Combining Vehicle and Teaching, and When Each Was First Taught
Combining the Vehicles and Teachings, and the Sequence in Which the Teachings Arose乘教開合・起教前後
Gate Five takes everything sorted so far — the vehicles from Part 2, the Five Teachings from Part 5 — and shows how each folds into and gathers the others, root within branch and branch within root, like nested mirrors. Gate Six then asks a much stranger question of the same material: not what each teaching says, but precisely when, in real time, each one was first spoken. The answer reaches all the way back to a single ocean-seal absorption beneath the bodhi tree, seven days after the Buddha's awakening, where — Fazang argues — the entire content of Buddhist teaching, past, present, and future, was already displayed at once.
The Text
1. Root Teaching and Branch Teaching, Counted Five Ways 約教開合
第五乘教開合者。於中有三。初約教開合。二以教攝乘。三諸教相收。初約教者。然此五教相攝融通有其五義。一或總為一。謂本末鎔融唯一大善巧法。二或開為二。一本教。謂別教一乘為諸教本故。二末教。謂小乘三乘。從彼所流故。又名究竟及方便。以三乘小乘望一乘悉為方便故。三或開為三。謂一乘三乘小乘教。以方便中開出愚法二乘故。四或分為四。謂小乘漸頓圓。以始終二教俱在言等故。五或散為五。謂如上說。
Fifth, combining the vehicles and the teachings: this has three parts. First, combining in terms of teaching. Second, gathering the vehicles by means of the teachings. Third, how the teachings mutually gather each other in.
As for the first, in terms of teaching: these Five Teachings, when gathered and fused together, have five senses. One, they may be gathered as a single one — root and branch fused into a single, great, skillful means. Two, they may be opened into two: one, the root teaching, meaning the One Vehicle as its own Separate Teaching, since it is the root of all the teachings; two, the branch teaching, meaning the Lesser Vehicle and the three vehicles, since they flow from that root — also named "the ultimate" and "the expedient," since the three vehicles and the Lesser Vehicle, judged against the One Vehicle, are all expedient means. Three, they may be opened into three: the One Vehicle, the three-vehicle teaching, and the Lesser Vehicle teaching, since the Dharma-ignorant two vehicles are opened out separately from within the expedient means. Four, they may be divided into four: the Lesser Vehicle, the Gradual, the Sudden, and the Perfect, since the Initial and Final Teachings are alike included within "the Gradual," bound to words. Five, they may be scattered into five, as already explained above.
"Root" and "branch" 本末 reprise the same pairing Part 1 used to close its tenth proof, and Part 3 used to fuse the One Vehicle and the three vehicles into one dharma-realm. Here it takes on its most concrete form yet: the Separate Teaching is quite literally named "the root teaching" 本教, and everything else — Lesser Vehicle, three vehicles, the whole of the Common Teaching — is "the branch teaching" 末教, flowing out from it the way branches grow from a trunk. The same relationship can be counted as one thing (a single fused skillful means), two (root versus branch), three, four, or five, depending only on how finely the branch side is subdivided — the root itself never multiplies.
2. The One Vehicle and the Three Vehicles, Each Counted Five Ways 以教攝乘
二以教攝乘者有二。先一乘隨教有五。一別教一乘云云。二同教一乘云云。三絕想一乘。如楞伽。此頓教。四約佛性平等為一乘等。此終教云云。五密義意一乘。如八意等。此約始教云云。二明三乘亦有五。一小乘中三。謂始別終同。以俱羅漢故。二始教中三。始終俱別。以有入寂故。三終教中三。始終俱同並成佛故。四頓教中三。始終俱離云云。五圓教中三。始終俱同。汝等所行是菩薩道等故云云。
Second, as for gathering the vehicles by means of the teachings, there are two. First, the One Vehicle, following the teachings, has five senses. One, the One Vehicle as its own Separate Teaching, and so on. Two, the One Vehicle as the Common Teaching, and so on. Three, the One Vehicle of thought cut off, as in the Laṅkāvatāra — this belongs to the Sudden Teaching. Four, the One Vehicle in terms of buddha-nature's equality, and so on — this belongs to the Final Teaching, and so on. Five, the One Vehicle in the sense of hidden meaning and intent, as with the eight intentions and the like — this belongs to the Initial Teaching, and so on.
