One Flower Is Enough, If the Heart Is Whole
Having just received the upāsaka precepts, Shansheng asks the most practical question of all: now what? How does an ordinary person at home actually make offerings to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha? The Buddha's answer moves from the abstract — three kinds of field in which merit is grown — to the exhaustively concrete: how to patch a cracked stupa, what not to mix into paint, how to treat a broken image, and why a single coin given wholeheartedly is worth exactly as much as a mountain of jewels. The chapter closes by naming, without flinching, why this plainest of practices turns out to be hardest precisely for the person who has not left the household behind.
1. Milestone: Shansheng's Question and the Three Fields of Merit
The chapter opens with Shansheng carrying the previous chapter's discipline forward into a new question: precepts have been received, wrongdoing is being restrained — so how, concretely, should offerings actually be made? The Buddha answers by first laying out a general theory of merit-fields before ever mentioning the Three Jewels by name.
善生言：「世尊！菩薩已受優婆塞戒，復當云何供養三寶？」
Shansheng said, "World-Honored One, once a bodhisattva has received the upāsaka precepts, how then should he make offerings to the Three Jewels?"
「善男子！世間福田凡有三種：一、報恩田，二、功德田，三、貧窮田。報恩田者，所謂父母、師長、和上。功德田者：從得煖法乃至得阿耨多羅三藐三菩提。貧窮田者：一切窮苦困厄之人。如來世尊是二種福田：一者、報恩田，二、功德田。法亦如是，是二種田。眾僧三種：一、報恩田，二、功德田，三、貧窮田。以是因緣，菩薩已受優婆塞戒，應當至心勤供養三寶。」
"Good man, there are, in general, three kinds of field of merit in the world: first, the field of repaying kindness; second, the field of merit; and third, the field of the poor. The field of repaying kindness refers to one's parents, teachers, and preceptor-masters. The field of merit extends from the attainment of the stage of heat [in the preparatory path] all the way up to the attainment of unsurpassed, complete enlightenment. The field of the poor refers to all beings afflicted by poverty, suffering, and hardship. The Tathāgata, the World-Honored One, is himself two kinds of field: the field of repaying kindness and the field of merit. The Dharma is likewise these same two fields. The assembly of monastics is three kinds of field: the field of repaying kindness, the field of merit, and the field of the poor. For this reason, once a bodhisattva has received the upāsaka precepts, he should make offerings to the Three Jewels with an utterly sincere and diligent heart."
Taixu opens by noting that "Three Jewels" is also traditionally rendered "Three Honored Ones": the Buddha is honored as one perfectly complete in both blessing and wisdom; the Dharma is honored as that which is free of craving; the Sangha is honored as the purest body within any assembly. Together they are the one true refuge for every being — a lamp in a dark room, a road out for the lost — which is exactly why Shansheng's question matters so much: not whether to make offerings, but how.
He then glosses "field" quite literally: a field is called a field because something planted in it grows, and what is planted here is merit. The field of repaying kindness covers parents, teachers, and the preceptor-master — literally, in the Chinese, one who "generates through reliance," since it is by relying on such a teacher that a disciple's own path is able to be born at all. The field of merit runs from the very first foothold on the path (the "heat" stage of the four preparatory practices) through the four fruits of the śrāvaka, the pratyekabuddha, and on to the bodhisattva — reverence shown to anyone anywhere along that whole climb generates merit. The field of the poor, finally, is simply anyone in real want or distress; Taixu adds, pointedly, that the ordinary monastic — who has given up family property, does not engage in production, and lives by begging — genuinely belongs partly in this third field as well, which is why the Sangha alone is named as all three kinds of field at once.
2. Milestone: Which Three Jewels? The Buddha as the Storehouse of All Dharmas
Before giving a single practical instruction, the Buddha states the underlying premise for all of them: he himself is "the storehouse of all dharmas," worthy of offerings made to his living body, his relics, his images, and his shrines alike — and then immediately turns to the inward attitude such offerings actually require, well before any outward materials are discussed.
