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Taishō no. 220
Fascicle 577

Śramaṇa Xuanze of Ximing Temple

Translated into English by Shaku Shingan (27.7.2025)

Inwardly reflecting, I see that a vast source must store the accumulation of supernormal wonders. Its clustered peaks naturally give one a vision of the hidden and mysterious. How much more does its penetration illuminate what exists, with its elegant tones rising high, serving as the model for reality, based on the profound and establishing the ultimate. Being a significant expansion from the initial assembly, it transforms small attainments into more mature thoughts, accumulating extraordinary merits—it is truly befitting! 

Thus, regarding the transmission of its essential words, it thrice bravely questions in its expositions; it regulates emotional defilements with principles, conveying solemn reverence twofold. It exhausts non-perception in disseminating outstanding achievement broadly, without assistance. Gathering and liberating beings with the dāna pāramitā, it encourages the vast merits of non-practice. Its aspirations equal the brightness of the sun, yet the reach of empty space [that it teaches] cannot be measured; faith in it is not changing like the wind, but flows through its sound and fragrance without abiding. Forgetting the Dharma-body in the major and minor marks, how can one see the Tathāgata? Dividing lands into dust motes, who can account for the world?

Many merits numbering as equal to the sands of the Ganges are actually not many, and the great body of the King of Mountains is not actually great. Dharma-nature transcends words, and to say it has an explanation is slander; bodhi is beyond grasping, and knowing there is no reception of it, it is accomplished. 

All of this brushes aside the mists of doubt, clipping the sprigs of the mind’s procession, prising contact with the unbounded and completely exhausting feeling conditioned by cherishing. The sharpness of the Vajra, though, is sufficient to dissolve duality. Its fierce antidote is but a single thought of non-obstruction. Its words must encompass all; hence, its expressions are often concise; its principles conform with profound inquiry, so its meanings are often intricate. Past sages relied on this to write treatises; later wise men therefore study it assiduously. It not only has a karmic connection to China, but it is also valued during this prosperous period. It has expanded and concise versions, with five translations, both old and new, but as it is refined, it becomes clearer. Moreover, wherever a scroll of a sūtra is, there dwells the Buddha. Therefore, the signs of taking up and bearing it are verification of its divinity. Its oral transmission is fully recorded in separate records. 

It eliminates the two extremes and makes manifest the nine contemplations: (1) a cloud in the wind and (2) a strand of hair are a shadow of the anguish of transience; (3) a lightning bolt, (4) an eye-like bubble, and (5) a casting of light, which have fleeting splendour; (5) the stars at night, which descend with dawn, and the (6) illusion-like wrong views from which it is hard to protect; (7) dew and (8) shadows, which are scattered with the sun: the risky aggregates are thus hastened to an end. 

Since conditioned things are like this, and the signless is like that, how can we not bear the distant grace of what has been entrusted here and personally experience beautiful verification of its practice?

577. The Vajracchedikā