---
title: "Reverencing All Buddhas, Praising the Tathāgatas, and Extensively Making Offerings: Samantabhadra's Vows One, Two, and Three as the Body, Speech, and Mind Halves of a Three-Karma Set"
author: "釋慧鏡 (Shi Huijing)"
series: "Six Practice Gates, Volume 1 — Mindful of the Buddha: From Early Buddhist Recollection to the Flower Ornament Vision"
series_short: "NIAN"
volume: 1
paper_id: "NIAN-P26"
paper_number: 26
part: "Part VII · The Flower Ornament Vision"
part_number: 7
date: "2026-05-02"
version: "1.0"
license: "CC BY-NC-SA 4.0"
---

# Reverencing All Buddhas, Praising the Tathāgatas, and Extensively Making Offerings

**Samantabhadra's Vows One, Two, and Three as the Body, Speech, and Mind Halves of a Three-Karma Set**

*中文主題：禮敬諸佛・稱讚如來・廣修供養——普賢願1+2+3 為三業之身語意三半*

---

**Author:** 釋慧鏡 (Shi Huijing)
**Date:** May 2026
**License:** CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
**Version:** 1.0
**Series:** NIAN — Mindful of the Buddha

---

> "Within all worlds of the ten directions,
> to the lions among men of past, present, and future,
> with body, speech, and mind made pure,
> I bow universally to all without remainder."
> — *Samantabhadra-bodhisattva's Practice-and-Vow Chapter*, T0293, translated by Prajña, fascicle forty (verses)

## Abstract
This paper treats the first three of Samantabhadra's ten great vows (*Bhadracarī-praṇidhāna*): reverencing all buddhas (*lǐjìng zhū fó* 禮敬諸佛, vow one), praising the tathāgatas (*chēngzàn rúlái* 稱讚如來, vow two), and extensively making offerings (*guǎngxiū gòngyǎng* 廣修供養, vow three). The thesis: these are not the first three items in a list of ten meritorious deeds but the body, speech, and mind halves of a three-karma set — vow one led principally by body-karma, vow two principally by speech-karma, vow three principally by mind-karma. Vow one's *"reverencing"* must be read as the highest three rungs of Chengguan's ten-form ladder of reverence — the great-compassion, total-encompassing, and inexhaustible forms — and not as mechanical prostration; vow two's *"praising"* must be read as the four unobstructed understandings (*catasraḥ pratisaṃvidaḥ*) together with the seven branches of eloquence at the ninth bodhisattva ground, not as lyrical encomium; vow three's *"extensively making offerings"* must be read as the seven kinds of dharma-offering — practising-as-taught, benefitting sentient beings, gathering-in sentient beings, taking on sentient beings' suffering, diligent cultivation of wholesome roots, not abandoning the bodhisattva's work, not departing from the awakening-mind — as the bodhisattva's outward-facing work, not as material almsgiving or charitable donation. The three vows form an isomorphic triplet at the textual level of T0293 itself — sharing the same cosmological field, the same practice-vow-power engine, the same four-exhaustion-four-inexhaustion closure formula, and the same *"body, speech, and mind never wearying"* coda. In Chinese ritual practice the set is directly codified by Shandao's *Verses for the Six Times of Reverence-Praise* (the gateways of body-karma prostration, speech-karma praise, and mind-karma recollection-and-contemplation) and by the parallel placement of *"three-karma offering / praising the Three Jewels / prostrating to the buddhas"* in Zhiyi's *Lotus Samādhi Repentance Liturgy*. The paper pushes back against Cook 1977's metaphysics-only reading of Huayan — strengthened by appeal to the *sūtra*'s own *"true offering"* textual hook and the textual isomorphism of the three vows — and extends Schopen 1997's archaeological grounding of early Buddhist devotion and Sharf 2002/2005's anti-psychologizing of Buddhist ritual.

**Keywords:** Samantabhadra's vow-practice; *Bhadracarī-praṇidhāna*; reverencing buddhas; praising tathāgatas; extensively making offerings; three-karma set; seven kinds of dharma-offering; ten-form ladder of reverence; total-encompassing reverence (*zǒngshè lǐ* 總攝禮); inexhaustible reverence (*wújìn lǐ* 無盡禮); four unobstructed understandings; *catasraḥ pratisaṃvidaḥ*; subtle tongue-faculty (*wéimiào shégēn* 微妙舌根); true offering (*zhēn gòngyǎng* 真供養); not departing from the awakening-mind (*bù lí pútíxīn* 不離菩提心); Sadāparibhūta (Never Disparaging Bodhisattva); Shandao's three-karma codification; *Verses for the Six Times of Reverence-Praise* (T1980); *Lotus Samādhi Repentance Liturgy* (T1941); moment-by-moment continuous (*niànniàn xiāngxù* 念念相續); *buddhānusmṛti*.

---

## I. Introduction

A standard formula recurs throughout the Chinese translations of the Āgama scriptures: *"He bowed his head at the Buddha's feet and withdrew to one side"* (*jīshǒu fózú, tuìzuò yīmiàn* 稽首佛足，退坐一面). On a first reading the line registers as a bare description of action — a disciple performs a salute, then sits. Returned to its Pāli correspondents, however, the word the Chinese collapses as *jīshǒu* is *abhivādeti* — etymologically *abhi-* ("toward") plus *vad-* ("speak"), literally "to address with words of homage." The action is in fact a tripartite composite: a verbal element (the words of homage), a postural element (the bow, palms joined), and a positional element (the withdrawal to a respectful place).[^1] What the Chinese has compressed into two characters is in the Pāli a single relational gesture in which speech, body, and place all participate at once. Centuries of Chinese reading habit have hardened the contraction; "reverencing" has become, for most readers, almost exclusively a matter of bodily posture.

This thin reading collapses immediately on entry into T0293, *The Practice-and-Vow Chapter of Samantabhadra Entering the Inconceivable Liberation Realm of the Avataṃsaka-sūtra*, fascicle forty — the most explicit and most layered locus in the Chinese canon for what reverencing, praising, and offering actually involve. Among the ten great vows that Samantabhadra delivers in answer to Sudhana, the first ("reverencing all buddhas"), the second ("praising the tathāgatas"), and the third ("extensively making offerings") are not arbitrarily ordered first items in a list of ten meritorious acts. They are an isomorphic triplet packaged by the *sūtra* itself: **the body, speech, and mind halves of a three-karma set.**

The previous paper (P25) set out a four-layered architecture for the introduction to Part VII: the *vow-king* (*praṇidhāna-rāja*) operator that totalises the ten as one; the inheritance from the *Entering the Dharmadhātu* (*Gaṇḍavyūha*) chapter; the dharma-realm buddha-recollection internal to the sūtra itself; and the textual seam from Part VI to Part VII. P25's closing section originally announced four subsequent papers, each treating one pair of vows.[^2] In the course of drafting the present paper, however, it became clear that holding vow three over to P27 would defer this paper's closure to a subsequent piece and would sever the textual triplet that the *sūtra* itself binds. The present paper accordingly treats vows one, two, and three together as a three-karma-set integral paper. Vows four through ten are redistributed across P27 (vows four and five, sharing the karma-transformation operator), P28 (vows six and seven, sharing the dharma-preservation theme), and P29 (vows eight, nine, and ten, the closing triad of upward-following, downward-conforming, and dedication).

