Explanation of the Diamond Sutra: Subhūti's Request, Two

Subhūti is also known as Subhūti (Sudatta's "Good Manifestation"), the foremost in understanding emptiness among Śākyamuni Buddha's disciples. While still in his mother's womb he already knew that all dharmas are empty and quiescent, due to the profound wholesome roots accumulated over many kalpas in previous lives. He entered the womb, dwelt in the womb, and emerged from the womb without confusion or delusion. At the moment of his birth, all the family's treasures vanished into emptiness, and a few days later they reappeared on their own—showing that everything is empty, and even existence is only provisional existence. Subhūti is honored with the title "Elder." An Elder is a person of prestige and majestic virtue among the assembly, one who is not in accord with the three poisons and afflictions. Subhūti realized the fruit of arhatship by cultivating the emptiness dharma of the Small Vehicle, and when the World-Honored One expounded the Great Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra, he turned his mind toward the Great Vehicle and walked the bodhisattva path. When the Buddha expounds a sūtra, he always relies on some particular condition as an occasion, using the topic as a springboard to bring forth a whole sūtra; he rarely expounds the Dharma without anyone requesting it, unless it is especially important. This sūtra was requested by Subhūti.

Original text:时。长老须菩提在大众中。即从座起。偏袒右肩。右膝着地。合掌恭敬而白佛言。希有世尊。如来善护念诸菩萨。善付嘱诸菩萨。

Explanation: Just after the World-Honored One finished his meal and sat down cross-legged, Subhūti rose from his seat among the assembly, bared his right shoulder, placed his right knee on the ground, and with palms joined respectfully asked the Buddha: "Rare and hard to behold, World-Honored One! The Tathāgata has always been good at protecting and being mindful of all bodhisattvas, and good at entrusting and instructing all bodhisattvas."

Subhūti first praised the World-Honored One as the rarest of sages in the world, extremely difficult to behold. The World-Honored One is indeed rare: a trichiliocosm has only one Buddha. One world system with its sun and moon—from the hells beneath the four great oceans, to the earth, to Mount Sumeru, and up to the six heavens of the desire realm—is called a small world system. One thousand small world systems together with the first dhyāna heaven of the form realm constitute a small thousand-world system; one thousand small thousand-world systems together with the second dhyāna heaven constitute a middle thousand-world system; one thousand middle thousand-world systems together with the heavens from the third dhyāna upward constitute a great thousand-world system. Such a vast world has only one Buddha, and the duration of his manifested presence in the world is extremely brief, while the interval between two successive Buddhas is very long. The shortest interval is between Śākyamuni Buddha and Maitreya Buddha—5.67 billion years. For longer intervals, often for several great kalpas or even dozens of great kalpas, no Buddha appears in the world, and sometimes even longer without a single Buddha appearing. From this we can see that the World-Honored One is indeed rare and hard to encounter.

The appellation "Tathāgata" is spoken from the perspective of the nature and essence of sentient beings. The Tathāgata comes from suchness (tathatā); suchness is a true and immovable essence. Where there is suchness, there is the Tathāgata; without suchness, there is no Tathāgata. In the Buddha's tathāgatagarbha, the ignorance of the seven consciousnesses has been completely severed, never again to be perfumed or transformed—this is called the suchness of permanence, bliss, self, and purity. But the sentient being's tathāgatagarbha contains seeds of unwholesome karma, harboring fundamental ignorance, beginningless ignorance, and dust-like ignorance, with seeds of both segmented birth-and-death and transformational birth-and-death; it is also called the storehouse consciousness. Through cultivation, the seeds of unwholesome karma in the sentient being's tathāgatagarbha steadily decrease, the seeds of wholesome karma steadily increase, ignorance diminishes bit by bit, and illumination increases bit by bit; the tathāgatagarbha as a whole constantly undergoes change, so it is not yet true suchness, and differs to some degree from the Buddha's suchness.

