How Long Practice Takes — Three Countless Kalpas, Counted Five Ways
Differences in What Is Taught, VII — The Time Practice Takes所詮差別・修行時分
The fourth sub-topic asks a question that sounds almost mathematical: how long does it actually take to become a buddha? Every teaching answers in terms of the asaṃkhyeya kalpa, an "incalculable eon" — and yet no two of them count the same way, place the count against the same body, or even agree that the count is fixed at all. The Perfect Teaching ends the whole question by denying that kalpas and thought-moments were ever really different quantities to begin with.
1. Three Grades of Practitioner, and Two Kinds of Body
The Hīnayāna's answer sorts practitioners by capacity — the fastest śrāvaka needs only three lifetimes, the fastest buddha needs three full incalculable eons — and then supplies the arithmetic for what "incalculable" actually means, before adding a further distinction between a buddha's dharma-body and his ordinary birth-body.
餘義準之。第四修行時分者。若依小乘自有三人。下根者。謂諸聲聞中。極疾三生得阿羅漢果。謂於一生種解脫分。第二生隨順決擇分。第三生漏盡得果。極遲經六十劫。中根者。謂獨覺人極疾四生得果。極遲經百劫。上根者。謂佛定滿三僧祇劫。此中劫數。取水火等一劫為一數。十箇合一為第二數。如是展轉至第六十。為一阿僧祇。依此以數三阿僧祇也。問何故下根返經時少。而上根等乃多時耶。答能於多時修鍊根行等。以為難故。是故多也。
The rest may be understood on this model. Fourth, on the time practice takes: according to the Hīnayāna, there are, of themselves, three kinds of persons. The lowest capacity refers to those among the śrāvakas who, at the very fastest, attain the fruit of arhatship in three lifetimes — planting the portion leading to liberation in the first lifetime, cultivating the portion conforming to determination in the second, and exhausting the outflows to attain the fruit in the third; at the very slowest, this takes sixty kalpas. The middling capacity refers to the pratyekabuddha, who, at the very fastest, attains the fruit in four lifetimes, and at the very slowest takes a hundred kalpas. The highest capacity refers to the Buddha, who is fixed at completing three asaṃkhyeya kalpas. As for the counting of kalpas here: one kalpa of water, fire, and the like is taken as the first unit; ten of these combined make the second unit; and proceeding onward in this way up to the sixtieth unit constitutes a single asaṃkhyeya — and it is by this reckoning that the three asaṃkhyeyas are counted. Question: why does the lowest capacity, on the contrary, pass through so little time, while the highest capacity requires so much more? Answer: to be able to refine one's faculties and practice over a great span of time is itself the harder achievement — this is why it requires more.
又依婆沙等。菩薩成佛有二身。一法身二生身。法身者。謂戒定慧等五分。修此法身具有四時。一三阿僧祇劫。修有漏四波羅蜜時。二於百劫修相好業時。三出家苦行修禪定時。四菩提樹下成正覺時。生身者。但百劫修相好業。於最後身伽耶城淨飯王家受生報身。於摩伽陀國而登覺道。餘如彼說。
Again, according to the Mahāvibhāṣā and similar texts, a bodhisattva's attainment of buddhahood involves two bodies: the dharma-body and the birth-body. The dharma-body consists of the five aggregates of morality, concentration, wisdom, and the rest; cultivating this dharma-body comprises four periods: first, the three asaṃkhyeya kalpas, the time of cultivating the four pāramitās together with outflows; second, the hundred kalpas of cultivating the karma of the [bodily] marks; third, the time of going forth and practicing austerities and meditative concentration; fourth, the time of attaining true awakening beneath the bodhi tree. The birth-body, by contrast, requires only the hundred kalpas of cultivating the karma of the marks, and then, in his final body, receives a birth-body in the house of King Śuddhodana in the city of Kapilavastu, ascending to the path of awakening in the land of Magadha. The rest is as explained there.