The thesis can be stated in a single sentence: **Samantabhadra's first three vows are not three parallel items at the head of a ten-item list of meritorious deeds but the body, speech, and mind halves of a three-karma set; vow one's "reverencing" must be read as the highest three rungs of the ten-form ladder of reverence — the great-compassion, total-encompassing, and inexhaustible forms — at the round-teaching plane, and not as mechanical prostration; vow two's "praising" must be read as the four unobstructed understandings combined with the seven branches of eloquence at the ninth bodhisattva ground, and not as lyrical encomium; vow three's "extensively making offerings" must be read as the seven kinds of dharma-offering as the bodhisattva's outward-facing work, and not as material charity.** The three vows form an isomorphic triplet at the textual level of T0293 itself — sharing the same cosmological-field opening clause, the same practice-vow-power engine, the same *"moment-by-moment continuous, without interruption, body and speech and mind never wearying"* closing coda, and the same four-exhaustion-four-inexhaustion closure formula. The Chinese patriarch Shandao (613–681), in his *Verses for the Six Times of Reverence-Praise*, has already codified the three-karma set directly: *"the gateway of body-karma prostration, the gateway of speech-karma praise, the gateway of mind-karma recollection-and-contemplation."* Zhiyi (538–597), in his *Lotus Samādhi Repentance Liturgy*, places *"three-karma offering / praising the Three Jewels / prostrating to the buddhas"* as three independent ritual segments within his ten-section liturgical schema.

Three Anglophone interlocutors are engaged: Francis Cook (1977) is conceded and pushed back against, with the pushback turning on the *sūtra*'s own *"true offering"* textual hook and the textual isomorphism of the three vows. Gregory Schopen (1997) and Robert Sharf (2002, 2005) are conceded and extended.

## II. Textual Sources and Recensional Configuration

The textual position of vows one, two, and three extends across four distinct strata: the canonical-original layer, the patriarchal-commentary layer, the parallel-precedent layer, and the Chinese ritual-practice layer.

The **canonical-original layer** is T0293 *Mahāvaipulya-buddhāvataṃsaka-sūtra: The Practice-and-Vow Chapter of Samantabhadra Entering the Inconceivable Liberation Realm*, fascicle forty, translated by the master Prajña (般若, c. 734 – c. 810) at Chang'an in 798 CE.[^3] This fascicle alone among the Chinese *Avataṃsaka* recensions presents a formal numbered enumeration of the ten great vows; it is the *locus classicus* for the chapter as a whole. Twelve passages furnish the principal text used here: the main exposition, closure formula, and verse-couplet of vow one; the main exposition, closure formula, and verse-couplet of vow two; and for vow three, the main exposition, the material-offerings enumeration, the seven-dharma-offerings enumeration, the *"true offering"* quantitative-comparison passage, the closure formula, and the verse-couplet.[^4]

The **patriarchal-commentary layer** consists of two *Wàn xùzàng* (續藏) works: X05n0227 Chengguan's (澄觀, 738–839) *Practice-and-Vow Chapter Commentary* and X05n0229 Zongmi's (宗密, 780–841) *Detailed Sub-Commentary on the Practice-and-Vow Chapter* (also known as *Bie-xing-shu chao* 別行疏鈔). These commentaries are not in the Taishō canon; their fascicle and page numbers follow the *Wàn xùzàng* X numeration, with CBETA's R007 cross-references provided where useful for the traditional citation form.[^5] The present paper draws on Chengguan's ten-form ladder of reverence; on Chengguan's three-section schema for vow three together with his Sanskrit-collation reading of *"dharma-offering pervades the ten dharma-practices"*; on Zongmi's exposition of the third (basic respectful) reverence as a three-karma composite; on the ninth (total-encompassing) reverence as the rung at which one *"may rightly be called the Samantabhadra practice-vow reverence"*; on the tenth (inexhaustible) reverence with its declaration that *"failing to enter into this contemplation, one only wears oneself out in vain"*; on the polemical excursus under the first (arrogant) reverence that addresses the Chan one-sided dismissal of prostration; on the exposition of the *subtle tongue-faculty* as the bodhisattva's ten kinds of tongue together with the four unobstructed understandings and the seven branches of eloquence; and on Zongmi's seven-fold sub-commentary on the seven kinds of dharma-offering — taking the first ("practising-as-taught") and the seventh ("not departing from the awakening-mind") as verbatim citations and the middle five in essence-paraphrase. The vow-four-through-vow-ten material in both commentaries is strictly reserved for later papers.

The **parallel-precedent layer** is T0262, the *Saddharmapuṇḍarīka-sūtra* (the *Lotus Sūtra*), translated by Kumārajīva in 406 CE. The chapter on Sadāparibhūta — *the Bodhisattva Never Disparaging* — fixes the pairing "prostrate and extol" (*lǐbài zàntàn* 禮拜讚歎) as a pre-given combination already in circulation almost four centuries before the *Practice-and-Vow Chapter* was rendered into Chinese.

The **early-root layer** is the early Pāli vinaya and the Chinese Āgamas. The *Vinaya-piṭaka, Mahāvagga* I.22 lists a five-mode spectrum of greeting (*abhivāda*, *sammodati*, *añjali*, *nāmagottaṁ sāveti*, *tuṇhībhūto*), and preserves the early nine-epithet *iti'pi so kittisadda abbhuggato* as the standard form by which the social fame of the Buddha was relayed; T0125 *Ekottara-āgama*, fascicle two, in its chapter on extended buddha-recollection, unfolds the nine epithets into an enumeration of the Buddha's *body, countenance, virtue of discipline, samādhi, and wisdom-body* — the direct ancestor of vow two's *"oceans of inexhaustible voice extolling the ocean of all the tathāgatas' merits."* The appeal to this layer here is taken at the level of essence — that *"praising"* in early Buddhist usage is the formulaic recitation of an epithet sequence rather than free-form composition — not at the level of philological detail; NIAN P02 has already conducted the philological treatment of the nine-epithet formula on the main stage.[^6]

The **Chinese ritual-practice layer** consists of three works whose function is supportive (the cultivation guidance in §VI rests on them). T1941 Zhiyi's (538–597) *Lotus Samādhi Repentance Liturgy*, fascicle one, sets out a ten-section ritual ordering in which the third (*"three-karma offering"*), the fifth (*"praising the Three Jewels"*), and the sixth (*"making prostrations to the buddhas"*) stand as three independent ritual segments. T1753 Shandao's (613–681) *Commentary on the Sūtra of the Visualization of the Buddha of Immeasurable Life*, fascicle four (the section *Sǎn-shàn yì* 散善義), establishes the doctrine of five right practices: reciting, contemplating, prostrating, calling the name, and praising-and-offering. T1980 Shandao's *Verses for the Six Times of Reverence-Praise*, fascicle one, lays out a daily six-period schedule and, in its preface and the ensuing five-recollection-gateway scheme, directly codifies the three-karma set — *"body-karma prostration to that buddha, speech-karma praise and extolling of that buddha, mind-karma sole recollection and contemplation of that buddha"* — which serves as the principal patriarchal anchor for the present paper's main argument.[^7]

## III. Core Argument

The argument unfolds across five sub-sections: §III.1 treats vow one's main exposition, closure formula, and verses, isolating the joint operation of the three karmic modes and the figure of the *Indra's-net* reverence; §III.2 treats the ten-form ladder of reverence and the patriarchal phrase *"may rightly be called the Samantabhadra practice-vow reverence"*; §III.3 treats vow two and the *subtle tongue-faculty* together with the four unobstructed understandings, distinguishing this from lyrical encomium; §III.4 treats vow three's reversal of material offerings into the seven kinds of dharma-offering and applies the *"true offering"* textual hook to the Cook pushback; §III.5 binds the three vows together as a three-karma set on the basis of textual isomorphism within T0293 and convergence within Chinese ritual practice.

### 3.1 Vow One: Three-Karma Joint Operation and Indra's-Net Reverence

The main expository section of vow one reads:

> "Of the Buddha-Lord-Honored Ones equal in number to dust-particles within all the buddha-fields filling the dharma-realm and the realm of empty space throughout the ten directions and the three times: I, by the power of Samantabhadra's practice-vow, generate a deep faith-and-understanding such that they are present before me as if directly facing them; with body, speech, and mind made wholly pure, I constantly cultivate reverence. At each buddha's place, I manifest bodies equal in number to dust-particles within indescribably many buddha-fields, and each body universally bows to buddhas equal in number to dust-particles within indescribably many buddha-fields."[^8]

Three structural elements within this passage call for separate identification.

