understanding and practice within the One Vehicle from the start, and only afterward, upon a body that has left the world, realizes that dharma, this belongs to the One Vehicle as its own Separate Teaching, as the "Chapter on Lesser Marks" teaches.
Three, it may gather in both kinds of faculties together, causing them to attain both benefits. This, too, is of two kinds. If beings are first drawn out by means of the three vehicles, and afterward caused to attain the One Vehicle, this too is the three and the one combined, gathering in faculties to accomplish two benefits, and so belongs to the Common Teaching — this is as the Lotus Sūtra teaches. If, within the border, there is seeing and hearing; beyond the world, the Dharma is attained; and beyond the world's own beyond, it is realized and accomplished — or if, within the border, seeing, hearing, understanding, and practice are all present together, while beyond the world there is only understanding and practice, and beyond the world's own beyond there is only realization and entry — these belong to the One Vehicle as its own Separate Teaching, as the Avataṃsaka teaches.
迴三入一教, "the teaching of turning the three back into the one," names exactly the pattern of the Lotus parable as Fazang reads it throughout these first three parts: a person genuinely practices and completes a three-vehicle path first, and only afterward, through a further expedient device, is redirected into the One Vehicle. Fazang contrasts this two-stage pattern with the Avataṃsaka's own pattern, in which understanding and practice within the One Vehicle come first, and it is only their fruit — realization "upon a body that has left the world" — that comes later. Both patterns lead somewhere real; they simply run in opposite order, and that ordering is itself one more way this treatise distinguishes the Common Teaching from the Separate Teaching.
Part Three Complete
This closes Part Three, and with it Gate One of the ten: root and branch fused into a single dharma-realm through four exhaustive standpoints; and the whole of Gate Two, teaching and meaning, and the benefit each teaching actually confers, run through every combination of the three positions established across these opening parts.
Part Four turns to Gate Three — a survey, unusually historical for this treatise, of ten earlier Chinese Buddhist teachers and the classification schemes each proposed for organizing the whole of the Buddha's teaching, from Bodhiruci's single voice to Zhiyi's four teachings to Xuanzang's three turnings of the Dharma-wheel — the ground Fazang's own scheme of Five Teachings, given in Part 5, will need in order to be understood as an intervention in a live and crowded debate.