Entry into the Realm of Reality
The Guide
THE INHERENT BASELESSNESS of physical and mental objects is called reality. The interpenetration of one and many, the disappearance of the boundaries of the real and artificial, of affirmation and negation, is called the realm.
Also, the realm that is purely concomitant with knowledge and not with emotional perceptions is called the realm of reality.
Furthermore, actually to realize that the seeds of unenlightened consciousness are purely functions of knowledge and are not subsumed by delusion is the sphere of independent knowledge and is called the realm of reality.
What is more, since the substance of knowledge has no abode and is all-pervasive, one sees the absolute and the mundane to be totally inconceivable. In the infinite realm where all beings and objects reflect one another, buddha-lands are multiplied and remultiplied, sages and ordinary people are the same whole, and the forms of objects interpenetrate. This is called the realm of reality.
And when one subtle sound pervades the universe, a single hair measures infinity, views of great and small disappear, others and self are the same body, conditioned consciousness and feelings are gone, and knowledge pervades without obstruction, this is called entry into the realm of reality.
This is the eternal goal of all buddhas of all times, without beginning or end. The progressive practices of the preceding stages all have this as their substance. At this point practice is complete; allowing knowledge to act, it returns to its original state—fundamentally there is no change.
As to the setting of this scripture, it takes place in the human world to illustrate that the garden of the human world is the very garden of the reality realm, that the nature of living beings is the nature of the reality realm, and that the world of living beings is the world of true awakening.
Manjushri, the spirit of wisdom, wanted to induce the pilgrim Sudhana to trust in the fundamental unshakable knowledge that is inherently pure and has no origin or extinction, no cultivation or witness, to induce him to become a bodhisattva, an enlightening being, of the stage of faith. So Manjushri explained enlightened teachings for Sudhana, to inspire the thought of enlightenment in him.
Since the thought of enlightenment is not learned or cultivated, the thought of enlightenment is always clearly self-evident as long as we carry out enlightening practices to quell habit energy.
It is as when clouds disperse in the sky; the sky is itself clear, so there is no further search for clear sky.
Just carry out the myriad practices of compassion and wisdom as means of stabilizing enlightenment. If any practice is not understood or not carried out, or if there is any grasping and rejecting, then there is an obstacle, and so the thought of enlightenment is not in its complete state, since enlightening action is itself the thought of enlightenment.
So once Sudhana had awakened the thought of enlightenment, he asked Manjushri how to learn to act as an enlightening being and practice the path of enlightening beings—he asked no more about the thought of enlightenment.
Because the methods of progress expounded in the previous assemblies of the Avatamsaka Sutra had not yet been realized by an ordinary human being, in the Gandavyuha Manjushri wants to make Sudhana a signpost for later generations of seekers.
Also, the names of the teachers and their abodes—people holy and ordinary, spirits, royalty, mendicants, lay people, non-Buddhists, humans, celestials, males and females—represent certain principles.
Furthermore, the South, the direction of Sudhana’s pilgrimage, is used to stand for truth, clarity, and openness. When you arrive at open, clear, true knowledge without subjectivity, then everywhere is the South.
Therefore Manjushri sent Sudhana south to call on spiritual friends and benefactors, each of whom sends him onwards that he may progress and not dawdle over past learning. This is why the friends always praise the virtues of those Sudhana has yet to meet.
In the realm of principle, Manjushri stands for knowledge of the fundamental. Samantabhadra stands for knowledge of differentiation, and Maitreya stands for the uncreate realization within Manjushri and Samantabhadra.
These three principles are all in the fifty spiritual friends—representing the five ranks of enlightenment—that Sudhana meets on his pilgrimage, so there are fifty-three teachers.
Since the fifty teachings of the spiritual friends each has cause and effect—as in other books of the Avatamsaka Sutra, where there are ten bodhisattvas and ten buddhas to represent cause and effect—this makes one hundred. Add to this the basic ten ways of transcendence and this makes one hundred and ten, the number of cities Sudhana is said to have passed through.
The Fifty-three Teachers
1. MEGHASHRI
First Sudhana climbed the Mountain of Marvelous Peaks, saw the monk Meghashri (“Glorious Clouds”), and realized the abode of inspiration.
Clouds have four meanings. They are everywhere, representing concentration. They bear moisture, representing virtue. They shade and cover, representing compassion. They shower rain, representing knowledge. Hence the name Glorious Clouds.
The significance of monkhood is the cessation of opinionated argument. The word used means “stopping contention.” When one is without thoughts, still and quiet as a mountain, then formless subtle principles become evident.
Sudhana climbed the mountain to its furthest reach and looked all over for Meghashri. This symbolizes use of the power of calm observation to gain access to the abode of the enlightened.
Sudhana saw Meghashri on a separate peak. This symbolizes going through expedient meditation methods to get into the original state where there is neither concentration nor distraction.
Meghashri was walking slowly, symbolizing being undisturbed. Walking around represents not lingering in concentration trance.