**First**, *"by the power of Samantabhadra's practice-vow"*. The reach of the reverence — which extends to all the buddhas of the ten directions and three times — does not derive from the practitioner's own effort but from the *practice-vow power* (the totalising operation of Samantabhadra's *vow-king*, treated in detail in P25). Although the grammatical subject of the vow is the practitioner, the dynamic agent is the practice-vow itself in its already-unfolding totality.

**Second**, *"with body, speech, and mind made wholly pure, I constantly cultivate reverence."* Reverence is not the single act of the body but the joint operation of all three karmic modes. Zongmi makes this explicit in his exposition of the third (basic respectful) reverence: *"Earnestness — that is the karma of mind. The making of vows together with calling-the-name and extolling — that is the karma of speech. The five-limbs touching the ground — that is the karma of body. So all three karmas are complete."*[^9] Elsewhere he establishes a three-karma-three-wheel correspondence: *"the body responds to the wheel of supernormal powers; speech to the wheel of admonition; mind to the wheel of mind-reading."*[^10] Reverence at the level of vow one is the integrated operation of all three.

**Third**, *"each body universally bows to buddhas equal in number to dust-particles within indescribably many buddha-fields."* Here the *Indra's-net* (the inexhaustible reverence) figure is already textually present: the reverencer's single body multiplies into bodies as numerous as the dust-particles of the buddha-fields, each of which in turn bows to a comparable multiplicity of buddhas — not in a sequence of additions, but in the simultaneous interpenetrating display of reflective multiplicity.

The main exposition is followed immediately by the closing four-exhaustion-four-inexhaustion formula:

> "If the realm of empty space could be exhausted, my reverence would also reach an end; but since the realm of empty space cannot be exhausted, my reverence has no end. Likewise, if the realm of sentient beings, the karma of sentient beings, and the afflictions of sentient beings could be exhausted, my reverence would reach its end; but since the realms of sentient beings and their afflictions cannot be exhausted, my reverence is without end, moment-by-moment continuous, without interruption — body, speech, and mind never wearying."[^11]

The pivotal phrase is *"moment-by-moment continuous"* (*niàn-niàn xiāng-xù* 念念相續). Reverence is neither a one-time offering nor a periodic ritual but a closure formula opened along four parameters all known to be inexhaustible: empty space, sentient beings, their karma, and their afflictions. Reverence could in principle be a finite act (one bow, finished); under the vow-king's operation, the object of reverence (an inexhaustible field of sentient beings) reverse-totalises the action into an inexhaustible flow.

The verse-section's central couplet-pair locks this structure:

> "Within all worlds of the ten directions, / to the lions among men of past, present, and future, / with body, speech, and mind made pure, / I bow universally to all without remainder.
> By the awesome power of Samantabhadra's practice-vow, / I appear universally before all tathāgatas, / one body manifesting bodies as numerous as dust-particles, / each one bowing to buddhas as numerous as dust-particles."[^12]

The three textual movements — main exposition, closure formula, verse — form a three-fold chiasmus, each reinforcing the other; the three-karma joint operation and the *Indra's-net* reverence stand as the doubled deep structure. Note in particular the verse-line *"with body, speech, and mind made pure"* (*wǒ yǐ qīngjìng shēn yǔ yì* 我以清淨身語意): the three-karma figure makes its appearance already in the verse — a textual prefiguring of the three-karma-set reading to be developed at §III.5.

### 3.2 The Ten-Form Ladder: *"May Rightly Be Called the Samantabhadra Practice-Vow Reverence"*

If vow one's textual structure is clear, its practical structure is not flat. Chengguan, in the *Practice-and-Vow Chapter Commentary*, makes the move on which the present paper's principal argument turns: he supplements Ratnamati's (勒那摩提, the Northern-Wei translator at the Yongning Temple) original seven-form schema[^13] by adding three further forms, yielding ten — and within the ten he identifies precisely which forms belong to the *Practice-and-Vow Chapter*.

Chengguan writes:

> "Tripiṭaka-master Ratnamati spoke of seven forms of reverence; I now add three to make ten. They are: (1) **arrogant reverence**, like a pestle moving up and down with no respectful mind; (2) **chanting-along reverence**, loud and disorderly, words confused — these two are non-conforming. (3) **respectful reverence**, the five limbs touching the ground, supporting the buddha's feet earnestly. (4) **non-mark reverence**, deeply entering dharma-nature, parted from the marks of subject and object. (5) **arising-and-functioning reverence**, where though there is no subject and object, body and mind are universally engaged, like a shadow universally pervading, reverencing what cannot be reverenced. (6) **inner-contemplation reverence**, reverencing only the inner dharma-body true buddha, not seeking outwardly. (7) **true-reality reverence**, where, whether inner or outer, all are one true reality. (8) **great-compassion reverence**, where with each single act of reverence one universally substitutes for sentient beings. (9) **total-encompassing reverence**, gathering the preceding six as one contemplation. (10) **inexhaustible reverence**, entering the realm of *Indra's net*, where buddha and reverence are layer upon layer inexhaustibly. The text properly identifies the fifth, the ninth, and the tenth."[^14]

By Chengguan's classification this ladder of ten falls into three segments: rungs one and two are non-conforming (better not done at all); rungs three through seven correspond to the traditional doctrinal classification (*store, common, distinct, round*) and supply graded levels of reverence within those categories; rungs eight, nine, and ten are Chengguan's own additions, the round-teaching's three highest forms. Chengguan's closing line — *"the text properly identifies the fifth, the ninth, and the tenth"* — declares that what the *Practice-and-Vow Chapter* identifies as reverence is not any reverence whatever, but precisely three rungs from this ladder of ten: the fifth (arising-and-functioning), the ninth (total-encompassing), and the tenth (inexhaustible). These are the *highest three forms* in the present paper's argument — *highest* because the fifth caps the seven graded forms (within the round-teaching schema) and the ninth and tenth are Chengguan's own round-teaching additions.

Zongmi expands on the ninth (total-encompassing) form:

> "The total-encompassing form is the gathering of the preceding six forms — deep and shallow alike — into one contemplation, namely, the unobstructed-mutual-interpenetration of phenomenon and phenomenon. It is called *gathering of six* because the first and second are non-conforming. That is to say: one who would reverence must first set the five limbs to the ground, supporting the buddha's feet earnestly (rung 3); deeply enter dharma-nature, parted from the marks of subject and object (rung 4); engage body and mind universally, reverencing what cannot be reverenced (rung 5); reverence only the inner buddha, not seeking outwardly (rung 6); whether inner or outer, holding all as one true reality (rung 7); with each single act of reverence universally substituting for sentient beings (rung 8) — only then may it be rightly called the Samantabhadra practice-vow reverence."[^15]

The line *"only then may it be rightly called the Samantabhadra practice-vow reverence"* (*fāng chēng pǔxián xíng-yuàn lǐ yě* 方稱普賢行願禮也) is the patriarchal steel column on which the present paper's principal argument rests. **Only the practitioner who has fused rungs three through eight into a single integrated contemplation deserves to be called a practitioner of vow one.** The reverence of Samantabhadra's first vow is not any one form of reverence but a composite ritual structure operating along six dimensions simultaneously: the earnestness of the three karmas, the parting from subject-object marks, the universalising of body-mind, the inward turning, the holding of inner-and-outer as one true reality, and the great-compassion substitution for sentient beings.

Zongmi expands further on the tenth (inexhaustible) form:

> "The inexhaustible form means *layer upon layer inexhaustibly*, as already explained… If one reveres in this manner, the inexhaustible merits of each single act of reverence are immeasurable. Failing to enter into this contemplation, one only wears oneself out in vain."[^16]

The closing phrase — *"failing to enter into this contemplation, one only wears oneself out in vain"* (*bù rù sī guān, tú zì pí láo yě* 不入斯觀，徒自疲勞也) — declares plainly: prostration that does not enter into the contemplative structure of the ninth and tenth forms is not without merit, but it is prostration without the round-teaching's structure of inexhaustible merit, and is therefore in that specific sense in vain. **This single line constitutes the most direct patriarchal refutation of the metaphysics-only reading that would dismiss prostration as dispensable in favour of contemplation alone.** It also corrects the one-sided Chan dismissal of prostration as mere mechanical formalism.

