Ten Vows and Three, Folded Into One
Having been promised buddhahood, Śrīmālā rises and takes ten vows of conduct, confirmed by an extraordinary sign — flowers raining from an empty sky. She then takes three further vows that, the Buddha says, contain all ten the way space contains every form.
The Ten Great Vows
爾時，勝鬘聞受記已，恭敬而立受十大受：
「世尊！我從今日乃至菩提，於所受戒不起犯心。
「世尊！我從今日乃至菩提，於諸尊長不起慢心。
「世尊！我從今日乃至菩提，於諸眾生不起恚心。
「世尊！我從今日乃至菩提，於他身色及外眾具不起疾心。
「世尊！我從今日乃至菩提，於內外法不起慳心。
「世尊！我從今日乃至菩提，不自為己受畜財物，凡有所受悉為成熟貧苦眾生。
「世尊！我從今日乃至菩提，不自為己行四攝法，為一切眾生故，以不愛染心、無厭足心、無罣礙心，攝受眾生。
「世尊！我從今日乃至菩提，若見孤獨幽繫疾病，種種厄難困苦眾生，終不暫捨，必欲安隱，以義饒益令脫眾苦，然後乃捨。
「世尊！我從今日乃至菩提，若見捕養眾惡律儀及諸犯戒終不棄捨。我得力時，於彼彼處見此眾生，應折伏者而折伏之；應攝受者而攝受之。何以故？以折伏、攝受故令法久住。法久住者，天人充滿，惡道減少，能於如來所轉法輪而得隨轉，見是利故救攝不捨。
「世尊！我從今日乃至菩提，攝受正法終不忘失。何以故？忘失法者則忘大乘，忘大乘者則忘波羅蜜，忘波羅蜜者則不欲大乘。若菩薩不決定大乘者，則不能得攝受正法欲，隨所樂入，永不堪任越凡夫地。我見如是無量大過，又見未來攝受正法菩薩摩訶薩無量福利，故受此大受。」
Then, having heard this prediction, Śrīmālā rose respectfully and took the Ten Great Vows:
"World-Honored One! From this day until I reach bodhi, I will never give rise to a mind that transgresses any precept I have received.
"World-Honored One! From this day until I reach bodhi, I will never give rise to a mind of pride toward my elders and teachers.
"World-Honored One! From this day until I reach bodhi, I will never give rise to a mind of anger toward any being.
"World-Honored One! From this day until I reach bodhi, I will never give rise to a mind of envy toward another's beauty or possessions.
"World-Honored One! From this day until I reach bodhi, I will never give rise to a mind of stinginess toward any dharma, whether inward or outward.
"World-Honored One! From this day until I reach bodhi, I will not accumulate wealth or goods for my own sake; whatever I receive, I will use entirely to bring poor and suffering beings to maturity.
"World-Honored One! From this day until I reach bodhi, I will not practice the four means of embracing beings for my own sake; for the sake of all beings, with a mind free of attachment, free of dissatisfaction, and free of any obstruction, I will embrace beings.
"World-Honored One! From this day until I reach bodhi, whenever I see beings who are friendless, imprisoned, sick, or caught in every kind of hardship and distress, I will never abandon them, even for a moment; I will resolve to bring them peace, benefit them with what is right, and free them from every suffering — and only then let them go.
"World-Honored One! From this day until I reach bodhi, whenever I see those who keep and encourage every kind of evil conduct, or who transgress the precepts, I will never cast them aside. Once I have gained the power to do so, wherever I encounter such beings, I will subdue those who should be subdued, and embrace those who should be embraced. Why is this? Because it is by subduing and embracing together that the Dharma abides long in the world. When the Dharma abides long, gods and humans grow abundant and the evil destinies diminish, and the wheel of Dharma the Tathāgata has turned can continue turning after him. Seeing this benefit, I will rescue and embrace such beings, and never cast them aside.