Yet the essence of the tathāgatagarbha is immovable suchness: when forms come it does not see, when sounds come it does not hear, when scents come it does not smell, when flavors come it does not taste, when tangible objects come it does not touch, when mental objects come it does not know. It is completely unmoved by the six sense objects, never giving rise to mental activity or thoughts, never turned by the six dusts, possessing true reality and suchness. The tathāgatagarbha is sometimes also called suchness; its self-nature being unchanging is called the non-transformation of suchness. The tathāgatagarbha itself is like a clean cup, and the seven transforming consciousnesses are like the water in the cup. Water can be pure or defiled, so the cup of water is divided into the undefiled and the defiled. The sentient being's seven transforming consciousnesses are defiled, and the seeds are stored in the cup of the true mind, so the true mind harbors filth, and the water poured out is dirty water. Therefore the sentient being's true mind is called the tathāgatagarbha, ālayavijñāna, vipākavijñāna, and so on; whereas the Buddha's true mind, being undefiled, is called the undefiled consciousness (amala-vijñāna). Cultivation is precisely the purification of the seven transforming consciousnesses and the breaking of ignorance. To break ignorance one must study the principle of the tathāgatagarbha; when one has fully penetrated it, one becomes a Buddha.

A sentient being begins cultivation from the ten stages of faith of an ordinary person, through the ten stages of abiding, the ten stages of conduct, the ten stages of dedication, and on to the ten bhūmis, and the stages of realization and wondrous awakening—fifty-two stages in all. At every stage, one cannot do without the Buddha's blessing and protection; otherwise one would be blocked by karmic obstructions and unable to continue cultivating upward. Thus it is said that the Buddha's grace is vast and mighty; without becoming a Buddha there is no way to repay it. Can the Buddha protect and cherish so many sentient beings? He can protect and cherish them all, because the Buddha is also called the possessor of the wisdom of all aspects (sarvākārajñatā), with wisdom and virtuous abilities perfectly complete; there is not a single dharma in the mundane or supramundane that he does not know or understand. The Buddha knows the minds of every sentient being in the worlds of the ten directions, knows the events of every sentient being's countless kalpas, and even when it rains simultaneously throughout the worlds of the ten directions, the Buddha knows exactly how many raindrops there are in total. Since the Buddha can know the minds of sentient beings, he can protect and support their cultivation, helping them pass through every stage until they attain buddhahood.

From the ten stages of faith, the bodhisattva begins cultivating faith in the Three Jewels: understanding the Buddha's thirty-two marks and eighty excellent characteristics, the causes and conditions of his cultivation of the bodhisattva path over countless kalpas, the merits contained in the Buddha's ten epithets, and the scope of formation of the Buddha-lands, so as to give rise to aspiration. Then he understands the rough contents of the Tripitaka and twelve divisions of scriptures taught by the Buddha, and the meaning of the three refuges and five precepts; then he understands the Sangha Jewel—what is meant by ordinary monks, monastic-community monks, and noble monks, as well as the Three Jewels as a single body and the Three Jewels of self-nature. Thus proceeding from blind faith to reverent faith and admiring faith, he arrives at correct faith: believing that the Three Jewels of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha truly abide in the worlds of the ten directions, believing that all sentient beings in the ten directions possess the suchness of buddha-nature and can all become Buddhas, and that he himself can also become a Buddha. When faith in attaining buddhahood is complete, the ten stages of faith are fulfilled. How long this takes depends on the depth of one's wholesome roots and merit and one's diligence; and all of this cultivation cannot be separated from the Buddha's protection.

After this stage of cultivation is complete, the Buddha will protect and guide the bodhisattva into the cultivation of the three stages of worthy ones. At the first stage of abiding, he cultivates generosity (dāna), accumulating the provisions of merit as provisions for the Path in preparation for seeing the true mind and realizing the nature; at the second stage of abiding, he cultivates the precepts, cutting off evil and cultivating good, transforming the mind toward purity, and not recklessly chasing after conditions; at the third stage of abiding, he cultivates patience, including patience with worldly affairs, persons, and principles, and patience with the great-vehicle principle of the non-arising of the tathāgatagarbha; at the fourth stage of abiding, he cultivates diligence—diligence in generosity, precepts, patience, and meditative concentration; at the fifth stage of abiding, he cultivates meditative concentration, being able to abide unmoved in a state of concentration and in the principles of the great and small vehicles, reaching preparatory concentration (anāgamya-samādhi), with the ability to engage in contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) on the emptiness of the Small Vehicle and the emptiness (śūnyatā) of the great vehicle mind; at the sixth stage of abiding, he cultivates the wisdom of prajñā, and when this is relatively complete he can awaken to the true mind. After giving rise to the illusion-like contemplation, he knows that all dharmas are illusory, knowing that all dharmas are like those conjured by a magician, and like clouds and mist in the sky, unreal.