On the latter, Zongmi's exposition of the first (arrogant) reverence carries an excursus:

> "Arrogant reverence — together with the second below — is identified so that one may know the non-conforming and not engage them. As to the line *'like a pestle moving up and down,'* Master Zhi said: *'Walking the ritual path is like turning a millstone; reverencing is like a pestle pounding rice.'* He was rebuking precisely this form. Today's Chan students who do not grasp this meaning regularly use this line one-sidedly to disparage all reverence-and-repentance practice. This is gravely mistaken."[^17]

Master Zhi (志公, also Baozhi 寶誌, 418–514) had been rebuking the *non-contemplative arrogant reverence* — that is, prostration that is mere bodily form without inward contemplation. Later Chan readers, taking the line out of its commentarial context, generalised it to a wholesale dismissal of reverence-and-repentance practice; Zongmi judges this a one-sided extraction.

### 3.3 Vow Two: The Subtle Tongue-Faculty and Four Unobstructed Understandings — Not Lyrical Encomium

The main expository section of vow two reads:

> "Furthermore, son of good family! As to praising the tathāgatas — within each minute particle of dust within all buddha-fields filling the dharma-realm and the realm of empty space throughout the ten directions and the three times, there are buddhas as numerous as the dust-particles of all worlds, and around each buddha there is an ocean-assembly of bodhisattvas. I, with deep and supreme understanding, see them all as if directly present; and with the subtle tongue-faculty surpassing that of the goddess of eloquence, each tongue-faculty issuing oceans of inexhaustible voice, and each voice issuing oceans of all words, I extol and praise the ocean of all the tathāgatas' merits, continuing without break to the limit of future time, pervading without exception the whole dharma-realm."[^18]

Three key phrases require commentarial unpacking before the passage can be read accurately: *"deep and supreme understanding," "the subtle tongue-faculty,"* and *"oceans of all words."*

**"Deep and supreme understanding."** This is not faith of an unspecified general kind. Zongmi reads the phrase together with the immediately following *"see them all as if directly present"* as the practitioner's contemplative cognition of the object of reverence — the ocean of all the tathāgatas' merits — established in direct presentation; it stands parallel to vow one's *"generate a deep faith-and-understanding such that they are present before me as if directly facing them."* But the objects differ: in vow one, the buddhas themselves are the object; in vow two, the merits of the buddhas are the object.

**"The subtle tongue-faculty."** Zongmi cites the *Avataṃsaka-sūtra* at length:

> "As to the *subtle tongue-faculty* spoken of in this text: as the great sūtra states, the bodhisattva-mahāsattva possesses ten kinds of tongue, namely: the tongue that opens-and-expounds the inexhaustible practices of sentient beings; the tongue that opens-and-expounds inexhaustible dharma-gates; **the tongue that praises the inexhaustible merits of the buddhas**; **the tongue that pours forth inexhaustible word-eloquence**; the tongue that opens up the auxiliary path of the great vehicle; the tongue that universally pervades the empty space of the ten directions; the tongue that universally illuminates all buddha-fields; the tongue that universally enables sentient beings to awaken-and-understand; **the tongue that causes all buddhas to rejoice**; and the tongue that subdues all demons and outsiders, eradicates all the troubles of birth-and-death, and brings beings to nirvāṇa."[^19]

The *subtle tongue-faculty* is not the bodily-organ tongue made aesthetically pleasing. It is the integrated operation of ten kinds of tongue-activity that the bodhisattva achieves at the ninth ground — and three of these tongues (the third, fourth, and ninth in Zongmi's enumeration) directly furnish the speech-karmic basis for vow two.

**"Oceans of all words."** Zongmi reads this as the joint operation of the four unobstructed understandings (*pratisaṃvit*: dharma, meaning, words, eloquence) and the seven branches of eloquence (responsive, swift, sharp, free-from-confusion, inexhaustible, rich-in-meaning, supreme-among-all-worlds). He concludes: *"These four unobstructed understandings are accomplished only by the bodhisattva at the ninth ground; what is attained earlier is not the supreme form."*[^20] **The praising of vow two is not a speech-act available to any practitioner on demand, but a speech-karma defined as the four unobstructed understandings at the ninth bodhisattva ground.**

Read through these three layers, vow two's *"praising"* is not a lyrical hymn or a ritual chanting of a praise-formula. It is a structurally dense itemising act: an enumeration of items within the ocean of the tathāgatas' merits, each item extolled along the four dimensions of the four unobstructed understandings, and conducted with the seven qualities of eloquence. The verse-section's central couplet — *"With oceans of all voices, I pour forth inexhaustible exquisite words; for all kalpas of the future, I praise the ocean of buddhas' deep merits"*[^21] — names this joint operation. This reading directly corrects the standard Anglophone rendering — Cleary 1984's *"praise the Tathāgatas"* — when the rendering is taken in its lyrical-encomium register. The early-Pāli precedent in *Vinaya, Mahāvagga* I.22's *iti'pi so* nine-epithet formula[^22] and the parallel enumeration in T0125 *Ekottara-āgama* fascicle two of the Buddha's *body, countenance, virtue of discipline, samādhi, and wisdom-body*[^23] are the early forms of this formulaic enumeration. Vow two is the cosmological amplification of this format.

### 3.4 Vow Three: The Reversal from Material Offerings into the Seven Kinds of Dharma-Offering

The main expository section of vow three reads:

> "Furthermore, son of good family! As to extensively making offerings — within each minute particle of dust within all buddha-fields filling the dharma-realm and the realm of empty space throughout the ten directions and the three times, there are buddhas as numerous as the dust-particles of all worlds, and around each buddha there are ocean-assemblies of bodhisattvas of all kinds. I, by the power of Samantabhadra's practice-vow, generate a deep faith-and-understanding, see them as if directly present, and with all manner of supreme offering-implements make offerings to them."[^24]

The opening clause is structurally aligned with vows one and two: the same cosmological field (*"the dharma-realm and the realm of empty space throughout the ten directions and the three times, all buddha-fields"*), the same practice-vow-power engine (*"by the power of Samantabhadra's practice-vow, generate a deep faith-and-understanding, see as if directly present"*), the same mind-karma leading the action (*"deep faith-and-understanding"* and *"see as if directly present"* are both mind-karmic verbs). The structural alignment of the three opening clauses across the three vows already constitutes the first textual layer of evidence for the present paper's principal argument.

But vow three has its own internal architecture. Where vow one is governed throughout by the verb of *reverencing* and vow two by the verb of *praising*, vow three's main exposition is followed first by an enumeration of material offerings, and then by a *sūtra*-internal reversal — *"of all offerings, the dharma-offering is supreme"* — that pivots the centre of gravity from material adornment to the seven kinds of dharma-offering. The density and explicitness of this reversal furnish the steel column for the present paper's pushback against Cook's metaphysics-only reading of Huayan.

#### 3.4.1 The Material Offerings and the *"Dharma-Offering Is Supreme"* Reversal

The material-offerings passage reads:

> "These are: clouds of flowers, clouds of garlands, clouds of celestial music, clouds of celestial parasols, clouds of celestial garments, all manner of celestial fragrances — anointing fragrance, burning fragrance, fragrant powder — clouds of these and the like, each in quantity equal to Mount Sumeru, the king of mountains; lit lamps of various kinds — butter-lamps, oil-lamps, scented-oil lamps — each lamp's wick equal to Mount Sumeru, each lamp's oil equal to a great ocean's water; with offering-implements of these and the like, I make offerings continually."[^25]

The passage enumerates eight categories of material offering — flowers, garlands, music, parasols, garments, fragrances (in three sub-types), and lamps (in three sub-types) — each modified by a cosmological quantification (*"in quantity equal to Mount Sumeru, the king of mountains"*).