「善男子！如來即是一切法藏，是故智者應當至心勤心供養生身、滅身、形像、塔廟！若於空野無塔像處，常當繫念，尊重讚歎，若自力作，若勸人作；見人作時，心生歡喜，如其自有功德力者，要當廣教眾多之人而共作之。既供養已，於己身中莫生輕想，於三寶所亦應如是。凡所供養，不使人作，不為勝他，作時不悔，心不愁惱，合掌讚歎，恭敬尊重。若以一錢至無量寶，若以一綖至無量綖，若以一花至無量花，若以一香至無量香，若以一偈讚至無量偈讚，若以一禮至無量禮，若遶一匝至無量匝，若一時中乃至無量時，若自獨作，若共人作。善男子！若能如是至心供養佛、法、僧者，若我現在及涅槃後，等無差別。」
"Good man, the Tathāgata is himself the storehouse of all dharmas. For this reason a wise person should, with an utterly sincere and diligent heart, make offerings to his living body, his body after extinction, his images, and his stupas and shrines! In an empty wilderness where there is no stupa or image, one should still constantly hold him in mind, honoring and praising him — whether by one's own effort, or by encouraging others to do so. On seeing someone else make such an offering, one's heart should fill with joy; and if one has the means and the merit-power to do so, one should broadly teach many people to join together in making offerings. Having made an offering, one should not think meanly of oneself for it — and the same attitude should be brought to the Three Jewels generally. In whatever one offers, one should not simply have someone else do the work, should not act merely to outdo others, should feel no regret once it is done, should harbor no anxiety over it, and should join one's palms in praise, reverence, and respect. Whether it is a single coin or measureless treasures, a single thread or measureless thread, a single flower or measureless flowers, a single stick of incense or measureless incense, a single verse of praise or measureless verses, a single prostration or measureless prostrations, a single circumambulation or measureless circumambulations, done in a single moment or over measureless time, done alone or done together with others — good man, if one is able in this way to make offerings to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha with an utterly sincere heart, then it makes no difference at all whether I am presently in the world or have already entered final nirvāṇa."
Taixu frames this whole section as addressing one specific member of a threefold framework he lays out for understanding "Three Jewels" at all. There is the intrinsic-nature Three Jewels — the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha already inherent in every being without exception, mind and Buddha and sentient being being, at root, one and the same. There is the distinct-aspect Three Jewels — the actual attainment of supreme enlightenment as the Buddha-jewel, the truth that attainment realizes and teaches as the Dharma-jewel, and the practitioners walking that path, from the first foothold up through the level just short of full enlightenment, as the Sangha-jewel. And there is what he calls the abiding Three Jewels — the physical images enshrined in temples and stupas, the written sutras themselves, and the ordained community actually upholding the monastic discipline in the world. This chapter, he stresses, is specifically about the third kind: the tangible, maintained forms through which the other two kinds keep being met by ordinary people. He warns explicitly against a subtle error — clinging to the intrinsic-nature Three Jewels as the "real" one and looking down on statues, scriptures, and monastics as merely external — calling this a genuine mistake, not a sign of deeper understanding.
On the inward attitude itself, Taixu reads the insistence on "no regret, no anxiety, no competing with others" as the entire point of the passage: the size of the gift is explicitly declared irrelevant — one coin against measureless treasure, one flower against measureless flowers — because what is actually being cultivated is the wholeness of the heart doing the giving, not the market value of what changes hands.
3. Milestone: The Practical Work of Upkeep — Stupas, Images, and Right Materials
The Buddha now turns from principle to the plainest possible detail: how to actually repair a damaged stupa, what materials are and are not appropriate, how to paint an image, and — strikingly — how to treat an image that has been broken.
