The Tenth Mysterious Gate, and Why Few Can Believe This Teaching
An Ordinary Thing, Rightly Seen — and the Ten Mysterious Gates Close託事顯法生解門
The tenth gate is the plainest of the ten, and in some ways the most demanding: an ordinary phenomenon, seen rightly, discloses the whole Dharma directly, without needing to stand for anything beyond itself. With it named, Fazang closes the entire Ten Mysterious Gates section — the doctrinal center of this whole treatise — with his own summary, and with the Avataṃsaka's own unflinching admission that almost no one, in any world, actually believes a teaching this vast.
Gate 10 — A Thing Relied Upon Discloses the Dharma Directly
The tenth gate explains why the Avataṃsaka reaches so often for jewels, kings, and clouds: not as poetic decoration standing in for an abstract idea kept safely elsewhere, but as the Dharma itself, disclosed exactly there, in that image, without residue.
十者託事顯法生解門。此上諸義隨託之事。以別顯別法。謂諸理事等一切法門。如此經中說十種寶王雲等事相者。此即諸法門也。顯上諸義可貴故。立寶以表之。顯上諸義自在故。標王以表之。顯上諸義潤益故。資澤故。齗齗故。以雲標之矣。如是等事云云無量。如經思之。
Tenth is the gate of relying upon a thing to disclose the Dharma and give rise to understanding 託事顯法生解門. All the topics discussed above, by way of whatever thing they are attached to, disclose, distinctly, a distinct dharma — that is to say, every dharma-gate of principle and phenomenon and the rest. As when the sūtra speaks of the ten kinds of jewel-king clouds and similar phenomena — these are exactly dharma-gates in themselves. To manifest that the topics above are precious, a jewel is set up to represent them; to manifest that the topics above are autonomous, a king is designated to represent them; to manifest that the topics above moisten and benefit, nourish and enrich, and press on unceasingly, a cloud is used to mark them. Phenomena of this kind are without measure; they should be considered as the sūtra itself presents them.
問三乘中以有此義。與此何別。答三乘託異事相表顯異理。今此一乘所託之事相。即是彼所現道理。更無異也。具足一切理事教義及上諸法門。無不攝盡者也。宜可如理思之。
Question: The three vehicles also have this device — how does it differ here? Answer: Within the three vehicles, a distinct phenomenon is relied upon to represent a distinct principle, separate from it. Within this One Vehicle, however, the very phenomenon relied upon is itself exactly the principle it manifests — there is no further distinction between the two at all. It is replete with, and gathers in without remainder, every dharma-gate of principle and phenomenon, teaching and meaning, and all the topics discussed above. This should be considered according to principle.
This is the most demanding of the ten gates precisely because it looks, at first, like ordinary religious symbolism, and Fazang is insisting that it is not. In an ordinary allegorical reading, a jewel stands for preciousness, a king stands for sovereignty, a cloud stands for nourishment — the image is a sign pointing away from itself, toward a separate truth the reader is meant to extract and then, in principle, discard the picture that delivered it. Fazang's claim for the One Vehicle is stronger and stranger: the jewel does not point to preciousness from a distance — the jewel, seen rightly, simply is the Dharma's own preciousness, with nothing left over once the phenomenon has been seen for what it truly is. This is why the gate is not "symbol reveals meaning" but "reliance on a thing gives rise to understanding" — the understanding arises directly from the thing itself, not from decoding a message the thing was carrying on behalf of something else.
Fazang's Own Summary of the Ten Mysterious Gates
With all ten gates now named, Fazang steps back to say what the whole section has been doing — and points, explicitly, to the Six Characteristics as the device by which a reader can hold all ten together without getting lost.
此上十門等解釋。及上本文十義等。皆悉同時會融。成一法界緣起具德門。普眼境界諦觀察餘時。但在大解大行大見聞心中。然此十門隨一門中即攝餘門無不皆盡。應以六相方便而會通之。可準。上來所明並是略顯別教一乘緣起義耳。又於其中諸餘法相及問答除疑等。與彼三乘或同或異。所目所設為方便等。廣如經論疏鈔孔目及問答中於彼釋矣。與彼三乘全別不同。宜可廣依華嚴經普眼境界準思之。
These ten gates of explanation above, together with the ten topics of the original text discussed earlier, are all, entirely, fused together at once, constituting a single gate of the dependent origination of the dharma-realm replete with virtue. As for truly contemplating the realm of the universal eye at any time beyond this — that lies only within a mind of great understanding, great practice, great seeing and hearing. Yet within any single one of these ten gates, the rest are all already gathered in without remainder — and this should be reconciled and understood by means of the device of the Six Characteristics; this may be taken as a guide.