The *sūtra* immediately follows with an explicit reversal:

> "Son of good family! Of all offerings, the dharma-offering is supreme. These are: the offering by practising as taught, the offering by benefitting sentient beings, the offering by gathering-in sentient beings, the offering by taking on sentient beings' suffering, the offering by diligent cultivation of wholesome roots, the offering by not abandoning the bodhisattva's work, and the offering by not departing from the awakening-mind."[^26]

The *"is supreme"* judgment is not a dualistic opposition between the material and the dharmic but an internal re-positioning of the term *offering*: the centre of gravity is shifted from material adornment to seven outward-facing bodhisattva activities.

The *sūtra* then closes the reversal with a quantitative-comparison verse:

> "Son of good family! In comparison with the immeasurable merits of the foregoing material offerings, the merit of a single moment of dharma-offering exceeds them — by a hundredfold, a thousandfold, a hundred-thousand-koti-nayuta-fold, by *kalā*, by counting, by enumeration, by simile, by *upaniṣad* — and yet none of these comparisons reach it. Why? Because all the tathāgatas hold the dharma supreme; because by practising as taught the buddhas come into being. **If a bodhisattva practises the dharma-offering, then he accomplishes the offering to the tathāgata; this practice is the true offering.**"[^27]

The phrase *"true offering"* (*zhēn gòngyǎng* 真供養) is the *sūtra*'s own definitional verdict: the *Avataṃsaka* itself defines *true offering* as the bodhisattva's outward-facing dharmic work — not material adornment, not metaphysical contemplation.

Chengguan, drawing on a Sanskrit collation, extends this definitional move:

> "*Dharma-offering pervades the ten dharma-practices*… The reverence-by-contemplation is precisely practice. Hence in the *Lotus Sūtra*, when the bodhisattva Sarvasattvapriyadarśana burnt his body, that was named a dharma-offering; in the *Vimalakīrti*, the teaching to Sudatta — making offerings without before-or-after, simultaneously and equally — was named a dharma-offering. **Therefore material giving, if it is conformable to the dharma, is itself dharma-offering.**"[^28]

Chengguan thus elevates *dharma-offering* from a list of seven liturgical items to a normative reading: *dharma-offering* is not what is opposed to material offering but what defines the genuine offering. **Any offering that conforms to the practice-vow is a true offering; any that does not falls short.**

#### 3.4.2 The Seven Kinds of Dharma-Offering, Item by Item

T0293's translation by Prajña enumerates the seven kinds of dharma-offering by name only; the definitions are supplied chiefly by Zongmi's *Detailed Sub-Commentary*. The first and the seventh are given here verbatim; the middle five are summarised in essence-paraphrase.

**(1) The offering by practising as taught.** Zongmi writes:

> "The *Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom* says: *Speaking what one is able to practise is upright; speaking what one does not practise — what is the use of it? Speaking but not practising, one cannot be called a wise person.* Therefore practising as taught is what attains the buddha-dharma; the dharma is not made pure by spoken word alone. Likewise the *Mahā-dharmapada* says: *Though one recite a thousand words, if one does not practise, what is the gain? Better to hear once and diligently practise, gaining the benefit.* …And the *Mañjuśrī Chapter* says: *Practise as taught; speak as practised. If one cannot do this, one cannot bring benefit and joy to sentient beings, nor save oneself from one's own afflictions.* Again it says: *Son of good family! The Tathāgata comes from practising. If one can practise, this accomplishes the offering to the Tathāgata.*"[^29]

The first item, anchored in the citation chain *Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom* → *Mahā-dharmapada* → *Mañjuśrī Chapter*, defines the foundation of dharma-offering as the alignment of word and practice — and not the recitation of teachings without practice.

**(2) The offering by benefitting sentient beings.** Zongmi cites the *Ten Stages Chapter*'s line *"the buddhas appear in the world for the welfare of all sentient beings"* — actual benefit to sentient beings, in concrete acts, is the second offering.

**(3) The offering by gathering-in sentient beings.** Zongmi cites the *Vimalakīrti*'s seven gathering-methods (giving, kind speech, beneficial conduct, sharing the work, and so on) — the four bodhisattva methods of gathering-in extended into the seven-fold form.

**(4) The offering by taking on sentient beings' suffering.** Zongmi gives the briefest gloss: *"by taking on sentient beings' suffering, one upwardly conforms to the buddha's will."* The bodhisattva's vicarious suffering is itself an upward-directed alignment with the buddha's compassion.

**(5) The offering by diligent cultivation of wholesome roots.** Zongmi defines this as *"the root of capability"* — the diligent cultivation of wholesome roots is the bodhisattva's basis of capacity.

**(6) The offering by not abandoning the bodhisattva's work.** Zongmi defines this as *"the constant work of the four gatherings and the six perfections."* Not occasional acts but the steady ongoing burden of the bodhisattva's activity.

**(7) The offering by not departing from the awakening-mind.** Zongmi writes:

> "The offering by not-departing-from-the-awakening-mind: this is named *constantly not abandoning the great awakening-mind*. The *Chapter on Departing from the World* sets out ten dharmas that lose wholesome roots, the foremost of which is abandoning the awakening-mind: any wholesome practice abandoned of the awakening-mind is taken hold of by Māra. The earlier chapter further says: *If one momentarily abandons the awakening-mind, one cannot bring benefit and joy to sentient beings.* Why? Son of good family! The bodhisattva, for the sake of bringing benefit and joy to all sentient beings, diligently seeks the supreme awakening. **Were there no sentient beings, no bodhisattva would attain perfect awakening.** Son of good family! You should understand the dharma-offering thus: then you will accomplish the offering to the tathāgata. It is not by worldly treasures or food that one is named to be making offerings."[^30]

The first item begins from the alignment of word and practice; the seventh ends with the awakening-mind grounded in sentient beings. Read as a pair — the first and the seventh — the seven items disclose their internal logic: dharma-offering is not seven parallel meritorious acts but a single integrated bodhisattva practice that begins from word-and-practice alignment, is animated by the search for awakening for the sake of sentient beings, and is sustained by the awakening-mind for which sentient beings supply the very oxygen. The line *"Were there no sentient beings, no bodhisattva would attain perfect awakening"* is the patriarchal steel column of the present paper's verdict on the *outward-facing* character of vow three.

#### 3.4.3 Closure Formula, Verse, and the *"True Offering"* in the Pushback Against Cook

Vow three's closure formula follows the same pattern as vows one and two:

> "If the realm of empty space, the realm of sentient beings, the karma of sentient beings, and the afflictions of sentient beings could be exhausted, my offering would also reach an end. But since these realms cannot be exhausted, my offering also has no end, **moment-by-moment continuous, without interruption, body, speech, and mind never wearying.**"[^31]

The phrase *"body, speech, and mind never wearying"* is verbally identical to vow one's and vow two's closing phrases — the three vows share the same closure-formula coda. This textual identity is the strongest internal evidence for the three-karma-set reading developed at §III.5.

Vow three's verse-section, beyond the two material-offering verses, includes a separate verse that states the dharma-offering's spiritual core:

> "With a vast and supreme understanding-mind, / I deeply trust all buddhas of the three times, / and by the power of Samantabhadra's practice-vow, / I universally make offerings to all the tathāgatas."[^32]

The phrases *"vast and supreme understanding-mind"* (*guǎngdà shèngjiě xīn* 廣大勝解心) and *"power of Samantabhadra's practice-vow"* both name the same mind-karmic engine that drives all three vows — mind-karma leads, body-karma and speech-karma follow.

Returning to the section's opening claim: the *sūtra* itself executes a reversal — material offerings → *"of all offerings, the dharma-offering is supreme"* → *"true offering"* as definitional verdict. This textual movement is the steel column of the pushback against the metaphysics-only reading. When Huayan is read as metaphysics-only, vow three is treated as a poetic illustration of metaphysical principles. But the *sūtra* itself, ahead of any patriarchal commentarial layer, has already executed the ritual-and-vow-as-practice grounding: *true offering* is not contemplation, but practice; not metaphysical contemplation, but the bodhisattva's outward-facing work along seven specific axes. §IV will return to the application of this textual hook in detail.

