The Distinctions in Cultivating That: The Ten Grounds

Vasubandhu lists the ten specific obstructions counteracted at each ground: at the first, the very condition of being an unenlightened, ordinary being; at the second, subtle wrongdoing toward other beings in body, speech, and mind; at the third, a certain sluggishness in retaining what has been heard, reflected on, and cultivated; at the fourth, the most subtle residue of afflictions bound up with an innate sense of self; at the fifth, still wishing for one's own nirvāṇa in a lesser sense; at the sixth, gross characteristics still appearing to consciousness; at the seventh, even subtle characteristics still appearing; at the eighth, effortful engagement with the signless; at the ninth, insufficient spontaneous engagement in benefiting beings; and at the tenth, not yet having complete mastery over all dharmas. He also explains why the same ignorance is called "non-defiling" for śrāvakas but "defiling" for bodhisattvas: śrāvakas, who have no wish to enter these ten grounds in the first place, are simply unaffected by not knowing what a bodhisattva needs to know — it obstructs nothing they are trying to do. For a bodhisattva, whose entire path runs directly through this specific knowledge, the very same ignorance is a genuine defilement, actively blocking progress. And though the dharma-realm's full nature is, in principle, already glimpsed at the first ground, ten distinct grounds are still needed because that first glimpse must be stabilized and deepened through ten successive levels of settled attainment before it becomes fully one's own.

Vasubandhu adds a telling detail to several of these names. The first ground brings a joy śrāvakas simply do not experience in the same way, since their own direct realization accomplishes only their personal benefit, not the shared benefit of self and others that produces a bodhisattva's distinctive rejoicing. The second ground's freedom from defilement is not merely careful rule-keeping, as at the first ground, but discipline that has become the practitioner's actual nature, requiring no deliberate restraint at all. The fifth ground's "difficult union" names something genuinely hard: holding, at once, both the ultimate wisdom that sees no fixed characteristics anywhere and the ordinary, discriminating wisdom needed to function skillfully in the world — two ways of knowing that pull against each other until this ground finally reconciles them. And the tenth ground's cloud image works two ways at once, Vasubandhu notes: the great mass of retention and absorption gateways gathered "within" this wisdom is like water held inside a cloud, while that same wisdom's capacity to cover and dissolve every remaining vast obstruction is like a cloud spreading to cover the whole sky.

These four aspects trace the same overall arc already familiar from Part 4's account of the path: conviction, corresponding to the earlier stage of resolute conduct; penetration, corresponding to the path of seeing, where the dharma-realm's single nature is glimpsed all at once, in a way that already implicitly reaches every one of the ten grounds even though each still needs to be separately stabilized; correct practice, corresponding to the sustained work of the path of cultivation; and complete fulfillment, corresponding to the path's ultimate completion. The same underlying reality is engaged differently at each stage — first believed, then directly seen, then practiced, then finally brought to its own completion.

Vasubandhu pairs the five modes of cultivation with their five specific fruits. "Gathering everything together" and "free of characteristics" together dissolve, moment by moment, the deep karmic burden of habituated obstructions built up since beginningless time — the same "coarse and heavy" (麁重) seeds discussed at length in Part 2. "Free of effort" produces a joy that comes from no longer needing to strain against the manifold conceptions ordinary experience is built from — a genuine rest, likened to a garden one can simply dwell in. "Blazing vigorously" produces an ever-widening comprehension of the Dharma's own light, without any sense of limit. And "free of easy satisfaction" — refusing to settle for what has already been attained — produces both the effortless, non-discriminating engagement of a mind approaching full purity, and the continued gathering of ever-better causes all the way to the dharma-body's final completion at buddhahood, glossed by Vasubandhu as "completion" proper belonging fully only to the eleventh, buddha ground beyond the tenth.

Vasubandhu is careful to head off a possible misunderstanding: saying that "generosity is cultivated at the first ground" does not mean the other five perfections are absent there, only that generosity is the predominant, most emphasized practice at that particular stage — every perfection, in fact, is practiced at every ground, "according to one's capacity and portion." The four additional perfections named for the latter four grounds — skillful means, vows, power, and wisdom in its fullest sense — are not really separate from the original six, but are the wisdom-perfection's own subsequently-attained wisdom (introduced in Part 4's illusionist simile) unpacked into four more specific functions: dedicating merit skillfully, sustaining aspiration through vows, ensuring the six perfections never lapse through the joint power of reflection and habituated practice, and finally using accumulated wisdom to benefit others directly. Vasubandhu closes by noting that the entire ten-ground teaching belongs to what he calls "the treasury of the perfections" — the Great Vehicle's own body of teaching, as distinct from the Śrāvaka canon — and that it is taught identically across every buddha-land by every buddha, which is why it holds the most authoritative possible place within Mahāyāna scripture.

Vasubandhu clarifies that these are not five different people but five successive stages of the very same practitioner, named the way a single person is called a stream-enterer, then a once-returner, then a non-returner at different points along the śrāvaka path. The practitioner of resolute conduct completes the first incalculable eon during the stage of resolute conduct explained in Part 4; upon directly penetrating suchness, the same practitioner becomes the practitioner of pure, superior resolve, known as the practitioner "with characteristics" through the first six grounds and "without characteristics, yet still effortful" at the seventh, completing the second incalculable eon; entering the eighth ground, the same practitioner becomes the practitioner of effortless practice, whose effortlessness only reaches full maturity at the ninth and tenth grounds, completing the third incalculable eon there. He closes by explaining the verse's terms: "the power of purity" is the strength of one's own accumulated wholesome roots, ensuring what is to be counteracted cannot overpower it; "the power of superior resolve" is the strength of one's own great vows, ensuring one continually meets good spiritual friends; and "a firm mind" that "continues to advance" names bodhicitta so settled that no negative influence can dislodge it, sustaining wholesome growth, without exception, across every single lifetime until buddhahood is reached.