Everything explained above only briefly manifests the meaning of dependent origination belonging to the One Vehicle as its own Separate Teaching. As for the remaining characteristics of dharmas within it, and the questions and answers resolving doubts, these are, in some respects, the same as the three vehicles, and in other respects different — what is pointed to, and what is established as skillful means, is explained at length elsewhere, in commentaries, sub-commentaries, topical outlines, and question-and-answer treatments of the sūtras and treatises. This teaching is, in every respect, wholly distinct from the three vehicles, and should be considered broadly in accordance with the Avataṃsaka Sūtra's own realm of the universal eye.
Fazang's closing instruction here is a genuine key to the whole section, and worth holding onto through Parts 33 and 34: he does not leave the reader with ten separate mysteries to memorize side by side, but points explicitly to "the device of the Six Characteristics" — the Total, the Particular, the Identical, the Different, the Formative, and the Disintegrating — as the tool for reconciling and unifying all ten gates into a single coherent vision. This is not a passing remark. It means the Six Characteristics, worked out in full over the treatise's last two parts through the simile of a rafter and a house, are not a separate, additional teaching tacked on at the very end almost as an afterthought — they are the master key Fazang has been holding in reserve the entire time, the explanation of how mutual identity and mutual inclusion actually operate underneath every one of the ten gates just surveyed.
The Evidence for a Vehicle Beyond the Three
A skeptical question returns to ground: this all sounds different from the three vehicles, but where, in the sūtra's own words, is the evidence that a genuinely separate One Vehicle exists at all? Fazang's answer is a verse that turns, without warning, into a confession about how rare belief in any of this actually is.
問此上道理。與彼三乘義別不同此可信矣。又以何文證知三乘外別有一乘耶。答此經自有誠文。故偈云。一切世界群生類。尠有欲求聲聞道。求緣覺者轉復少。求大乘者甚希有。求大乘者猶為易。能信是法甚為難。良由此法出情難信。是故聖者將彼三乘對比決之。
Question: That the principle explained above is different from the meaning of the three vehicles is now credible. But by what textual evidence can it be known that, beyond the three vehicles, there exists a separate One Vehicle? Answer: The sūtra has its own explicit text on this. Its verse says: "Among the multitudes of beings in every world, few wish to seek the path of the śrāvaka; those who seek the way of the pratyekabuddha are fewer still; those who seek the Great Vehicle are rarer yet — and even seeking the Great Vehicle is still the easier thing; to be able to believe this Dharma is far harder still." It is truly because this Dharma goes beyond ordinary feeling that it is hard to believe — and it is for this reason that the sages set it against the three vehicles, to settle the matter by comparison.
Four Vehicles, Matched to Four Kinds of Disciple
A second verse sorts the vehicles by the capacity of the beings each one is taught to — closing, at the top, on the One Vehicle reserved for a mind that will settle for nothing less than the whole.
又偈云。若眾生下劣其心厭沒者。示以聲聞道。令出於眾苦。小乘也。若復有眾生。諸根少明利。樂於因緣法。為說辟支佛。中乘也。若人根明利。有大慈悲心。饒益諸眾生。為說菩薩道。即大乘也。若有無上心。決定欲大事。為示於佛身。說無盡佛法。一乘也。
Another verse says: "If sentient beings are of inferior capacity, their minds sunk and despondent, one shows them the path of the śrāvaka, so as to bring them out of their many sufferings" — this is the Lesser Vehicle. "If there are sentient beings whose faculties are somewhat clear and sharp, who delight in the dharma of causes and conditions, one teaches them the way of the pratyekabuddha" — this is the Middle Vehicle. "If a person's faculties are clear and sharp, and there is a mind of great compassion that would benefit all sentient beings, one teaches for them the path of the bodhisattva" — this is exactly the Great Vehicle. "If there is a mind set on nothing less than the supreme, resolved upon the great matter, one shows for them the buddha-body, and teaches the inexhaustible Buddha-Dharma" — this is the One Vehicle.
