Terms

dharmadhātu—The “realm of dharma.” While in Abhidharma, this is limited to denoting mental phenomena, i.e. dharmas (which is to say, feeling, perception, and formations (among some others which are too complex to go into here)), in this sūtra and other Mahāyāna sūtras, this denotes the world/universe/dhātu in which all phenomena/dharmas  take place. This is to say, the dharmadhātu is the entire universe. The various schools have further divided this according to the level of its realisation, but the sūtra only talks of it in the context of a unified whole.

Overall Teaching

The buddhas promote the study and spread of PW because they care for her as children a mother, for PW is the mother of the buddhas, thus they’re grateful. The world is the skandhas, and as they’re empty and identical to suchness, thus the whole world is. The buddha knows the thoughts of all beings as being exactly of an empty nature, identical to suchness—the mind is inherently pure. You cannot fix onto any dharmas, just as you cannot fix onto space. Dharmas are known as being unknowable, and viewing them in non-viewing is truly viewing the world.

Summary

1.     Perfect Wisdom the Mother of the Buddhas

a.     In the same way that children protect their mother from pain and harm, because she begat them in her pain and taught them, thus tathāgatas regard PW. [253-4]

b.     Thus, tathāgatas in this and other worlds sustain PW by promoting its study and propagation—so that Māra and his host may not prevent it from spreading.

c.     PW is the mother, progenitor, and instructor of tathāgatas.

d.     PW shows tathāgatas cognition of all-knowing: showing what the world is. [254]

2.     How the Tathāgata Knows the World

a.     Subhūti asks how PW instructs them in the world, and what that world is. [255]

i.     Buddha: The world is the five skandhas.

b.     Subhūti: how have the skandhas been shown by PW or what does PW show?

i.     Buddha: PW shows the skandhas as the world, because they don’t crumble/fall apart, they don’t fall apart because they have emptiness as their own-being, and being devoid of own-being, they cannot fall apart.[1]

ii.     The same applies to the signless, wishless, unaffected, unproduced, inexistent, and the realm of dharma (dharmadhātu).

3.     How the Tathāgata Knows the Thoughts of Beings

a.     Through PW the Tathāgata knows the nature of beings through their lack of own-being [256]:

i.     Their thoughts and doings, as they have not own-being.

ii.     Their collected thoughts, which, being extinct due to mergence with the absolute are non-extinct.

iii.     Their distracted thoughts, and nature of not being able to be distracted because they cannot really be directed at external objects. [257]

iv.     Their inexhaustible nature: like the realm of dharma itself. [258]

v.     Their polluted mind as unpolluted: “transparently luminous in their essential original nature.”

vi.     Their tensely active nature: fundamentally, thoughts are exerted so as to win dispassion, and when nothing is left to seize on, they’re not exerted. [259]

vii.     The same applies to thoughts with and without outflows.

viii.     A mind with greed, hate, or delusion as not a mind as it really is, and without those as being so freed. [260-2]

ix.     The extensiveness of thoughts as not diminishing or increasing. [263]

x.     That the perceptible attributes of thoughts are fundamentally without marks, isolated from their object, and imperceptible. [264-5]

xi.     The same goes for lower and supreme, unconcentrated and concentrated, unemancipated and emancipated, imperceptible thoughts. None of them can be grasped by any kind of eye: wisdom, heavenly, or fleshly. [245-8]

xii.     That tendencies to think positively and negatively, and the wrong views as listed in the Nikāya/Āgamas, all pertain to the skandhas, and not to reality. [249]

b.     The Tathāgata cognizes the skandhas as identical to suchness thanks to PW. [270]

c.     Suchness of the skandhas is the same as the suchness of the world: the four paths, and the tathāgata. All are:

i.     One single suchness.

ii.     No variety of positivity and negativity.

iii.     One, non-different, non-dual, without cause for duality.

iv.     Inextinguishable

v.     Unaffected. [271]

d.     This is precisely how the PW is the mother of the tathāgatas: their knowledge of suchness (tathatā) gives them the appellation tathāgata.[2]

e.     Subhūti declares that this is deep, and only an irreversible bodhisattva, arhat, or a person with right views could firmly believe in it.[3]

4.     Deep Marks, and How they are Fastened

a.     The devas headed by Śakra ask how marks are fixed onto dharmas. [272]

b.     The Buddha explains that they are fixed onto the fact that they are empty, signless, etc. and of the nature of nirvāṇa and suchness, because they’re not supported by anything (independent), like space. Such marks are not fixed upon by anyone, include gods and buddhas, just as you cannot fix onto space as it’s unconditioned. [273]

c.     This is a nature that doesn’t depend upon a buddha: he knows it, thus he’s called a tathāgata. His range is unattached cognition, i.e. PW.

5.     The World Shown as Empty

a.     PW instructs tathāgatas, who dwell in dependence upon that Dharma of dharmas taking no stand.

b.     Therefore tathāgatas respect and adore PW [274] and the vehicle and path (yāna) out of thanks. The Tathāgata’s full knowledge of dharmas being unmade is also his gratitude.

c.     Subhūti asks how the tathāgatas can be instructed if all dharmas are unknowable:

i.     the Buddha replies that the very fact that dharmas are unknowable, empty, and independent, is the way tathāgatas can fully know them by not viewing them. That’s why PW is their instructor. [275]

d.     Subhūti: How can there be a non-viewing of the skandhas?

i.     Where an act of consciousness arises without skandhas as an objective support (i.e. in any such instance), there is non-viewing of the skandhas.

ii.     Non-viewing the skandhas is viewing the world.

iii.     PW shows the world as empty, unthinkable, calmly quiet. [276]

[1] Lack (/emptiness) of own-being or inherent existence means it has no solid, permanent, enduring existence, but is dependently originated. Therefore, if that is something’s own-being, there is no falling apart, since it is the only kind of own-being that can be said to be solid, permanent, and enduring, i.e. non-solid, impermanent, and unenduring. As they say, “change is the only constant.”

[2] Tathatā is the nature (-tā = -ness in English) of being such/thus (tatha/tathā). However, the Middle Indic and Pāli “tatha/tathā” has the meaning of truth (equivalent to Pāli sacca and Sanskrit satya). Thus, one meaning of tathāgata among others (intended here) is “the one who is gone (gata) or come (agata) to truth,” having realized the nature of the truth. Being “such” is the same as “truth” inasmuch as truth is an inexpressible reality, only understandable by an experience designated as being of “such” or “thus” a nature.

[3] I would venture to equate that “firmness” with the “non-trembling” of not being “afraid” when one hears of the perfection of wisdom.