### 3.5 The Three-Karma Set: Textual Isomorphism and Convergence in Chinese Ritual Practice

The structural claim now comes into focus: vow one operates principally through body-karma (*"five limbs touching the ground," "supporting the buddha's feet earnestly," "one body manifesting bodies as numerous as dust-particles"*); vow two operates principally through speech-karma (*"the subtle tongue-faculty," "oceans of all words," "oceans of inexhaustible voice"*); vow three is led by mind-karma (*"vast and supreme understanding-mind, deeply trusting all buddhas of the three times"*). Read together, the three vows form **the body, speech, and mind halves of a three-karma set**. This claim is not the imposition of a later commentarial interpretation; it is an isomorphic triplet packaged at the textual level by the *sūtra* itself.

#### 3.5.1 The Textual Isomorphism of the Three Closure Formulas

A side-by-side reading of the three closure formulas shows that they differ in only one verb — *reverence / praise / offering* — while all other elements are 99% identical:

| Vow | Closure Formula |
|---|---|
| Vow 1 | "...since the realms of sentient beings and their afflictions cannot be exhausted, **my reverence is without end**, moment-by-moment continuous, without interruption, body and speech and mind never wearying." |
| Vow 2 | "...since empty space and the afflictions cannot be exhausted, **my praising is without end**, moment-by-moment continuous, without interruption, body and speech and mind never wearying." |
| Vow 3 | "...since empty space and the afflictions cannot be exhausted, **my offering also has no end**, moment-by-moment continuous, without interruption, body and speech and mind never wearying." |

The three vows share: (i) the same four-exhaustion-four-inexhaustion parameter structure (empty space, sentient beings, their karma, their afflictions); (ii) the same *"moment-by-moment continuous, without interruption"* temporal structure; (iii) the same *"body and speech and mind never wearying"* three-karma joint-operation coda. **Each individual vow already operates in all three karmic modes** — vow one's reverence is not pure body-karma, vow two's praising is not pure speech-karma, vow three's offering is not pure mind-karma — and the three vows taken together exhibit a *body → speech → mind* progression of outward emphasis. **The two-layer structure** — three karmas operating within each vow, three vows aligned along the body-speech-mind axis — is the doubled textual evidence for the present paper's three-karma-set reading. This is not the work of later commentators: it is the structure that Prajña's 798 CE translation already presents.

#### 3.5.2 Shandao's *Verses for the Six Times of Reverence-Praise* and the Direct Codification

Shandao (613–681), in the preface to his *Verses for the Six Times of Reverence-Praise* (T1980), states the three-karma codification explicitly:

> "The vow-establishing supreme mind sets up its essence as three. The first is the sincere mind. That is to say: **body-karma prostration to that buddha; speech-karma praise and extolling of that buddha; mind-karma sole recollection and contemplation of that buddha.** Whatever arises of the three karmas must be made true. This is what is meant by sincere mind."[^33]

The same scheme reappears in the five-recollection-gateway sequence: *"the gateway of body-karma prostration… the gateway of speech-karma praise… the gateway of mind-karma recollection-and-contemplation…"* as the first three of the five gateways.

Shandao's three-karma codification is structurally aligned, point for point, with Samantabhadra's vows one, two, and three: vow one (reverencing) corresponds to Shandao's body-karma gateway of prostration; vow two (praising) to Shandao's speech-karma gateway of praise; vow three (extensively making offerings) to Shandao's mind-karma gateway of recollection-and-contemplation. Although the surface verbs differ — *extensively making offerings* in Samantabhadra, *recollection-and-contemplation* in Shandao — both occupy the same structural position: a mind-karma-led outward-facing bodhisattva activity. *Recollection-and-contemplation of that buddha* is itself a specific form of mind-karmic offering: recollecting that buddha's merits, that buddha's pure-land, that buddha's original vow — the very content of each segment of the six-period reverence-praise schedule. **Shandao's three-karma mapping is the direct patriarchal codification of the three-karma-set reading of Samantabhadra's vows one, two, and three, and supplies the principal Chinese-ritual-practice anchor for the present paper.**

#### 3.5.3 Zhiyi's *Lotus Samādhi Repentance Liturgy*: Three Sections in Parallel

Zhiyi (538–597), in his *Lotus Samādhi Repentance Liturgy*, fascicle one, places three sections of the ten-section liturgy as parallel independent ritual segments:

> "When the practitioner first enters the ritual space, he must equip himself with ten dharmas: (1) purifying the ritual space; (2) purifying the body; **(3) the three-karma offering; (4) inviting the Three Jewels; (5) praising the Three Jewels; (6) prostrating to the buddhas;** (7) repentance; (8) walking the ritual path in circumambulation; (9) reciting the *Lotus Sūtra*; (10) contemplating the one true reality."[^34]

The third (*three-karma offering*), the fifth (*praising the Three Jewels*), and the sixth (*prostrating to the buddhas*) stand as three independent ritual segments. Zhiyi establishes this liturgical ordering at the close of the sixth century — two centuries before the *Practice-and-Vow Chapter* is rendered into Chinese in 798 CE; the two systems, mutually independent within the textual record, converge on the same structural configuration: prostration, praise, and offering as the minimum unit of bodhisattva practice. **This independent cross-system convergence — that the three-karma set is not a later commentarial interpolation but the structure independently arrived at by both the Chinese repentance-liturgy tradition and the *Practice-and-Vow* textual tradition — is among the strongest supports for the present paper's principal argument.**

#### 3.5.4 Shandao's Five Right Practices as the Closing Convergence

T1753 Shandao's *Commentary on the Sūtra of the Visualization of the Buddha of Immeasurable Life*, fascicle four, in the *Sǎn-shàn yì* section, establishes five right practices: reciting, contemplating, prostrating, calling-the-name, and praising-and-offering.[^35] The third (*"prostrating"*) corresponds to Samantabhadra's vow one; the fifth (*"praising-and-offering"*) corresponds to the merger of vows two and three.

There is a directional reversal: Shandao's five right practices converge upon the single buddha Amitābha (*"single-mindedly prostrating only to that buddha, single-mindedly calling only that buddha"*), whereas Samantabhadra's vows one, two, and three open out across all the buddhas of the ten directions. The directions are reversed — convergence vs. dispersion — but the structures are perfectly isomorphic: the structural claim that prostration plus praise plus offering constitutes the three-karma compound of bodhisattva practice has, in the Chinese Pure Land tradition, already been deployed as the supportive structure of the Amitābha original-vow doctrine. This is the concrete micro-evidence for what P25 introduced as the *Part-VI-to-Part-VII textual seam*, applied at the level of vows one, two, and three.[^36]

## IV. Cross-Disciplinary Engagement

This section engages three Anglophone interlocutors in a 1-pushback-plus-2-extensions configuration: vis-à-vis Cook 1977's metaphysics-only reading, the present paper concedes-and-pushes-back; vis-à-vis Schopen 1997's archaeological grounding and Sharf 2002/2005's anti-psychologizing of Buddhist ritual, it concedes-and-extends. The 1+2 framing — restoration-and-extension as the steady-state — differs from P25's 2-pushback-plus-1-extension (the latter being needed to establish a contributory thesis at Part VII's opening); the present paper is neither at an opening point nor in need of a recasting move.