Why the Buddha's Ten Bodies Are Shown to So Few
Fazang closes by explaining why the buddha-bodies taught within the three vehicles look smaller than the "ten bodies" this treatise has been describing all along — and by returning, one last time, to the claim that opened this entire section back in Part 28: that the One Vehicle treats inexhaustibility as its own virtue, where the three vehicles treat it as a fault to be avoided.
由此一乘非下機堪受。是故大聖善巧。於彼三乘位中隨其機欲方便少說。由不窮法界源故。權現二身三身等佛。今為如是無上心機樂大事方始現佛十身境界。說無盡佛法耳。名現佛身說無盡佛法也。三乘但隨機而已。未顯諸佛十身自境界故。非現佛身。又隨機少說一相一寂一味理等。非窮盡說也。何以故三乘以此無窮為過失故。然此一乘以無窮為實德故耳。
Because this One Vehicle is not something a lesser capacity can receive, the great sages, skillfully, teach only a little, by way of expedient means, matched to the faculties and wishes of beings at the stages of the three vehicles — and because this does not exhaust the source of the dharma-realm, buddhas are provisionally shown as possessing two bodies, or three bodies, and the like. Only for those of this supreme mind and capacity, who delight in the great matter, is the buddha's realm of the ten bodies at last displayed, and the inexhaustible Buddha-Dharma taught — this alone is called "manifesting the buddha-body and teaching the inexhaustible Buddha-Dharma." The three vehicles only accord with capacity, and have not yet manifested the buddhas' own realm of the ten bodies — and so they do not manifest the buddha-body in this full sense. Moreover, according with capacity, they teach only briefly of a single characteristic, a single quiescence, a single-flavored principle, and the like — not an exhaustive teaching. Why? Because the three vehicles take this very inexhaustibility to be a fault, whereas this One Vehicle takes inexhaustibility to be its own real virtue.
又此經云。於一世界中。聞說一乘者。或二三四五乃至無量乘。此據本末分齊說耳。聖教文義顯然。不可以執情而驚怪者矣。
The sūtra also says: "Within a single world, those who hear the One Vehicle taught may hear it as two, three, four, five, or even boundless vehicles" — this is spoken only in terms of the bounds between root and branch. The text and meaning of the sagely teaching are plain and evident; one should not be startled into strange doubt through clinging to ordinary feeling.
The phrase "the buddha's realm of the ten bodies" 佛十身境界 closes a loop this section opened at the very start of Part 28, where Fazang first distinguished "the ten buddhas' own realm" — inexpressible, belonging to the fruit alone — from Samantabhadra's realm, reached through cause, which everything in Parts 28 through this part has been an account of. The three vehicles' more familiar "two bodies" (dharma-body and form-body) or "three bodies" (dharma-body, reward-body, and transformation-body) are not, on Fazang's reading, wrong so much as deliberately partial — expedient teachings scaled down to a capacity that could not yet receive the full ten-body reality being pointed to all along.
And it is worth sitting with the verse Fazang chooses to close this entire doctrinal center on. Every other citation across Parts 28 through 32 has been marshaled to prove a point; this one is not making an argument at all — it is a confession, placed in the Avataṃsaka's own mouth, that almost no being in any world actually manages to believe any of it. Seekers of the śrāvaka path are already few; seekers of the pratyekabuddha path fewer still; seekers of the Great Vehicle rarer yet — and then the verse adds, without softening it, that even wanting the Great Vehicle is the easy part. Believing a teaching in which one coin already holds ten, in which a single thought-moment is already buddhahood, in which every mote of dust already contains every world — that is named, plainly, as the harder thing. Fazang offers no reassurance here, no argument designed to make the doctrine easier to accept. He simply lets the sūtra say what it says: that a teaching this total will look, to most people who ever encounter it, like something too large to be true. Whether or not a given reader finds themselves able to believe it, the treatise has by this point shown its whole hand — the Ten Mysterious Gates, from the first coin counted in Part 28 to the buddha's ten bodies here, close as one continuous argument, not a set of separate curiosities. What remains, in Parts 33 and 34, is the promised key: the Six Characteristics, and the ordinary rafter and house that make the whole preceding vision concrete enough to hold in one hand.