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WorkVasubandhu

十地經論

(lit.: Commentary on the Daśabhūmika)

Lost in Sanskrit, this commentary on the bodhisattva's ten stages divided its own Chinese translators and gave a school its name.

by Vasubandhu441 passages held

  • Chinese, a translation held here
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Original title
Daśabhūmikabhāṣya
Original language
Sanskrit

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Overview

In 508 two Indian monks, Bodhiruci and Ratnamati, reached Luoyang, the capital of the Northern Wei dynasty in China, and with a third, Buddhaśānta, began translating this book; by the time the work was done, they disagreed about what it meant. The book is Vasubandhu's commentary on the Daśabhūmika, a Mahayana sutra in which the bodhisattva Vajragarbha, at the request of another bodhisattva, sets out the ten stages through which a bodhisattva becomes a Buddha. That sutra later became a chapter of the vast Avataṃsaka. The commentary works through the sutra passage by passage. Its Sanskrit original is lost, and the Chinese sets each piece of the sutra before Vasubandhu's explanation of it. At the sixth stage the sutra says that the three realms of existence are false and made by one mind alone, and Vasubandhu reads it as meaning that everything in them is only a transformation of mind. The same sutra line, in Sanskrit, opens his Viṃśatikā. To read the sutra's many lists of ten, the commentary sets out a method of six characteristics: the whole and its parts, sameness and difference, formation and dissolution. The translators' quarrel concerned the storehouse consciousness, the deepest layer of mind in Yogācāra teaching, and whether it is pure, impure or both. Their pupils carried it on, and the school that grew from them, the Dilun, took its name from this treatise. Daochong, Bodhiruci's pupil, led a northern branch and held that the storehouse consciousness is not ultimately real. Huiguang, Ratnamati's pupil, led a southern branch that identified it with the Buddha-nature present in every being. The six characteristics outlived the school: Fazang, the Tang-dynasty systematiser of the Huayan school, made them a doctrine of the perfect interfusion of all things. The Chinese translation is held here complete.

Key concepts

What is a bodhisattva, and what is a stage on the path?

A bodhisattva is someone who has resolved to become a Buddha for the sake of all beings, not only to escape suffering alone. A stage, bhūmi in Sanskrit, literally ground, is a level of realisation on which that resolve stands firm before rising further. The sutra counts ten, from Joy to the Cloud of Dharma, and Vasubandhu's commentary explains what is seen, practised and overcome on each.

What are the ten perfections that the ten stages match?

The perfections are the virtues a bodhisattva brings to completion: giving, moral conduct, patience, vigour, meditation and wisdom, and in this sutra four more, skilful means, vows, strength and knowledge. Each stage is matched with one of them. The others are still practised, but one is carried to its fullness, so the first stage perfects giving and the sixth, where reality is seen as it is, perfects wisdom.

What are the six characteristics Vasubandhu reads the sutra through?

They are three pairs: the whole and its parts, sameness and difference, formation and dissolution. Vasubandhu applies them to the sutra's many lists of ten. The first item of such a list states the whole, the other nine are its parts; they share one meaning yet differ; and the brief statement forms the teaching while the full account spreads it out, as a world forms and breaks up. Every list becomes one teaching seen from six sides.

What are the twelve links of dependent origination?

They are the Buddha's chain of causes that keeps beings in rebirth: ignorance, mental formations, consciousness, name and form, the six senses, contact, feeling, craving, grasping, becoming, birth, and old age and death. Each arises in dependence on the one before. At the sixth stage the bodhisattva contemplates the chain both forwards and in reverse, and the sutra traces the whole of it to one mind.

What is a bodhisattva's vow?

A vow here is a resolve stated aloud that shapes everything after it. At the first stage the bodhisattva takes ten great vows, among them to honour every Buddha, to bring all beings to maturity and to purify the worlds, each to last as long as the realm of beings, space and time have no end. The vows are what turn a moment of good intention into a path.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

The Ten Stages to Buddhahood

Can the road from an ordinary good intention to Buddhahood be mapped, step by step, and what is gained at each step that was missing before?