「見塔廟時，應以金、銀、銅、鐵、繩鎖、幡蓋、伎樂、香油、燈明而供養之。若見鳥獸踐蹋毀壞，要當塗治掃除令淨；暴風、水、火之所壞處，亦當自治——自若無力，當勸人治——或以金、銀、銅、鐵、土、木。若有塵土，灑掃除拂，若有垢污，以香水洗。若作寶塔及作寶像，作訖當以種種幡、蓋、香、花奉上。若無真寶力不能辦，次以土木而造成之，成訖亦當幡、蓋、香、花、種種伎樂而供養之。若是塔中草木不淨、鳥獸死尸及其糞穢、萎花臭爛，悉當除去；蛇、鼠孔穴，當塞治之。銅像、木像、石像、泥像，金、銀、琉璃、頗梨等像，常當洗治，任力香塗。隨力造作種種瓔珞，乃至猶如轉輪聖王塔。精舍內當以香塗。若白土泥作塔像已，當以琉璃、頗梨、真珠、綾絹、綵錦、鈴磬、繩鎖而供養之。畫佛像時，綵中不雜膠乳、雞子，應以種種花貫、散花、妙紼、明鏡、末香、塗香、散香、燒香、種種伎樂歌舞供養。如晝，夜亦如是；如夜，晝亦如是。不如外道燒酥、大麥而供養之，終不以酥塗塔像身，亦不乳洗。不應造作半身佛像；若有形像身不具足，當密覆藏，勸人令治，治已具足，然後顯示。見像毀壞，應當至心供養恭敬，如完無別。如是供養要身自作，若自無力，當為他使，亦勸他人令佐助之。」
"On seeing a stupa or shrine, one should make offerings to it with gold, silver, copper, iron, chains and cords, banners and canopies, music, fragrant oil, and lamps. If one sees it trampled and damaged by birds or beasts, one should plaster, repair, sweep, and clean it; where it has been damaged by fierce wind, water, or fire, one should likewise repair it oneself — and if one lacks the means to do so, one should encourage others to repair it — using gold, silver, copper, iron, earth, or wood, whichever is at hand. Where there is dust, one should sweep and wipe it away; where there is grime, one should wash it with scented water. If one is building a jeweled stupa or a jeweled image, once it is finished one should offer up various banners, canopies, incense, and flowers. If one lacks genuine jewels and the means cannot be found, one should build it of earth and wood instead, and once it is finished should likewise make offerings of banners, canopies, incense, flowers, and various kinds of music. If the grass and growth within the stupa grounds are unclean, or there are the carcasses of dead birds and beasts and their droppings and filth, or withered flowers rotting and foul, all of this should be cleared away; the holes of snakes and rats should be sealed and repaired. Bronze images, wooden images, stone images, clay images, and images of gold, silver, lapis lazuli, and crystal should constantly be washed and cared for, and anointed with fragrance as one's means allow. According to one's means, one should fashion all manner of ornaments for them, even to the point of making them as splendid as the stupa of a wheel-turning sage-king. The interior of a monastery hall should be anointed with fragrance. If a stupa or image has been made of white clay, one should make offerings to it with lapis lazuli, crystal, pearls, damask silk, brocade, bells and chimes, and chains and cords. When painting a buddha image, one should not mix glue, milk, or egg into the pigments; one should make offerings with garlands of threaded flowers, scattered flowers, fine silk streamers, bright mirrors, powdered incense, anointing incense, scattered incense, burning incense, and various kinds of music, singing, and dance. As by day, so also by night; as by night, so also by day. This is not like the non-Buddhist practice of burning ghee and barley as an offering — one should never smear ghee on the body of a stupa or image, nor wash it with milk. One should not fashion a half-body image of the Buddha; if an image's body is incomplete, one should discreetly cover and conceal it, urge someone to repair it, and display it again only once it has been made whole. On seeing a damaged image, one should still make offerings to it with an utterly sincere heart and show it reverence exactly as if it were undamaged. Offerings of this kind should properly be made by one's own body; but if one lacks the ability, one should have someone act on one's behalf, and should urge others as well to lend their assistance."
Taixu keeps his glosses here brief and mostly lexical, since he treats the passage as continuing to elaborate on the abiding Buddha-jewel introduced just before it. "Living body" means the physical body the Buddha actually bore in India; "body after extinction" means the relics left behind once that body was consumed by the fire of his own samādhi. The stone called "lapis lazuli" here, he notes, is not the same word as an oil lamp's glass — it names an actual blue gemstone. "Threaded flowers" simply means blossoms strung on a cord, worn or hung as a garland.