Second, clarifying the three vehicles, these too have five senses. One, within the Lesser Vehicle, the three begin as distinct but end the same, since all three alike end in arhatship. Two, within the Initial Teaching, the three are, from beginning to end, distinct, since there are those who enter final cessation without ever becoming buddhas. Three, within the Final Teaching, the three are, from beginning to end, the same, since all alike attain buddhahood. Four, within the Sudden Teaching, the three are, from beginning to end, both set apart from ordinary discourse, and so on. Five, within the Perfect Teaching, the three are, from beginning to end, the same — because "what you are practicing is the bodhisattva path," and so on.
This passage quietly answers a question a careful reader of Part 5 might already be asking: if the One Vehicle is what the Perfect Teaching alone teaches, why does the Sudden Teaching, the Final Teaching, and even the Initial Teaching each get their own version of "the One Vehicle" here? The answer is that "One Vehicle" names a family of related claims, of different strength, scattered across every level of the Five Teachings — the Initial Teaching's One Vehicle is only a hidden, provisional intent behind its surface teaching of three; the Final Teaching's is grounded in buddha-nature's universal presence; the Sudden Teaching's is a wordless unity beyond concepts altogether; and only the Perfect Teaching's own Separate Teaching is the full, unqualified thing this treatise has been arguing for since Part 1. The three vehicles undergo the mirror-image process: whether they "end the same" (in universal buddhahood) or "end distinct" (with some practitioners permanently short of it) turns out to depend entirely on which of the Five Teachings is doing the counting.
3. How the Teachings Gather Each Other In 諸教相收
三諸教相收者有二門。一以本收末門。二以末歸本門。初中於圓內。或唯一圓教。以餘相皆盡故。或具五教。以攝方便故。頓教中或唯一頓教亦以餘相盡故。或具四教。以攝方便故。熟教中或一或三。初教中或一或二。小乘中唯一。皆準上知之。二以末歸本。小乘內或一。以據自宗故。或五。謂於後四教。皆有為方便故。初教中或一。是自宗故。或四。謂於後三教。皆有作方便故。熟教中或一或三。頓教中或一或二。圓教中唯一。皆準上知之。是諸教下所明義理交絡分齊。準此思之。是則諸教本末句數結成教網。大聖善巧長養機緣無不周盡。故此經云。張大教網置生死海。漉人天魚置涅槃岸。此之謂也。
Third, as for how the teachings mutually gather each other in, there are two gates. One, the gate of the root gathering in the branches. Two, the gate of the branches returning to the root.
Within the first: within the Perfect Teaching itself, it may be only the single Perfect Teaching, since every other characteristic is exhausted within it; or it may possess all five teachings, since it gathers in the expedient means leading up to it. Within the Sudden Teaching, it may be only the single Sudden Teaching, since every other characteristic is likewise exhausted within it; or it may possess four teachings, since it gathers in the expedient means. Within the Final Teaching, it may be one, or it may be three. Within the Initial Teaching, it may be one, or it may be two. Within the Lesser Vehicle, it is only one. All this should be understood by analogy with what precedes.
Second, as for the branches returning to the root: within the Lesser Vehicle, it may be one, since this rests on its own tenet alone; or it may be five, since the latter four teachings all serve, in some sense, as its expedient means. Within the Initial Teaching, it may be one, since this is its own tenet; or it may be four, since the latter three teachings all serve, in some sense, as its expedient means. Within the Final Teaching, it may be one, or it may be three. Within the Sudden Teaching, it may be one, or it may be two. Within the Perfect Teaching, it is only one. All this should be understood by analogy with what precedes.
The interlaced boundaries of meaning and principle set out beneath these various teachings should be reflected on accordingly. This is how the root and branches of all the teachings, tallied out in this way, are knotted together into a single net of teaching — the great sage's skillful means, nurturing the capacities and conditions of beings, leaves nothing whatsoever incomplete. Hence the sūtra says: "He spreads the great net of the teaching and casts it over the ocean of birth and death, dredging up the fish that are humans and gods and setting them on the shore of nirvāṇa" — this is what is meant.