The base-sixty escalation — one unit, then ten of those units, doubling in scale sixty times over to reach a single asaṃkhyeya — is deliberately built to defeat ordinary intuition about large numbers; "incalculable" is meant literally, not as a poetic exaggeration. Worth carrying forward is the "hundred kalpas of cultivating the karma of the marks" mentioned here for the birth-body: this specific span reappears, and is treated very differently, in every teaching that follows — the Initial Teaching keeps it as a real requirement, while the Final Teaching drops it entirely, on the grounds that a bodhisattva who cultivates merit and wisdom together from the very start never needed a separate period to acquire a buddha's physical marks.
2. The Initial Teaching: Bigger Numbers, and Three Named Buddhas
The Initial Teaching keeps the three-asaṃkhyeya-kalpa figure but recalculates it on a far larger scale, and then does something the Hīnayāna never attempted: it assigns each of the three eons to a specific named buddha in Śākyamuni's own past, with a scriptural citation to match.
若依始教。修行成佛定經三僧祇。但此劫數不同小乘。何者。此取水火等大劫。數至百千。數此復至百千為一俱胝。名第一數。數此俱胝復至俱胝為第二數。如是次第以所數等數。至第一百名一阿僧祇。此即十大劫數中第一數也。依此數滿三阿僧祇。仍此教中。就釋迦身以分此義。如優婆塞戒經云。我於往昔寶頂佛所滿足第一阿僧祇劫。然燈佛所滿足第二阿僧祇劫。迦葉佛所滿足第三阿僧祇劫。我於往昔釋迦佛所。始發阿耨菩提心。又依本業經。又有百劫修相好業。但是變化非實修也。又以一偈歎弗沙佛已。即迢九劫。但九十一劫即成佛也。問三無數劫修諸實行。應成報身。何故乃就化身說耶。答由此始教就下機故。有二乘故。此身是彼所知見故。是權教故。作是說也。
According to the Initial Teaching, practice culminating in buddhahood is fixed at three asaṃkhyeya kalpas, but the counting of kalpas here differs from the Hīnayāna's. How so? Here, a great kalpa of water, fire, and the like is counted up to a hundred thousand; counting this further up to a hundred thousand makes one koṭi, called the first unit. Counting this koṭi again up to a koṭi makes the second unit; and proceeding in this way, counting each successive unit up to the same number again, one reaches the hundredth unit, called a single asaṃkhyeya — this being the first of the ten great numbers. By this reckoning, the three asaṃkhyeyas are completed. In this teaching, moreover, this meaning is divided out specifically in terms of Śākyamuni's own body. As the Upāsaka-śīla Sūtra says: "In ages past, at the place of the Buddha Ratnaśikhin, I completed the first asaṃkhyeya kalpa; at the place of the Buddha Dīpaṃkara, I completed the second asaṃkhyeya kalpa; at the place of the Buddha Kāśyapa, I completed the third asaṃkhyeya kalpa. And in ages past, at the place of the Buddha Śākyamuni, I first generated the mind of unsurpassed bodhi." Again, according to the Sūtra of the Original Acts, there are also a hundred kalpas of cultivating the karma of the marks — but this is merely a transformation, not real cultivation. Also, by praising the Buddha Puṣya with a single verse, nine kalpas were leapt over at once, so that buddhahood was in fact attained in only ninety-one kalpas. Question: cultivating genuine practice for three incalculable kalpas ought to result in a reward-body — why, then, is it spoken of in terms of a transformation-body? Answer: because this Initial Teaching addresses itself to inferior capacities, there being persons of the two vehicles among its audience, for whom this body is what they are actually capable of perceiving. Since this is a provisional teaching, it speaks in these terms.
The Puṣya Buddha anecdote is a small, striking detail: nine entire kalpas of practice compressed away by the merit of a single verse of praise, so that a nominal ninety-one kalpas of practice count as the completed three incalculable eons. Fazang does not dwell on it, but it is worth noticing that this is the same intuition the Perfect Teaching will push to its limit at the end of this part — that the relationship between practice and time is not as rigid as the numbers suggest. Here it is a single, marked exception; there it becomes the rule.