**Cook 1977.** Francis Cook's *Hua-yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra* is the established Anglophone introduction to Huayan.[^37] Its exposition focuses almost entirely on the metaphysics of Fazang (643–712) — the unobstructed-mutual-interpenetration of principle-and-phenomenon and of phenomenon-and-phenomenon, the *Indra's-net* image, the structure of the dharma-realm; the ten great vows of Samantabhadra's *Bhadracarī* receive minimal sustained attention, and where the bodhisattva path is taken up, the focus falls on the cognitive realisation of interpenetration rather than on reverencing-praising-offering as a discrete obligatory practice cluster. **The pushback move:** when Huayan is read as metaphysics-only, vows one through three come to be read as poetic illustrations of metaphysical principles rather than as concrete ritual-and-vow obligations. The present paper now appeals to the full three-karma textual evidence: vows one, two, and three form an isomorphic triplet at the *sūtra*'s textual level (sharing the same opening cosmological field, the same practice-vow-power engine, the same four-exhaustion-four-inexhaustion closure formula, and the same three-karma joint-operation coda); and the *sūtra* furnishes its own *"true offering"* textual hook: *"If a bodhisattva practises the dharma-offering, then he accomplishes the offering to the tathāgata; this practice is the true offering"* (§III.4 above). The *Avataṃsaka* itself defines *true offering* as the bodhisattva's outward-facing dharmic work — not as material adornment, not as metaphysical contemplation. **The metaphysics-only reading misses the action-and-structure encoding the *sūtra* has already inscribed.** The patriarchal supports converge in four places: Zongmi's *"failing to enter into this contemplation, one only wears oneself out in vain"*; Chengguan's *"the text properly identifies the fifth, the ninth, and the tenth"*; the *sūtra*'s own *"true offering"* hook; and Shandao's direct codification of body-speech-mind-karma as a single set in the *Verses for the Six Times of Reverence-Praise*. All four directly refute the metaphysics-only line.

**Schopen 1997.** Gregory Schopen's *Bones, Stones, and Buddhist Monks* assembles archaeological and epigraphic evidence demonstrating that practice-vow activity (stūpa worship, image-veneration, relic-cult) was a core element of monastic Buddhism from the earliest documented period — not a later concession to the laity.[^38] **The extension move:** Schopen's archaeological grounding shows that practice-vow activity was never marginal in Indian Buddhism; consequently, *Bhadracarī*'s elevation of reverencing-praising-offering to the position of the first three of the ten great vows is not a Mahāyāna popularising deviation but the continuation of a core tradition that pre-existed Mahāyāna's self-aware emergence. Furthermore, the archaeological-epigraphic evidence shows that stūpa worship is itself a three-karma compound — bodily circumambulation, vocal recitation of homage, and mind-karmic offering — structurally cognate with Samantabhadra's vows one, two, and three. Stūpa worship is not the performance of a single act but the simultaneous mobilisation of all three karmic modes in a single ritual cluster; Samantabhadra's *Practice-and-Vow* simply amplifies this action structure from *circumambulating a single stūpa* to *reverencing all the buddhas of the ten directions* at the cosmological scale. The internal supports align — *Vinaya, Mahāvagga* I.22's five-mode greeting spectrum; the *Dīrgha-āgama Mahāparinirvāṇa*'s four occasions for stūpa erection (T0001, fascicle three); and the *Ekottara-āgama*'s buddha-recollection enumeration — all converge with Schopen's thesis.

**Sharf 2002 and 2005.** Robert Sharf's methodological essays — particularly *Coming to Terms with Chinese Buddhism* and the 2005 essay on *"Ritual"* in *Critical Terms for the Study of Buddhism* — repeatedly warn against the psychologising of Buddhist ritual: the reading of prostration, chanting, and offering as primarily inner mental events (*"the cultivation of humility," "the expression of devotion," "the inner expression of gratitude"*) rather than as efficacious public ritual acts whose meaning is constituted by performance; Catherine Bell's ritual theory furnishes the underlying theoretical support.[^39] **The extension move:** the present paper's claim — that vows one, two, and three retain a ritual-and-vow concreteness as a three-karma set — must withstand the modernist reduction of *"reverencing"* to inner respect, *"praising"* to inner appreciation, and *"offering"* to inner gratitude. Sharf supplies the scholarly warrant for resisting this reduction. The internal support is two-fold: Zongmi's quotation of the *Awakening of Faith* — *"Not pursuing outward objects, turning back from the dust toward the awakened — that is the reverencing of taking refuge"* — and Shandao's *"whatever arises of the three karmas must be made true."*[^40] The inner sense of reverence is preserved by the patriarchal commentators as the action's *transitive turning toward original awakening*, but the action remains an action, not a cancellation of the action into a purely inner mental event. Sharf and the patriarchs converge at precisely this point.

## V. Middle-Way Cautions

This section sets out three philological cautions against common errors in reading vows one, two, and three.

**❌ Mistaken reading one: *"reverencing all buddhas"* equals the ritual act of prostrating before a buddha-image.** The literal facts: the early-Pāli *abhivādeti*, with its tripartite verbal-postural-positional structure, has been clarified at the opening of §I; the Chinese rendering *"bowed his head at the Buddha's feet and withdrew to one side,"* though concrete in its imagery, has hardened the reader's intuition into a purely bodily reading. The phrase in vow one's main exposition — *"with body, speech, and mind made wholly pure, I constantly cultivate reverence"* — directly corrects this narrowing reading, with Zongmi's three-karma-three-wheel correspondence as the internal patriarchal warrant. **The remedying language:** describe reverence as *"the joint operation of body, speech, and mind in a relational gesture of recognition"*; avoid the body-only renderings *"prostrating," "bowing,"* and *"kowtowing"* as freestanding equivalents.

**❌ Mistaken reading two: *"praising the tathāgatas"* equals the formulaic chanting of praise-verses in liturgical service.** The literal facts: in the early Pāli, *thomanā / pasaṃsā / vaṇṇa-bhāsana* designate the formulaic recitation of a fixed epithet sequence; *Vinaya, Mahāvagga* I.22's *iti'pi so* nine-epithet *kittisadda* and the *Ekottara-āgama*'s aspect-by-aspect enumeration are both early instances of this format. Vow two's *"subtle tongue-faculty,"* together with *"the four unobstructed understandings and seven branches of eloquence,"* is the cosmological amplification of this early format — *"praising"* is the itemising enumeration of buddha-merits with modifiers applied to each item, not free emotional composition. **The remedying language:** describe praising as *"the unfolding of an epithet-formula"* / *"the unfolding enumeration of buddha-merits"* / *"the speech-karmic operation of the four unobstructed understandings"*; avoid the lyrical-register equivalents *"hymning," "lauding," "chanting praise."*

**❌ Mistaken reading three: *"extensively making offerings"* equals material almsgiving or offering-table donations.** The literal facts: the *sūtra* itself reverses the centre of gravity from material adornment to seven kinds of dharma-offering by means of the *"of all offerings, the dharma-offering is supreme"* judgment (§III.4.1), and defines *true offering* as **the bodhisattva's outward-facing dharmic work** through the *"if a bodhisattva practises the dharma-offering, then he accomplishes the offering to the tathāgata; this practice is the true offering"* declaration. The seven kinds of dharma-offering (practising-as-taught, benefitting sentient beings, gathering-in sentient beings, taking on sentient beings' suffering, diligent cultivation of wholesome roots, not abandoning the bodhisattva's work, not departing from the awakening-mind) are all outward-facing bodhisattva activities, not material almsgiving. Chengguan, drawing on the Sanskrit collation, extends further: *"Material giving, if it is conformable to the dharma, is itself dharma-offering"* — *dharma-offering* is not opposed to material offering but is the normative reading of *offering* as such; any offering that conforms to the practice-vow is a *true offering*. The Vimalakīrti-derived three-fold caution to Sudatta — that an offering caught within the limits of its place, its recipient, or its time, falls short — supplies the classical precedent for the warning that contemporary material charity, when it carries the limits of its audience or its setting, falls into the same three-fold trap.[^41] **The remedying language:** describe vow three with *"dharma-offering," "true offering," "the bodhisattva's outward-facing work"*; avoid *"almsgiving," "donating,"* and *"charitable contribution"* as equivalents, and avoid confusion with *dāna* (the first of the early *pāramitās*) — the latter has its proper philological treatment in NIAN's parallel DĀNA series.