"World-Honored One! From this day until I reach bodhi, I will never forget or lose my grasp of embracing the true Dharma. Why is this? Whoever forgets the Dharma forgets the Mahāyāna; whoever forgets the Mahāyāna forgets the pāramitās; and whoever forgets the pāramitās no longer wishes for the Mahāyāna. If a bodhisattva is not resolved upon the Mahāyāna, no genuine wish to embrace the true Dharma can arise in him, however he might wish to enter it, and he will never be able to pass beyond the stage of an ordinary being. Seeing such immeasurable faults as these, and seeing too the immeasurable blessing that awaits the bodhisattva-mahāsattvas of the future who embrace the true Dharma, I take this great vow."
Jizang glosses the number itself before he glosses any single vow: "ten is the name of a perfect, round number" (十是圓數之名) — long and broad enough to be called "great." He records several rival schemes for grouping the ten under the three learnings, and adopts one that maps vows one through five onto restraint of wrongdoing, six through nine onto benefiting beings, and the tenth, alone, onto the precept of embracing the Dharma itself. Within the first five, he further explains why pride and anger come before envy and stinginess: pride and anger are "proclivities" (使), the heavier root-level afflictions, while envy and stinginess are "entanglements" (纏), lighter surface afflictions that a practitioner meets only after the heavier ones are addressed — "the heavier proclivities come first, the lighter entanglements after" (使重纏輕，故前離於重、後息於輕).
On the vow against stinginess, Jizang identifies it with the fourth immeasurable mind, equanimity: "not giving rise to a stingy mind is the immeasurable mind of relinquishing" (不起慳心，是捨無量). He also draws out the logic of the wealth vow with a series of contrasts worth sitting with: wealth hoarded for oneself brings joy to oneself alone, while wealth accumulated for others' sake brings joy to everyone touched by it; what is hoarded for oneself remains vulnerable to five parties who can seize it — thieves, fire, flood, an unworthy heir, or the state — while what is given away for others' sake becomes, in a sense no one can take from her, truly her own.
The ninth vow's pairing of "subduing" (折伏) and "embracing" (攝受) is one Jizang treats as inseparable rather than optional: "the obstinate must be subdued, and subduing makes them leave evil; the pliant must be embraced, and embracing keeps them in goodness" (剛強應伏，伏令離惡；柔軟應攝，攝令住善). Embracing alone, applied to someone who will only exploit gentleness, does not serve the stated goal — that the Dharma abide long in the world — so both halves of the pair are required, matched to the person in front of her rather than applied uniformly.
On why the tenth vow is not simply one more item on the list, Jizang records a reading he adopts as his own: the first nine vows are "worldly-teaching precepts" (世教戒), regulating conduct case by case, while the tenth — never forgetting to embrace the true Dharma — is not another rule alongside them but the substance the other nine are made of: "there is no true Dharma apart from embracing the good; hence the three precept-categories are exhausted within it" (攝善之外無別正法，故三戒攝一切戒盡也). The vow's own reasoning bears this out: to forget the Dharma is to forget the Mahāyāna, to forget the Mahāyāna is to forget the pāramitās, and to forget the pāramitās is to lose even the wish for the Mahāyāna at all — each failure collapsing into the next, all the way down to never managing to pass beyond the condition of an ordinary being. Lose the tenth vow, in other words, and the other nine have nothing left to stand on.
Flowers Raining From an Empty Sky
「法主世尊！現為我證，唯佛世尊現前證知。而諸眾生善根微薄或起疑網，以十大受極難度故；彼或長夜非義饒益，不得安樂。為安彼故，今於佛前說誠實誓。我受此十大受，如說行者，以此誓故，於大眾中當雨天花，出天妙音。」
說是語時，於虛空中，雨眾天花出妙聲言：「如是如是！如汝所說，真實無異。」彼見妙花及聞音聲，一切眾會疑惑悉除，喜踊無量而發願言：「恒與勝鬘常共俱會，同其所行。」世尊悉記一切大眾如其所願。
"Lord of the Dharma, World-Honored One! Bear witness for me now — only the Buddha, the World-Honored One, can witness and know this directly. Yet the roots of goodness among beings are thin and weak, and doubt may well take hold of them, since these Ten Great Vows are exceedingly hard to carry through; through the long night of saṃsāra they might otherwise gain no true benefit and find no peace. To set them at ease, I now speak this true and sincere vow before the Buddha. If I keep these Ten Great Vows exactly as I have spoken them, then by the power of this vow, flowers shall rain down over the whole assembly, and a wondrous voice shall sound forth from the heavens."