The final question and answer settle a real tension: three incalculable kalpas of genuine cultivation would ordinarily be expected to produce a buddha's reward-body, the fruit of real practice — yet the Initial Teaching insists the resulting body is a mere transformation-body, provisionally displayed for an audience of limited capacity. This is the same move Part 9 traced for the storehouse consciousness and Part 13 traced for stages: whatever the Initial Teaching describes, however elaborately, is aimed at what its audience can actually receive, not at the deepest fact of the matter.
3. The Final Teaching: Fixed as Local Custom, or Not Fixed at All
The Final Teaching gives two accounts rather than one. The first keeps three asaṃkhyeya kalpas, but demotes the figure to a regional convention rather than a universal fact, since genuine practice produces a genuine reward-body outside of time as ordinarily counted. The second drops the fixed number altogether.
若依終教說有二義。一定三阿僧祇。約一方化儀故。又此教中修實行故成實報身。不約化說。故法華云。我實成佛已來。經於無量無邊百千萬億阿僧祇劫。又經云。我於然燈佛所得授記等。皆以方便分別故也。又亦無百劫修相好業等。何以故。以小乘中偏修智分不修福分。是故臨成佛時。更於百劫別修彼業。始教中引彼亦同彼說。仍是化也。此終教中論其實行。從初發意即福慧雙修。故成佛時無別修也。二不定修三阿僧祇。此有二義。一通餘雜類世界故。如勝天王經說。二據佛功德無限量故。如寶雲經云。善男子。菩薩不能思議如來境界。如來境界不可思量。但為淺近眾生。說三僧祇修習所得。菩薩而實發心已來不可計數。解云。此中不可計數者。是不可計數阿僧祇劫。非但三也。問何故前教定三僧祇此教有定不定耶。答前教生故。此教熟故。方便漸漸勸彼三乘向一乘故。作此說也。
According to the Final Teaching, there are two accounts. The first holds that the three asaṃkhyeya kalpas are fixed, but only with reference to the teaching-ceremony of one particular region; and in this teaching, since genuine practice is cultivated, one attains a genuine reward-body, not spoken of in terms of transformation. Hence the Lotus Sūtra says: "Since I truly attained buddhahood, immeasurable, boundless hundreds of thousands of myriads of koṭis of asaṃkhyeya kalpas have passed." And it also says, elsewhere: "I received the prediction of future buddhahood at the place of the Buddha Dīpaṃkara" — statements of this kind are all made merely by way of provisional distinction. And here, too, there is no separate hundred kalpas of cultivating the karma of the marks. Why is this? Because in the Hīnayāna, one cultivates the portion of wisdom exclusively, without cultivating the portion of merit, and so, on the verge of buddhahood, a hundred further kalpas must be separately spent cultivating that karma — and when the Initial Teaching draws on this account, citing it likewise, it too remains a matter of transformation. In this Final Teaching, discussing genuine practice, merit and wisdom are cultivated together from the very first arising of the intention, and so no separate cultivation is needed when buddhahood is attained. The second account holds that the three asaṃkhyeya kalpas are not fixed at all. This has two meanings. First, because it must extend to other, mixed kinds of world as well, as the Śrīmahādevī Sūtra explains. Second, because a buddha's merit is without limit or measure, as the Ratnamegha Sūtra says: "Good sons, bodhisattvas cannot fathom the Tathāgata's own domain; the Tathāgata's domain cannot be measured by thought. It is only for the sake of shallow, nearsighted beings that the three asaṃkhyeyas' worth of cultivation and attainment is spoken of — in reality, since a bodhisattva first generates the mind, the time that has passed cannot be calculated at all." Explanation: what "cannot be calculated" here means is asaṃkhyeya kalpas beyond calculation, not merely three of them. Question: why does the preceding teaching fix the three asaṃkhyeyas decisively, while this teaching leaves the matter both fixed and unfixed? Answer: because the preceding teaching's audience is still unripe, while this teaching's audience is ripened — in either case, this is said by way of skillful means, gradually urging the three vehicles onward toward the One Vehicle.