Meghashri saw all living beings as the body of enlightenment and saw the mundane world as like light, like a reflection, neither real nor false, inherently undefiled. He maintained the integrity of ordinary vision, so he saw living beings. He maintained the integrity of objective vision, so for him all objects were insubstantial. He maintained the integrity of the vision of knowledge, so he could magically produce objects. He saw the body of buddhas to be free of both being and nonbeing.
Therefore Meghashri told Sudhana that he always saw infinite buddhas of the ten directions and knew the teaching of universal vision through the light of knowledge attained by recollection of the realm of buddhas.
2. SAGARAMEGHA
Next Sudhana went to the country of Sagaramukha (“Ocean Door”), saw the monk Sagaramegha (“Ocean Cloud”), and realized the abode of preparing the ground.
Spontaneous discipline is like the ocean. Not retaining the corpse of birth and death is the ocean door. Because he was able to make the ocean of birth and death itself into the ocean of great knowledge and always benefit people with this principle, the monk was called Ocean Cloud.
Having attained the light of highest knowledge, using it to observe current subjective and objective worlds to develop all knowledge, he knew that the ocean of ignorance and pain caused by the twelvefold process of conditioning is wholly the vast ocean of essence of the buddhas of all times, and that there is no place to attain buddhahood outside the ocean of birth and death. Therefore Ocean Cloud said he had been living in that country for twelve years.
Because this ocean of essence is not finite and is full of knowledge and virtue, Ocean Cloud said the ocean was very deep and very wide and adorned with many treasures.
In ordinary people, the seven conditions of ignorance, restlessness, self-consciousness, name and form, sense receptors, contact, and reception are currently active, so they cling greedily and obstinately, thus forming the three conditions of craving, grasping, and becoming. From these three conditions develop the conditions of birth, aging, sickness, and death.
Being tossed about on the waves of pain in an endless circle, temporary students of individual liberation r
eject this in disgust and do not conceive great compassion. Therefore Sagaramegha directly used basic intuitive insight to illumine all at once the intrinsic baselessness of the substance and forms of conditioned production, all at once transforming it into an ocean of great knowledge.
This ocean produced a huge lotus, symbolizing the action of knowledge without taint. Because enlightened action is always in accord with knowledge, the flower covered the whole ocean.
When titans stand in the ocean, the water only comes up to their waists; because wise action does not sink into the ocean of birth and death, the lotus stem was held by titans.
As knowledge gives natural discipline to wash away mental defilement, water spirits showered fragrant water.
As objectless compassion responds without contrivance, the spirits bowed in reverence.
As knowledge is invincible, the embodiment of the buddha sitting on the lotus blossom was immensely tall. The function of knowledge is represented by the buddha extending his right hand. The reflection and combination of knowledge and action is represented by the buddha’s laying his hand on Sagaramegha’s head.
Knowledge of the fundamental is represented as the universal eye, knowledge of differentiation is represented as a scripture. Teachings are set up in consideration of people’s faculties and states, and so, as people are infinite, the teachings are infinite.
So Sagaramegha said there was a buddha on the flower whose height reached to the summit of existence and that the buddha had reached out with his right hand, laid his hand on Sagaramegha’s head and expounded the universal eye scripture, which is so vast that an ocean of ink and a brush made of mountains could not write out even a little of one statement of one doctrine of one book of the scripture. Sagaramegha said he had been keeping the scripture for twelve hundred years, alluding to the use of knowledge of expedients to overturn the twelve hundred afflictions and be liberated from them all.
3. SUPRATISHTHITA
The Sudhana went to a village on the seashore of Lanka, where he saw the monk Supratishthita (“Well Established”) and realized the abode of practice.
Having contemplated the twelve links of conditioning, Sudhana reexamined current habit energies of discrimination active in his senses and found that they had all become seeds of knowledge, so he no longer lingered over them.
The mountain of Lanka is in the south seas, so high and steep that it is nearly impossible to climb. Now that the ocean of birth and death had turned into the ocean of knowledge, Sudhana had found the way of ascent and rested peacefully in patience, not deluded by the bedevilments of birth and death. Therefore Sudhana saw the monk Supratishthita walking in the sky; because he dwelt neither in the world nor beyond the world, he “traveled in the sky.”
Because the voice of the teaching had universal influence and the light of knowledge destroyed illusion, therefore the rain spirits produced thunder and lightning as offerings to the monk.
Because of his practical knowledge and compassion, his humility and self-discipline, bird maidens surrounded the monk respectfully.
Because of his mastery of use of the ten transcendent ways to benefit beings, the monk was honored by ten kings.
Because he had entered the door of freedom through great knowledge, the monk was unhindered by barriers of defilement and purity; all false states of existence melted away on contact, to become like the sky.
Therefore the monk said he had found the door of unobstructed liberation, swiftly serving buddhas everywhere, going throughout the ten directions in an instant of thought, going through walls, penetrating the earth, and walking on water, as if they were all space.
4. MEGHA
Then Sudhana went to the Dravidian city of Vajrapura, saw the grammarian Megha, and realized the abode of noble birth.