Our source reads 頓教中惑唯一頓教, where the surrounding pattern — "it may be only the single X teaching, or it may possess N teachings" — repeated for the Perfect Teaching just before it and implied for every teaching after it, calls for "or" 或 rather than "confusion" 惑. We read it as 或唯一頓教 accordingly; as with the similar point flagged in Part 2, this looks like a transmission error rather than a deliberate technical term.
The "net of teaching" image closing this passage is a fitting summary of the whole exercise: every teaching, from the Lesser Vehicle up through the Perfect, is a knot tied at the intersection of how many other teachings it contains and how many other teachings it is contained by — the Perfect Teaching containing everything and being contained by nothing outside itself, the Lesser Vehicle containing nothing beyond its own tenet while being contained by everything above it. A net, not a ladder: each teaching's position is defined by its relations to every other, not by a single independent rung.
4. The Root Teaching That Accords with the Dharma 稱法本教
Gate Six asks when, in the Buddha's own teaching career, each of these teachings was first delivered — and the answer for the root teaching turns out to require rethinking what "when" even means.
第六教起前後者。於中有二。初明稱法本教。二明逐機末教。初者謂別教一乘。即佛初成道第二七日。在菩提樹下。猶如日出先照高山。於海印定中同時演說十十法門。主伴具足圓通自在。該於九世十世盡因陀羅微細境界。即於此時一切因果理事等一切前後法門。乃至末代流通舍利見聞等事。並同時顯現。何以故。卷舒自在故。舒則該於九世。卷則在於一時。此卷即舒舒又即卷。何以故。同一緣起故。無二相故。經本云。於一塵中。建立三世一切佛事等。又云。於一念中。即八相成道。乃至涅槃流通舍利等。廣如經說。是故依此普聞。一切佛法並於第二七日。一時前後說。前後一時說。如世間印法。讀文則句義前後。印之則同時顯現。同時前後理不相違。當知此中道理亦爾。準以思之。
Sixth, the sequence in which the teachings first arose: this has two parts. First, clarifying the root teaching that accords with the Dharma. Second, clarifying the branch teaching that follows beings' capacities.
As for the first: this is the One Vehicle as its own Separate Teaching. It is taught at the second seven-day period after the Buddha first accomplished the Way, beneath the bodhi tree — just as the sun, on rising, first shines on the high mountains. Within the ocean-seal absorption, he expounds, all at once, the ten-times-ten dharma-gates, host and retinue fully present, perfectly interpenetrating and self-mastered, encompassing the nine times and the ten times, exhausting the subtle and fine domain of Indra's Net. At this very moment, all causes and fruits, principle and phenomena, and every dharma-gate whatsoever, earlier or later — down to the relics and their transmission, the seeing and hearing of the final age, and all such matters — appear all together, at the same time. Why is this? Because rolling up and unfolding are both freely self-mastered: unfolded, it encompasses the nine times; rolled up, it is within a single moment. This "rolled up" simply is "unfolded," and "unfolded" simply is, again, "rolled up." Why is this? Because it is one and the same dependent origination, without a second mark. The sūtra text itself says: "Within a single mote of dust, all the buddha-deeds of the three times are established," and so on; and again: "Within a single thought-moment, the eight aspects of accomplishing the Way, down to nirvāṇa and the transmission of the relics, all occur," and so on — set out at length, as the sūtra teaches.
For this reason, according to this universal hearing, the whole of the Buddha-Dharma is, all at once, taught earlier-and-later within that second seven-day period — spoken earlier-and-later, yet all at one time. It is like the seal-method of the ordinary world: reading the text, its clauses and meaning run one after another; but stamped as a seal, they appear all at the same instant. "At the same time" and "earlier-and-later" do not, in principle, contradict each other — one should know that the principle at work here is likewise so. Reflect on it accordingly.
海印三昧, the "ocean-seal absorption," names the very samādhi this treatise's opening line said it would unfold — "the teaching and meaning of the One Vehicle contained in the Tathāgata's ocean-seal absorption." The image is of a vast, perfectly still ocean whose surface, precisely because it is unmoved and unbroken, reflects the whole of the sky, every star and cloud, all at once — the way a wax seal presses an entire, complex design onto paper in a single instant, rather than tracing it stroke by stroke. Fazang uses it here to make an extraordinary claim: that everything spoken, done, and transmitted across the Buddha's entire teaching career, and even after his final nirvāṇa, was already fully present — "rolled up" — within a single moment beneath the bodhi tree, needing only to "unfold" across historical time to become the sequence of sūtras and events later generations would experience one after another.