The Lotus Sūtra's claim — that Śākyamuni's buddhahood dates back immeasurable, boundless asaṃkhyeya kalpas rather than to a single lifetime under the bodhi tree — is the same claim this site's own Fahua Xuanyi translation examines at length from within Tiantai's own doctrinal classification; Fazang here reads it through Huayan's Final Teaching instead, as evidence that genuine practice produces a genuine reward-body altogether outside the more modest, regionally-pitched three-asaṃkhyeya-kalpa figure. Both readings converge on the same underlying point: the historical Buddha's finite lifetime was never the whole of the story.
Notice the care with which Fazang distinguishes "fixed as regional custom" from "genuinely indeterminate," rather than treating the Final Teaching's two accounts as a simple contradiction. Both serve the same larger strategy this whole sub-topic has traced: whatever number a teaching states plainly is calibrated to what its audience can receive, while the deeper reality it is gesturing toward keeps turning out to be less countable than the number suggests.
4. The Sudden and Perfect Teachings: No Time, and Every Time
The sub-topic closes exactly as consciousness, lineage, and stages all closed: the Sudden Teaching erases the entire question, and the Perfect Teaching answers it so completely that a single thought-moment and countless kalpas turn out not to be different quantities at all.
若依頓教。一切時分皆不可說。但一念不生即是佛故。一念者即無念也。時者即無時也。餘可準思。
According to the Sudden Teaching, no span of time whatsoever can be spoken of at all — a single thought unarisen is itself the buddha. "A single thought" here means no thought; "time" here means no time. The rest may be reflected upon on this model.
若依圓教。一切時分悉皆不定。何以故。謂諸劫相入故。相即故。該通一切因陀羅等諸世界故仍各隨處。或一念或無量劫等。不違時法也。餘準而思之。
According to the Perfect Teaching, every span of time whatsoever is entirely indeterminate. Why is this? Because the kalpas mutually include one another, and are mutually identical with one another, pervading throughout all the worlds of Indra's Net and the like — and yet, according to each respective place, it may be a single thought-moment or it may be countless kalpas, without contradicting the laws of time. The rest may be reflected upon on this model.
Notice, once again, the difference between the Sudden Teaching's "no time" and the Perfect Teaching's "every time" — the same distinction Part 14 drew between the Sudden Teaching's collapse of all stages and the Perfect Teaching's claim that every stage remains distinct while still containing all the others. The Sudden Teaching arrives at timelessness by removing time altogether, along with every other mark; a single thought unarisen simply has no temporal extension to measure. The Perfect Teaching, by contrast, keeps time fully real at every place in the dependently-arisen dharma-realm — Indra's Net, named here for the first time in this collection and unfolded at length in Part 31, is a net of jewels each reflecting all the others, and Fazang's point is that within such a net, a single thought-moment at one node and countless kalpas at another are not in tension, because the kalpas themselves mutually include and are mutually identical with one another. This is the same principle Part 14 used to show that a bodhisattva's first position and last position could both be fully real and fully identical at once — now applied to duration rather than to rank.
Part Fifteen Complete
This closes Part Fifteen: the Hīnayāna's three grades of practitioner and its base-sixty reckoning of the asaṃkhyeya kalpa; the two-body scheme of dharma-body and birth-body from the Mahāvibhāṣā; the Initial Teaching's larger-scale kalpa count, assigned to Śākyamuni across three named past buddhas and shortened by nine kalpas through a single verse of praise; the Final Teaching's two accounts, one keeping three asaṃkhyeya kalpas as regional convention, the other denying any fixed number at all; the Sudden Teaching's erasure of time altogether; and the Perfect Teaching's claim that a single thought-moment and countless kalpas, mutually included and mutually identical throughout Indra's Net, were never really different durations to begin with.
Part Sixteen turns to the fifth and final sub-topic of this block: not how long practice takes, but what kind of body practices at all — whether a bodhisattva's body across the stages is the ordinary, karma-bound body of birth and death, or the subtler transformation-body no longer bound by karma, across all Five Teachings.