What he leaves the plain text to do on its own is arguably the more striking teaching: a damaged, incomplete, or broken image is still to be bowed to exactly as though whole, rather than discarded or treated as diminished — the object's condition changes, but the reverence it is owed does not. Concealing an unfinished or broken image until it can be properly repaired, rather than displaying it in disrepair, is offered as ordinary good practice, not superstition: care for the abiding form is itself a form of care for what that form represents.
4. Milestone: Two Equal Offerings — Wealth and Heartfelt Praise
Having spent so long on material offerings, the sutra now makes a deliberately leveling claim: a person who gives away treasure equal to four continents and a person who simply, sincerely praises the Buddha's real qualities have generated exactly the same merit.
「若人能以四天下寶供養如來，有人直以種種功德尊重讚歎，至心恭敬，是二福德等無差別。所謂如來身心具足：身有微妙三十二相、八十種好，具足大力，心有十力、四無所畏、大悲、三念、五智三昧、三種法門、十一種空、觀十二緣智、無量禪定，具足七智，已能度到六波羅蜜岸。若人能以如是等法讚歎佛者，是人則名真供養佛。」
"If one person makes offerings to the Tathāgata with all the treasures of the four continents, while another simply reveres and praises his manifold virtues with an utterly sincere and respectful heart, these two kinds of merit are, in truth, no different from one another. This is because the Tathāgata is complete in both body and mind: his body possesses the subtle and wondrous thirty-two marks and eighty excellent features, and is endowed with great power; his mind possesses the ten powers, the four fearlessnesses, great compassion, the three mindfulnesses, the samādhi of the five wisdoms, the three dharma-gates, the eleven kinds of emptiness, the wisdom that contemplates the twelve links of dependent origination, and measureless states of meditative concentration, and is complete in the seven factors of enlightenment, having already crossed over to the far shore of the six perfections. If a person is able to praise the Buddha by way of qualities such as these, that person may truly be called one who makes genuine offering to the Buddha."
Taixu walks through the technical list mainly to show how much real content sits behind what could otherwise sound like an abstract catalogue. The "samādhi of the five wisdoms" refers to the settled concentration reached through the five classical methods for calming a scattered mind — contemplating the body's impurity, cultivating loving-kindness, tracing dependent origination, distinguishing the elements, and counting the breath. The "three dharma-gates" are calming (śamatha), insight (vipaśyanā), and the dhyāna in which the two are no longer separate practices at all. The "eleven kinds of emptiness" — internal, external, both together, conditioned, unconditioned, beginningless, of nature, of non-existence, of ultimate meaning, great, and so on — are one classical enumeration among several; other texts count sixteen, eighteen, or twenty, largely covering the same ground. The wisdom that "contemplates the twelve links" is simply the wisdom that sees dependent origination clearly, and the "seven" are the seven factors of enlightenment: discernment of dharmas, diligence, joy, tranquility, mindfulness, concentration, and equanimity.
His real point in cataloguing all this, though, is simple: genuine praise is not empty flattery, because there is this much specific, real substance actually being praised. That is precisely why sincerely voicing it counts as fully as handing over four continents' worth of treasure — both acts point at, and rest on, the same reality.
5. Milestone: What It Means to Make Offerings to the Dharma and the Sangha
The chapter now defines offerings to the remaining two Jewels. Offering to the Dharma, it turns out, is not simply reverence for a physical scripture — it requires actually living by what the scripture says. Offering to the Sangha is then defined with equal precision.
