Spontaneous, Unceasing Buddha-Activity
Chapter Ten explains how buddha-activity proceeds — spontaneously, without discrimination, awaiting the right time and place the way sunlight simply waits for cloud to clear. Six categories govern the analysis: advancement, quality, fruit, gathering others in, obstruction, and the severing of obstruction — pictured through the ocean's hidden jewels, boundless space, the unmoving earth, and the sun that illumines every being's tathāgata-nature the instant affliction's clouds are blown away.
Chapter Ten: Buddha-Activity Proceeds Spontaneously
論曰：已說無垢諸佛功德，次說諸佛如來作業。彼諸佛業自然而行，常不休息教化眾生應知。此依略說有二種法自然而行。以是義故，依諸佛業自然而行，常不休息常作佛事故，說六偈：
於可化眾生， 以教化方便，
起化眾生業， 教化眾生界。
諸佛自在人， 於可化眾生，
常待處待時， 自然作佛事。
遍覺知大乘， 最妙功德聚，
如大海水寶， 如來智亦爾。
菩提廣無邊， 猶如虛空界，
於無量功德， 大智慧日光，
遍照諸眾生， 有佛妙法身，
無垢功德藏， 如我身無異。
煩惱障智障， 雲霧羅網覆，
諸佛慈悲風， 吹令散滅盡。
The treatise says: the buddhas' stainless qualities have already been explained; next, the buddhas' and tathāgatas' activity will be explained. It should be understood that this buddha-activity proceeds spontaneously, ceaselessly teaching and transforming sentient beings without ever resting. This is, briefly stated, in dependence on two dharmas that proceed spontaneously. For this reason, in dependence on buddha-activity proceeding spontaneously, ceaselessly performing the buddha's work without ever resting, six verses are spoken:
For sentient beings capable of being transformed, by the skillful means of teaching and transforming,
the activity of transforming sentient beings arises, teaching and transforming the realm of sentient beings.
The buddhas, beings of mastery, with regard to sentient beings capable of being transformed,
ever await the right place and await the right time, spontaneously performing the buddha's work.
Fully awakened to and knowing the Mahāyāna, the most wondrous mass of qualities,
like the treasures within the great ocean's water — the Tathāgata's wisdom is likewise.
Bodhi, vast and boundless, is like the realm of empty space; with regard to immeasurable qualities,
the sunlight of great wisdom universally illumines every sentient being, showing that they possess
the buddha's wondrous dharmakāya, the stainless storehouse of qualities, no different from my own body.
The afflictive obstruction and the cognitive obstruction, covering like a net of cloud and mist —
the buddhas' wind of loving-kindness and compassion blows to scatter and utterly dispel them.
The verse's most direct line of the entire treatise may be its simplest: sunlight shows that every being possesses "the buddha's wondrous dharmakāya... no different from my own body." After twenty-nine parts of careful analysis, similes, and citations, the treatise's speaker briefly steps forward in the first person to make the same claim personal rather than merely doctrinal — not that beings resemble a buddha in some abstract sense, but that whatever the reader now understands the Buddha's own body and qualities to be, that same reality is already theirs.
Six Categories: Advancement, Quality, Fruit, Gathering, Obstruction, Severing
此六行偈義，以十四偈略釋應知。偈言：
以何等性智， 何者何處時，
作業無分別， 是故業自然。
以何等根性， 諸眾生可度，
以何等智慧， 能度諸眾生。
又以何者是， 化眾生方便，
眾生以何處， 何時中可化。
進趣及功德， 為果為攝取，
彼障及斷障， 諸緣不分別。
進趣謂十地， 功德因二諦，
果謂大菩提， 攝菩提眷屬。
彼障謂無邊， 煩惱及習氣，
斷障謂大慈， 及大悲心等。
是名一切時， 常種種因緣，
如是等六處， 次第說應知。
It should be understood that the meaning of these six verses is briefly explained by fourteen further verses. A verse says:
By what nature and wisdom, by whom, in what place, at what time, does activity proceed without discrimination —
for this reason activity is spontaneous.