This same rolling-and-unfolding relationship between a single instant and the whole of time recurs, worked out sūtra-narrative rather than treatise-argument, in the Avataṃsaka's own Gaṇḍavyūha — most famously when Sudhana enters Maitreya's tower and witnesses the bodhisattva's entire immeasurable career unfold within what, outside the tower, has been no time at all. Indra's Net, mentioned here as the domain the ocean-seal absorption exhausts, receives its own full technical treatment much later in this treatise, among the Ten Mysterious Gates.
5. The Three Vehicles — Same Time, Different Place 逐機末教・三乘
二逐機末教者。謂三乘等有二義。一與一乘同時異處說。二異時異處說。初義者是同教故。末不離本故。依本而成故。後義者本末相分故。與本非一故。此二各有二義。一三乘。二小乘。初者密迹力士經說。佛初成道竟。七日思惟已。即於鹿園中以眾寶等莊嚴法座。廣集三乘眾。梵王請佛為轉法輪。廣益三乘眾。得大小等果。乃至廣說如彼經中。又大品經云。佛初在鹿野轉四諦法輪。無量眾生發聲聞心。無量眾生發獨覺心。無量眾生發阿耨多羅三藐三菩提心行六波羅蜜。無量菩薩得無生忍。住初地二地乃至十地。無量一生補處菩薩一時成佛。解云。以此教證。當知最初第二七日。即說三乘法。與一乘同時說也。
Second, as for the branch teaching that follows beings' capacities: the three vehicles and the rest have two senses. One, taught at the same time as the One Vehicle, but in a different place. Two, taught at a different time and in a different place. The first sense holds because it is the Common Teaching: the branch is not separate from the root, since it is accomplished in dependence on the root. The second sense holds because root and branch are here divided apart from each other, since they are not identical with the root. Each of these two, in turn, has two aspects: one, the three vehicles; two, the Lesser Vehicle.
As for the first: the Sūtra of the Vajra-Wielding Guardian says that, once the Buddha had first accomplished the Way and reflected for seven days, he arranged, in the Deer Park, a Dharma-seat adorned with every kind of jewel, and gathered a great assembly of the three vehicles; Brahmā requested the Buddha to turn the wheel of the Dharma, greatly benefiting the assembly of the three vehicles, who attained fruits great and small — and so on at length, as in that sūtra. The Larger Perfection of Wisdom also says: when the Buddha was first at Deer Park turning the wheel of the Four Truths, measureless sentient beings gave rise to the mind of a śrāvaka, measureless sentient beings gave rise to the mind of a solitary buddha, and measureless sentient beings gave rise to the mind set on unsurpassed, perfect awakening and practiced the six pāramitās; measureless bodhisattvas attained the acceptance of the non-arising of dharmas and abided on the first ground, the second ground, and on up to the tenth ground; and measureless bodhisattvas who were one lifetime away from buddhahood all became buddhas at that very time. Explanation: on the evidence of this teaching, one should know that, in that very first second seven-day period, the dharma of the three vehicles was already being taught — spoken at the same time as the One Vehicle.
6. The Lesser Vehicle, Same Time — and Why the Place Differs 逐機末教・小乘
二小乘者。如彌沙塞律說。佛初成道竟入三昧。七日後乃於鹿野苑而轉法輪。故知小乘亦與一乘同時說也。又普曜經云。第二七日。提謂等五百賈人。施佛麨蜜。佛與授記當得作佛等。此經所說雖通三乘等教有義亦攝人天等法。亦與一乘同時說也。問說時既同。何故說處別耶。答為約時處寄顯法故。須同異也。故地論云。時處等校量顯示勝故。同時者。顯是同教故。異處者。示非別教故。如別教一乘在菩提樹下說者。欲明此是得菩提處即顯如來自所得法稱本而說故。不移處說也。餘三乘等法。欲明逐機改異故。移處就機鹿園而說。顯非本也。
Second, as for the Lesser Vehicle: the Mahīśāsaka Vinaya says that, once the Buddha had first accomplished the Way, he entered samādhi, and only after seven days did he turn the wheel of the Dharma at Deer Park — hence we know that the Lesser Vehicle, too, was taught at the same time as the One Vehicle. The Lalitavistara also says that, in the second seven-day period, Trapuṣa and the other five hundred merchants offered the Buddha parched grain and honey, and the Buddha bestowed on them the prediction that they would attain buddhahood, and so on. What this sūtra teaches, though it belongs to the three-vehicle teachings and the like in its content, also includes the dharma of humans and gods — and this, too, was taught at the same time as the One Vehicle.