After completing the ten stages of abiding, he moves into the ten stages of conduct, realizing the mirage contemplation, perceiving all dharmas as empty and illusory like a mirage. The phenomenon of a mirage is like this: when the sun shines on a sandy beach, heat rises and forms an illusory scene, as if there were buildings, carriages, horses, and people, and the people and horses seem to be moving; yet upon approaching, one finds nothing there at all. The phenomenon of the mirage is like this: a deer, being extremely thirsty, gazes from afar at the beach and hallucinates that it sees a river; running over, it finds not a single drop of water on the sand. Sentient beings, like that thirsty deer, delusively see all dharmas.

After this dharma is cultivated, he passes the third gate of Chan—the heavy gate of birth and death—and then moves into the ten stages of dedication, cultivating the dream-like contemplation, realizing that all dharmas are like a dream. When dreaming, all the people, things, and affairs in the dream seem real, and so in the dream one experiences joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness, grasping at and clinging to the dream scenery; upon waking, not a single hair can be found, though tears of mingled sorrow and joy still hang on one's cheeks. When sentient beings are awake, they are just as in a dream, utterly unable to sense the falsity and unreality of the world—coming and going within the dream without ever awakening. At this point, after further cultivating some wisdom of the varieties of paths, he enters the first bhūmi and becomes a noble one; one-third of the path to buddhahood has been completed.

Throughout this entire process of cultivation, the bodhisattva has never, life after life, been apart from the blessing and protection of all Buddhas. When the bodhisattva craves worldly pleasures and forgets cultivation, the Buddha warns him with impermanence; when the bodhisattva must leave home to cultivate, the Buddha secretly blocks his path in worldly affairs; when the bodhisattva is attached to the Small Vehicle, the Buddha guides him onto the great-vehicle path; when the bodhisattva has the ability to deliver sentient beings, the Buddha arranges for him to go to karmically connected worlds in the ten directions to deliver beings; when the bodhisattva accidentally falls into the three evil destinies, the Buddha personally or sends bodhisattvas to rescue him; when the bodhisattva has realized the fourth fruit of arhatship and is about to enter nirvāṇa, the Buddha uses skillful means to persuade the bodhisattva to remain in the world, benefiting himself and others until attaining buddhahood without entering nirvāṇa. All these are the Buddha's protection and entrustment of the bodhisattvas. The Buddha's compassion surpasses that of parents by countless, unspeakable billions of times; the Buddha's grace can never be fully told or fully praised.

This is the protection and cherishing by the Sambhogakāya and Nirmāṇakāya Buddhas with visible marks. Most important is the protection and cherishing by the Dharmakāya Buddha (dharma-kāya-buddha)—a protection and cherishing of no small consequence and utterly indispensable. Throughout the bodhisattva's cultivation over three countless great kalpas, the Dharmakāya Buddha—the Tathāgata within himself—protects and cherishes the bodhisattva at every moment, never departing for an instant, providing all the seeds needed for the bodhisattva's cultivation of the Path, and storing the seeds of Path-karma obtained through the bodhisattva's practice, without the slightest omission or loss. Only when the seeds of wholesome karma are complete in this way can the bodhisattva accomplish the Buddha-way.

Original text:世尊。善男子善女人。发阿耨多罗三藐三菩提心。云何应住。云何降伏其心。佛言。善哉善哉。须菩提。如汝所说。如来善护念诸菩萨。善付嘱诸菩萨。汝今谛听。当为汝说。善男子善女人。发阿耨多罗三藐三菩提心。应如是住。如是降伏其心。唯然世尊。愿乐欲闻。

Explanation: Subhūti asked again: "World-Honored One, when good men and good women give rise to the mind of anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi, how should they abide? How should they subdue their minds?" The World-Honored One replied: "Excellent, excellent! Subhūti, just as you have said, the Tathāgata indeed protects and cherishes all bodhisattvas well, and entrusts and instructs all bodhisattvas well. Now listen attentively, and I shall explain for you: when good men and good women give rise to the mind of bodhi seeking buddhahood, they should abide in this way, and subdue their minds in this way." Subhūti then declared: "Yes, World-Honored One, I gladly wish to hear your exposition."