By what kind of faculty and disposition are sentient beings to be liberated;
by what kind of wisdom is one able to liberate sentient beings.
And, further, what is the skillful means for transforming sentient beings;
in what place, at what time, can sentient beings be transformed.
Advancement and its qualities, becoming the fruit, becoming that which gathers others in;
that obstruction, and the severing of that obstruction, and the supporting conditions — none of these are discriminated.
Advancement means the ten grounds; the cause of the qualities is the two truths;
the fruit means great bodhi; gathering others in means the bodhi-retinue.
That obstruction means boundless affliction and its habitual traces;
severing the obstruction means great loving-kindness and great compassion and the rest.
This names, at every time, the ever-varied causes and conditions —
these six categories, in due order, should be understood as now explained.
Calling buddha-activity "spontaneous" (自然) is not a claim that it is random or unmotivated — the six categories that follow show it is governed by an entirely specific structure: a definite path of advancement (the ten grounds), a definite cause (the two truths), a definite fruit (bodhi), and definite obstructions to be severed by definite means (loving-kindness and compassion). "Spontaneous" instead means something closer to what the treatise says explicitly: this activity proceeds "without discrimination" — without the deliberative, effortful calculation that a still-unawakened mind requires to act at all, the way the sun does not have to decide, moment by moment, whether or where to shine.
The Ocean, Space, Sun, and Earth
如大海水寶， 空日地雲風，
諸地如大海， 智水功德寶，
菩提如空界， 廣無中後邊，
為利益眾生， 二種業如日。
能悉遍照知， 一切眾生界，
皆有如來性， 如地中伏藏。
猶如彼大地， 體安固不動，
為利益眾生， 見彼我無別。
客塵煩惱等， 本自無體性，
一切皆虛妄， 如雲聚不實。
起大慈悲心， 猶如猛風吹，
煩惱智障盡， 如彼雲聚散。
化事未究竟， 故常在世間，
從本際以來， 自然不休息。
Like the great ocean's water and jewels, like space, the sun, the earth, cloud, and wind:
the bodhisattva grounds are like the great ocean, its water of wisdom and jewels of qualities;
bodhi is like the realm of space, vast, without middle, without end, without limit;
for the benefit of sentient beings, the twofold activity is like the sun.
Able to fully and universally illumine and know that the realm of every sentient being
entirely possesses tathāgata-nature, like a hidden treasure within the earth.
Just like that great earth, its essence settled, firm, unmoving,
for the benefit of sentient beings, he sees them as no different from himself.
Adventitious afflictions and the rest have, from the very beginning, no essential nature of their own —
all are utterly false, like a mass of cloud, unreal.
Giving rise to the mind of great loving-kindness and compassion, like a fierce wind blowing,
affliction and the cognitive obstruction are exhausted, like that mass of cloud scattering.
Because the work of transformation is not yet complete, he ever remains within the world —
from the very beginning, spontaneously, without ever resting.
This closing sequence — ocean, space, sun, earth, cloud, wind — reuses nearly every image this treatise has relied on throughout, now assembled into a single compact scene: buddha-wisdom as inexhaustible as the ocean, buddha-activity as boundless as space, buddha-compassion illuminating like the sun and blowing away obstruction like wind, all resting on an unmoving ground that "sees them as no different from himself." The chapter's closing line answers its own implicit question about why a buddha, having attained complete realization, would continue any activity at all: not because anything remains for the buddha to gain, but "because the work of transformation is not yet complete" for the beings still within it.
Part 30 Complete
Part 31 completes Chapter Ten by confronting an objection the treatise poses against itself: if the buddhas are truly unborn and unceasing, how can activity — which seems to require a mind still discriminating and acting — continue at all? The answer unfolds through this literature's most famous set of images: the sound of Indra's drum that no one strikes, rainclouds that benefit crops without intending to, and Brahmā's reflection appearing in countless mirrors without Brahmā himself ever moving.
Continue to Part 31 — Indra's Drum and the Nine Similes of Activity →