Vasubandhu follows the sutra through ten stages, from Joy, where the bodhisattva first takes vows that are to last as long as there are beings, to the Cloud of Dharma, where the teaching rains on all. Each stage perfects one virtue, and at each the bodhisattva's goodness is refined like gold in a smith's fire. The commentary reads the sutra's many lists of ten through six characteristics, whole and part, sameness and difference, formation and dissolution, so that every list is one thing seen from six sides.

  • bodhisattva path
  • bodhisattva stages
  • spiritual development
  • perfections
  • vows
  • bodhisattva vows
  • merit
  • perseverance
  • faith
  • ethical conduct
  • spiritual practice
  • spiritual powers
  • buddhahood
  • awakening

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Compassion and Skilful Means

How does someone who has seen through the world stay in it to help others, and what does helping require besides goodwill?

Great compassion in the sutra is born from looking at beings caught by ignorance and craving and seeing what binds them. Wisdom without it would leave the world; compassion without wisdom would be swallowed by it. Vasubandhu reads the higher stages as their joining. At the seventh, the bodhisattva moves among the passions without being stained by them, and skilful means, the art of reaching each listener where they stand, becomes the form that compassion takes.

  • compassion
  • skillful means
  • teaching
  • wisdom
  • bodhisattva practice
  • liberation
  • suffering

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The Three Realms Made by One Mind

At the sixth stage the sutra declares that the three realms of existence are false, made by one mind alone. What does a bodhisattva see when the chain of rebirth turns out to be the mind's own work?

Facing, the sixth stage, is where wisdom faces things as they are. There the bodhisattva traces the twelve links of dependent origination, from ignorance through craving to old age and death, and the sutra says that the three realms are made by one mind. Vasubandhu reads the line as meaning that everything in them is a transformation of mind. The same line, in Sanskrit, opens his Viṃśatikā, but here it is a stage on a path of meditation, not a thesis defended against realists.

  • dependent origination
  • emptiness
  • no-self
  • afflictions
  • karma
  • rebirth
  • nirvana
  • meditation
  • concentration

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held
441
distinct concepts
356
by passages held, corpus-wide
#167

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “bodhisattva path” and “wisdom”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 27 pairings. 82 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
bodhisattva pathwisdom38
bodhisattva pathcompassion33
compassionskillful means33
compassionwisdom27
bodhisattva pathskillful means25
skillful meanswisdom21
bodhisattva pathmeditation20
bodhisattva pathteaching17
skillful meansteaching15
meditationwisdom14
teachingwisdom14
compassionteaching13
liberationwisdom12
compassionliberation11
meditationskillful means10
compassionmeditation9
bodhisattva pathliberation6
liberationskillful means6
liberationmeditation4
liberationteaching4
karmaliberation3
karmawisdom3
bodhisattva pathkarma2
meditationteaching2
compassionkarma1
karmameditation1
karmateaching1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. Abhidharmakośa-Bhāṣya (Abhidharmakośabhāṣya)

    The standard Abhidharma textbook for later Buddhist scholars in China and Tibet. Scholars usually place it before the shorter works in which Vasubandhu argues that only the mind's own representations exist.

     SA
  2. Distinguishing the Middle from the Extremes (Madhyāntavibhāgakārikābhāṣya)

    The one Yogācāra book on the shelf that is a commentary on someone else's verses: the teaching Vasubandhu received through his brother Asaṅga, explained line by line.

     SA
  3. Pañcaskandhaka-prakaraṇa (Pañcaskandhaprakaraṇa)

    A pocket version of the inventory that his Abhidharmakośa-Bhāṣya argues through at length, redrawn on the Yogācāra scheme of his brother Asaṅga.

     SA
  4. Tri-svabhāva-nirdeśa (Trisvabhāvanirdeśa)

    Counted by one report as his last work and doubted by some scholars as his at all, it takes the three natures that his longer books touch on and makes them the whole subject.

     SA
  5. Triṃśikā-kārikā (Triṃśikāvijñaptikārikā)

    Thirty verses and no prose: the most compressed statement of his mature teaching on the mind, left for others to explain.

     SA
  6. Viṃśatikā-kārikā-vṛtti (Viṃśatikā)

    Where his Thirty Verses lay out the system, this book defends its starting point, arguing against Buddhist and Brahmanical realists alike.

     SA
  7. 十地經論 (Daśabhūmikabhāṣya) you are here ZH
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