The moment she spoke these words, flowers rained down from the empty sky, and a wondrous voice sounded forth: "So it is, so it is! Exactly as you have said — true, and no different." Seeing the wondrous flowers and hearing that voice, the whole assembly's doubts were entirely dispelled, and, leaping with immeasurable joy, they made this vow: "May we always be gathered together with Śrīmālā, sharing in whatever she practices." And the World-Honored One predicted that the whole assembly would indeed have it exactly as they had wished.
Jizang points out something the passage never quite says outright: the Buddha himself never personally certifies the vows aloud. Instead, "there is no need for the Buddha's own words — the sound issues forth of itself from space" (不須佛言，空自聲出). His reasoning is almost political: were the Buddha to confirm the vows in his own voice, the confirmation might look like ordinary human favor or sentiment (人情) toward a particular queen. A sign that arises impersonally — flowers no one threw, a voice from no visible speaker — carries a kind of evidentiary weight a personal endorsement never could, precisely because no one can suspect it of partiality. The assembly's doubt, born from how "extremely hard to accomplish" the Ten Great Vows sound in the abstract, is dispelled not by authority asserting itself but by a witness nobody can accuse of bias.
The Three Great Vows
爾時勝鬘復於佛前發三大願，而作是言：「以此實願安隱無量無邊眾生，以此善根於一切生得正法智，是名第一大願。我得正法智已，以無厭心為眾生說，是名第二大願。我於攝受正法，捨身、命、財，護持正法，是名第三大願。」
爾時，世尊即記勝鬘三大誓願，如一切色悉入空界。如是菩薩恒沙諸願，皆悉入此三大願中，此三願者真實廣大。
Then Śrīmālā made three great vows before the Buddha, and spoke thus: "By this true vow, may I bring peace to immeasurable, boundless beings; by this root of goodness, may I attain the wisdom of the true Dharma in every life I am born into — this is called the first great vow. Once I have attained the wisdom of the true Dharma, may I teach it to beings with a mind that never tires — this is called the second great vow. In embracing the true Dharma, may I give up body, life, and wealth, to protect and uphold the true Dharma — this is called the third great vow."
Then the World-Honored One confirmed Śrīmālā's three great vows, saying they were like every form entering entirely into the realm of space: just so, the Ganges-sands of vows made by every bodhisattva all enter entirely into these three great vows — these three vows are true, and vast without limit.
Jizang treats the whole passage from the ten vows through the three vows and into the next chapter as one continuous act of telescoping: the ten vows already fold into the tenth alone; the three vows now fold into the third alone — giving up body, life, and wealth to protect the true Dharma; and Chapter Four will open by folding these three vows into a single vow, embracing the true Dharma, with the text explicitly marking the move: "before, all vows were shown returning to three vows; now the three vows are shown returning to one vow" (上明攝一切願以歸三願，今攝三願以歸一願). He reaches for a classical Chinese parallel to describe how many can collapse into one without loss: Confucius's own line on the three hundred Odes, "though the Odes number three hundred, one phrase covers them all: no depraved thought" (詩雖三百，一言弊之，謂心不邪) — a single formula that does not simplify the three hundred poems so much as name what all of them already share.
The sūtra's own simile for this — "as all form enters space" — makes the same point more starkly than the Confucius citation does: space does not average the shapes it contains, or approximate them, or stand for their common denominator. Every shape occupies space completely and without remainder, and space is not diminished by containing infinitely many different ones at once. The Ganges-sands of vows a bodhisattva might make are related to these three great vows the same way — not as members of a larger set with these three as a subset, but as forms that were never, in the end, anything other than space to begin with.
Part 2 Complete
This closes Part 2: the Ten Great Vows, confirmed by an impersonal sign from an empty sky, and the Three Great Vows the Buddha says contain them all. Part 3 turns to Chapter Four, where Śrīmālā explains what it actually means to embrace the true Dharma — clouds, a great water-mass, and the earth's own four burdens and four treasure-stores, each mapped onto a single practice she will go on to show is identical with the six pāramitās themselves.
Continue to Part 3 — What It Means to Embrace the True Dharma →