The significance of Dravidia is the melting away of mistaken understandings by the teaching of sages. Megha means “Cloud,” representing one who contains life-giving moisture and showers the rain of the teaching.
Sudhana saw Megha in the middle of the city, surrounded by thousands of people, expounding ways into truth through arrays of revolving letters.
The preceding teachers were all mendicants: Megha is a layman, to represent the fact that when transcendence of the world is achieved, transcendent knowledge is not divorced from the world. He was in the world yet unaffected by it, so he was “in the middle of the city.” His knowledge body was free, interchanging with society, so he was “surrounded by thousands of people. “
Revolving means turning completely. Since the fact that an individual word or sound has no inherent identity underlies infinite words and sounds, infinite words and infinite sounds are one word and one sound. Therefore one and many revolve around and embellish each other. All mundane phenomena are transmundane phenomena, and all transmundane phenomena are mundane phenomena.
When it is said that phenomena exist, each one is inherently empty; when it is said that phenomena do not exist, that does not destroy appearances. Therefore the absolute and the mundane, existence and nonexistence, completely change into each other and embellish each other. Since the totality, individuality, sameness, difference, integration, and disintegration of all phenomena simultaneously revolve around each other in an interrelated array, this is called the method of arrays of revolving letters.
Megha is personally a layman, while the spirit of enlightenment is an absolute principle. Mundane truth should obey absolute truth, so when Megha heard that Sudhana had awakened the thought of enlightenment, he immediately got down from his seat and bowed.
Because he wanted to inspire Sudhana to further progress, Megha told him that he only knew this teaching method of concentration spells of subtle sound.
5. MUKTAKA
Next Sudhana went to Vanavasin (“Forest Dweller”), saw the distinguished man Muktaka (“The Liberated One”), and realized the abode of full equipment with skill in means.
Muktaka was in the midst of the mundane, the same as Megha. The wise use places where there are many beings living and dying for meditation communities, and meditation communities are called forests, so Megha had indicated a community in the South called Forest Dweller.
Indicative of the fact that the twelve links of conditioning—ignorance, restlessness, self-consciousness, name and form, sense receptors, contact, reception, craving, grasping, becoming, birth, aging and death—are the substance of meditation, Sudhana traveled for twelve years to get to Vanavasin.
Before, with Sagaramegha, he had observed the twelve links of conditioned life and attained transmundane awareness; here he neither destroys conditioned life nor clings to conditioned life. Traveling means not dwelling.
When Sudhana saw Muktaka he threw himself bodily on the ground, because the essence of the body-mind cluster is itself meditation; he also joined his palms, symbolic of the nonduality of the absolute and mundane.
Because the subject of trance is immensely deep, all-pervasive, and completely fulfilling, Muktaka entered absorption into a concentration formula for the whirlpool of boundless buddha-fields, whereat there appeared in the ten directions the enlightenment sites of buddhas as numerous as atoms in ten buddha-fields.
The whirlpool has the meaning of depth, the number ten has the meaning of fulfillment. In absorption, the buddhas resulting from his own knowledge and his own causal practices appeared in profound stillness, so Muktaka said that when he entered absorption in trance he saw ten buddhas in the ten directions, with their ten chief assistants.
Because buddha is the accord of the inner mind with reality, therefore one thought in harmony is a moment of buddhahood, while a continuum of thoughts in harmony is a continuum of buddhas.
There is no country outside mind, no buddha outside mind, so the Liberated One Muktaka said that if he wanted to see buddhas such as the Buddha of Infinite Light in the World of Bliss, he could see them as soon as he thought of them.
Because the whole realm of the infinite compassionate acts of all knowledge is a meditati
on community, inherently unimpeded, Muktaka said he had only delved into the ins and outs of this way to liberation through unimpeded manifestation.
6. SARADHVAJA
Then Sudhana went to the tip of the continent, saw the monk Saradhvaja, and realized the abode of the correct state of mind.
Because Saradhvaja had reached the ultimate boundary of transmundane knowledge, he “lived on the tip of the continent.” Because he had only attained the great compassion by which worldlings transcend the world and had not attained the great compassion by which to enter the mundane and share its confinements, he was a “monk.” Because his oceanic knowledge could smash through delusion, he was called Ocean Banner.1
Sudhana saw Saradhvaja by the side of a place for walking meditation. A place for walking represents function, concentration in quiescence. This represents having tranquillity based on function. That Saradhvaja was sitting by the side of the promenade represents not dwelling in quiescent function, being spontaneous and free. He was detached from his breathing, representing tranquillity and function in accord with inner reality, since essence is inherently omnipresent and is not going in or out.
So Sudhana saw Saradhvaja in a trance next to a promenade detached from his breathing.
Grandees, householders, and Brahmins are worldly people who practice virtue, while feet are means of travel; so Sudhana saw grandees, householders, and Brahmins issuing from Saradhvaja’s feet and traveling throughout the ten directions.
Warriors are a governing class, Brahmins are a priestly class. Knees are joints that bend and extend freely. Because of Saradhvaja’s freedom of pure knowledge, warriors and priests issued from his knees.
The Flower Ornament Scripture Page 215