Question: if the time of teaching is the same, why does the place of teaching differ? Answer: it is precisely by relying on time and place to disclose the Dharma that both sameness and difference are needed. Hence the Daśabhūmika-śāstra says: comparing time, place, and the rest serves to reveal what is superior. Sameness of time reveals that this is the Common Teaching; difference of place shows that it is not the Separate Teaching. As for the One Vehicle in its own Separate Teaching being taught beneath the bodhi tree — this is meant to make clear that this is the very place of attaining bodhi, thereby showing that the Tathāgata speaks the dharma he himself has attained, in accordance with the root, without moving to another place to teach it. The remaining teachings of the three vehicles and the rest, wishing to make clear that they change and adapt according to beings' capacities, move to another place — Deer Park, suited to those capacities — to be taught, thereby showing that they are not the root.
7. Both Time and Place Differ 時處俱異
第二時處俱異者。由與一乘不即義故。時處俱別也。或三七日後說。如法華經。或六七日後說。如四分律及薩婆多論說。或七七日乃說。如興起行經。或八七日乃說。如十誦律說。或五十七日後說。如大智論說。或一年不說法。經十二年方度五人。如十二遊經說。有人解云。智論五十七日者。即五十箇七日。與十二遊經一年同也。以此等教證當知。三乘小乘教。並非第二七日說。由與一乘教差別故。隨機宜故。餘可準知。
As for the second sense, where time and place both differ: because it is a matter of not being identical with the One Vehicle, both time and place are set apart. In some accounts it was taught after three seven-day periods, as the Lotus Sūtra says; in some, after six seven-day periods, as the Four-Part Vinaya and the Mahāvibhāṣā say; in some, only after seven seven-day periods, as the Sūtra on the Arising of Actions says; in some, only after eight seven-day periods, as the Sarvāstivāda Vinaya says; in some, only after fifty-seven days, as the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra says; in some, no Dharma was taught for a full year, and it was only after twelve years that the five ascetics were finally brought across, as the Sūtra of the Twelve Journeys says. Some explain that the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra's "fifty-seven days" actually means fifty sets of seven days, which comes to the same one year as in the Sūtra of the Twelve Journeys. On the evidence of these various teachings, one should know that the three-vehicle and Lesser-Vehicle teachings were, none of them, spoken in that second seven-day period, since they differ from the One Vehicle's own teaching, following instead what suits each capacity. The rest may be understood by analogy.
This pile-up of conflicting timelines — three weeks, six weeks, seven weeks, eight weeks, fifty-seven days, a full silent year — is not a problem Fazang is trying to solve away. Chinese Buddhist scholiasts inherited a genuinely disordered set of scriptural claims about how long the Buddha waited before teaching, each anchored to a different Vinaya or sūtra tradition, and the raw material assembled here is close kin to what, in Zhiyi's Tiantai school, hardened into the famous "five periods" 五時 chronology of the Buddha's teaching career. Fazang's own use of the same raw material serves a narrower purpose: every one of these competing timelines agrees on one thing, that whatever the exact count, none of them place the three-vehicle or Lesser-Vehicle teaching in the second seven-day period specifically — the one period every source agrees is when the root teaching, the Avataṃsaka, was delivered. The chronological disagreement among the branch teachings is, if anything, further evidence for how uniquely fixed and undisputed the root teaching's own moment is.
Part Six Complete
This closes Part Six: the Five Teachings and the vehicles, each shown folding into and gathering the others as root and branch; and the sequence in which every teaching first arose, from the single, all-encompassing moment of the ocean-seal absorption to the branch teachings' scattered, disputed timelines of three weeks, six weeks, or twelve years later.
Part Seven turns to why, if the root teaching and the branch teachings really were spoken at the same time, different beings perceive such wildly different sequences at all — ten kinds of disciple, and ten ways the very same teaching career can be heard.