「云何名為供養於法？善男子！若能供養十二部經，名供養法。云何供養十二部經？若能至心信樂、受持、讀誦、解說、如說而行，既自為己，復勸人行，是名供養十二部經。若能書寫十二部經，既書寫已，種種供養，如供養佛，唯除洗浴。若有供養、受持、讀誦如是經者，是則名為供養法也。供養法時，如供養佛。又復有法，謂菩薩一根，辟支佛人三根、三諦，若信是者，名供養法。若有供養發菩提心受持戒者出家之人、向須陀洹至阿羅漢果，名供養僧。」
"What does it mean to make offerings to the Dharma? Good man, if one is able to make offerings to the twelve divisions of the scriptures, this is called making offerings to the Dharma. And what does it mean to make offerings to the twelve divisions of the scriptures? If one is able, with an utterly sincere heart, to believe in and delight in them, to accept and uphold them, to read and recite them, to explain them, and to practice in accordance with what they teach — doing this both for one's own sake and also urging others to practice — this is called making offerings to the twelve divisions of the scriptures. If one is able to copy out the twelve divisions of the scriptures, then once the copying is complete, one should make every kind of offering to it just as one would to the Buddha, with the sole exception of bathing it. Anyone who makes offerings to, accepts and upholds, or reads and recites scriptures in this way may truly be said to make offerings to the Dharma. In making offerings to the Dharma, one should do exactly as when making offerings to the Buddha. There is, further, another Dharma: that the bodhisattva has a single faculty, while the pratyekabuddha has three faculties and three truths — to believe in this is likewise called making offerings to the Dharma. Making offerings to those renunciants who have given rise to the mind of bodhi and uphold the precepts, and to those ranging from the stream-enterer up to the arhat, is called making offerings to the Sangha."
Taixu underlines a distinction he clearly considers easy to miss: genuine offering to the Dharma has to include reciting, upholding, actually practicing, and encouraging others to practice — not merely explaining a text for others to listen to, which he calls an incomplete reading of what "offering to the Dharma" means, however well-intentioned. The "three faculties and three truths" of the pratyekabuddha refer to the upper, middle, and lower grades of capacity found among such practitioners, and the corresponding depth of truth each grade actually realizes; he notes the phrase "three truths" can also be read in the more familiar sense of the impermanence of all conditioned things, the selflessness of all dharmas, and the stillness of nirvāṇa — two valid readings of the same compact phrase.
On the Sangha-jewel, he is careful to specify that this includes both the bodhisattva-monastic — someone who has given rise to bodhicitta and taken both the monastic and bodhisattva precepts — and the noble ones of the lesser vehicle, from the stream-enterer through to the arhat, who remain equally worthy of offering even though their path and goal differ from the bodhisattva's own.
6. Milestone: The Fruit of True Offering — and Why It's Harder for the Householder
The chapter closes with two short, plain statements: what genuine offering to the Three Jewels actually yields over time, and an unflinching admission of why exactly this practice is harder for someone still living at home than for someone who has left the household behind.
「若有人能如是供養佛、法、僧寶，當知是人終不遠離十方如來，常與諸佛行住坐臥。善男子！若有人能如說多少供養如是三福田者，當知是人於無量世多受利益。
「善男子！菩薩二種：一者、在家，二者、出家。出家菩薩供養三寶，是不為難；在家供養，是乃為難。何以故？在家之人多惡因緣所纏繞故。」
"If a person is able to make offerings to the Three Jewels — Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha — in this way, know that such a person will in the end never be far from the Tathāgatas of the ten directions, and will constantly walk, stand, sit, and lie down together with the buddhas. Good man, if a person is able to make offerings to these three fields of merit, whether much or little, exactly as has been taught, know that such a person will receive abundant benefit throughout measureless lifetimes to come.
"Good man, there are two kinds of bodhisattva: the householder and the renunciant. For the renunciant bodhisattva, making offerings to the Three Jewels is no difficult thing; for the householder, making such offerings is truly difficult. Why is this so? Because the householder is entangled by so many adverse conditions."
Taixu reads the promise of never being far from the buddhas quite directly: constant, sincere offering to the abiding Three Jewels — the statues, scriptures, and monastics actually present in the world — gradually brings a person into resonance with the intrinsic-nature Three Jewels already inherent in their own mind, until the two are no longer felt as separate. That resonance, sustained, is what is meant by receiving benefit across measureless lifetimes.
On the closing admission, he is unsentimental rather than discouraging: a renunciant's whole day is already structured around this practice — a fixed daily routine, an act of offering built into every single meal — so that making offerings is simply woven into monastic life by default. A householder has no such built-in structure, and lives instead surrounded by exactly the tangled, competing obligations the text names as "adverse conditions." Taixu notes that this line also closes out a much larger unit of the sutra — sixteen consecutive chapters on how a bodhisattva's practice is cultivated to completion, all of them framed around the householder as the standard case throughout. What follows next turns to the six pāramitās themselves: the actual content of that practice, now that the ground for it has been fully laid.