The two further cautions — the cross-tradition analogy warning and the one-sided Chan extraction of Master Zhi's line — have already been addressed: the first within §IV's treatment of Schopen, the second within §III.2's quotation of Zongmi's *"this is gravely mistaken"* judgment. Each is collected here with a single footnote rather than re-stated.[^42]

## VI. Closing

### Essence Restated

Samantabhadra's first three vows are not the first three items of a list of ten meritorious deeds. They are the body, speech, and mind halves of a three-karma set: vow one operates principally through body-karma; vow two principally through speech-karma; vow three principally through mind-karma. Vow one's *"reverencing"* must be read as the highest three rungs of the ten-form ladder of reverence — the great-compassion, total-encompassing, and inexhaustible forms — at the round-teaching plane; vow two's *"praising"* must be read as the four unobstructed understandings together with the seven branches of eloquence at the ninth bodhisattva ground; vow three's *"extensively making offerings"* must be read as the seven kinds of dharma-offering as the bodhisattva's outward-facing work, not as material charity. The three vows form an isomorphic triplet at the textual level of T0293 itself — sharing the same cosmological-field opening clause, the same practice-vow-power engine, the same four-exhaustion-four-inexhaustion closure formula, and the same *"body, speech, and mind never wearying"* coda. In Chinese ritual practice the set is directly codified by Shandao (613–681) in his *Verses for the Six Times of Reverence-Praise* (the gateways of body-karma prostration, speech-karma praise, and mind-karma recollection-and-contemplation) and by the parallel placement of *"three-karma offering / praising the Three Jewels / prostrating to the buddhas"* in Zhiyi's *Lotus Samādhi Repentance Liturgy*. The two systems, mutually independent within the textual record, converge on the same configuration — each serves as the cross-system witness to the other.

### Cultivation Guidance

For modern Chinese readers and Anglophone practitioners alike, the vows one, two, and three treated in this paper are not abstract doctrinal material; they have concrete historical liturgical templates ready to follow. Three concrete frameworks: (i) Shandao's *Verses for the Six Times of Reverence-Praise*, fascicle one, sets out a daily six-period schedule (early morning, midday, sunset, first watch, middle watch, late watch) with reverence-and-praise sequences for each — a framework of daily liturgical practice to which the individual practitioner can hold. (ii) Zhiyi's *Lotus Samādhi Repentance Liturgy*'s ten-section parallel ordering — the third (three-karma offering), fifth (praising the Three Jewels), and sixth (prostrating to the buddhas) — supplies the structure for a group-ritual setting. (iii) The seven kinds of dharma-offering — practising-as-taught, benefitting sentient beings, gathering-in sentient beings, taking on sentient beings' suffering, diligent cultivation of wholesome roots, not abandoning the bodhisattva's work, not departing from the awakening-mind — supply the map of the bodhisattva's daily outward-facing work along seven distinct axes. Ouyi Zhixu (1599–1655), in his *Essential Commentary on the Amitābha-sūtra*, compresses the joint operation of Samantabhadra's three karmas into the three syllables *xìn-yuàn-xíng* (faith-vow-practice) within the single act of name-recollection — a patriarchal directive for the condensed form of reverencing-praising-offering, but Ouyi's chapter-by-chapter exposition is reserved for the closing paper of NIAN's Part VIII.[^43]

### Open Question

Vow three's seventh sub-item, the offering by *not departing from the awakening-mind*, names the oxygen of the dharma-offering itself: the awakening-mind, and the awakening-mind's own oxygen, sentient beings — *"Were there no sentient beings, no bodhisattva would attain perfect awakening."* This single line locates the dynamic source of Samantabhadra's practice-vow at the field of sentient beings themselves: the three-karma set of this paper is not a closed inner-contemplative ritual but an outward-facing bodhisattva work for which sentient beings are the very condition of operation. The next paper (P27) will treat vow four (repenting karmic obstructions) together with vow five (rejoicing in others' merit); these two share the karma-transformation operator — vow four reversing one's own past unwholesome karma, vow five turning others' wholesome action into one's own rejoicing — opening, beyond the three-karma set, a second structural register of Samantabhadra's ten-vow sequence. P28 will treat vow six (requesting the turning of the dharma wheel) together with vow seven (requesting the buddhas to abide), unified by their shared *requesting* opening and the dharma-preservation theme. P29 will treat vows eight (constantly following in the buddhas' learning), nine (according with all sentient beings), and ten (universally dedicating all merit) — the closing triad of upward-following, downward-conforming, and dedication, in resonance with P25's opening on the *vow-king*'s totalising operation.

To close, the central couplets of the verse-section across vows one, two, and three:

> "Within all worlds of the ten directions,
> to the lions among men of past, present, and future,
> with body, speech, and mind made pure,
> I bow universally to all without remainder.
>
> With oceans of all voices,
> I pour forth inexhaustible exquisite words;
> for all kalpas of the future,
> I praise the ocean of buddhas' deep merits.
>
> With a vast and supreme understanding-mind,
> I deeply trust all buddhas of the three times,
> and by the power of Samantabhadra's practice-vow,
> I universally make offerings to all the tathāgatas."[^44]

---

## Notes

[^1]: *Vinaya, Mahāvagga* I.22.1–4 (PTS *Vin* i 35); see Pāli lexicographical works for the etymology of *abhivādeti*.

[^2]: For the sustained argument, see NIAN P25, *Samantabhadra's Ten Great Vows: An Introduction*, §III and §VI. The present paper takes vows one, two, and three together because at the textual level of T0293 they form an isomorphic triplet that cannot be cleanly severed; the redistribution of vows four through ten across P27 (vows four and five), P28 (vows six and seven), and P29 (vows eight, nine, and ten) is described later in this section.

[^3]: T0293 is the forty-fascicle *Avataṃsaka* translated by Prajña (般若) at Chang'an in 798 CE — the independent rendering of the *Practice-and-Vow Chapter of Samantabhadra Entering the Inconceivable Liberation Realm*, and not affiliated with the sixty-fascicle (Buddhabhadra) or eighty-fascicle (Śikṣānanda) recensions.

[^4]: T0293 fascicle 40, CBETA approximations: T10.0844b28–c5 (vow 1 main exposition); T10.0844c5–9 (vow 1 closure formula); T10.0847a region (vow 1 verse); T10.0844c10–16 (vow 2 main exposition); T10.0844c16–19 (vow 2 closure formula); T10.0847a region (vow 2 verse); T10.0844c end – 0845a (vow 3 main exposition); T10.0845a region (vow 3 material offerings, seven dharma-offerings, *true offering* coda, and closure formula); T10.0847a region (vow 3 verse).

[^5]: Chengguan's commentary X05n0227 and Zongmi's sub-commentary X05n0229 are *Wàn xùzàng* (卍續藏) works; CBETA cross-references at R007 are provided for traditional citation.

[^6]: NIAN P02 furnishes the philological treatment of the *iti'pi so* nine-epithet formula; the present paper takes only its essence and does not re-open the early phonological layer.

[^7]: T1980 Shandao, *Verses for the Six Times of Reverence-Praise*, fascicle 1, *Taishō* vol. 47. The three-karma codification appears in the preface and in the five-recollection-gateway scheme.

[^8]: T10n0293 fascicle 40, CBETA approx. T10.0844b28–c5.

[^9]: X05n0229 Zongmi, *Detailed Sub-Commentary on the Practice-and-Vow Chapter*, p. 0267a25.

[^10]: X05n0229, p. 0268c01.

[^11]: T10n0293 fascicle 40, CBETA approx. T10.0844c5–9.

[^12]: T10n0293 fascicle 40 verse-section, CBETA approx. T10.0847a region.

[^13]: Ratnamati (勒那摩提)'s original seven-form schema is found in passages of the texts he translated; Chengguan cites and supplements them as a ten-form ladder.

[^14]: X05n0227 Chengguan, *Practice-and-Vow Chapter Commentary*, p. 0193a13–23 (R007 p. 0760a10–b02).

[^15]: X05n0229 Zongmi, *Detailed Sub-Commentary*, p. 0267c19–268a02 (R007 p. 0888b05–11).

[^16]: X05n0229, p. 0268a02–11 (R007 p. 0888b11–889a02).

[^17]: X05n0229, p. 0267a05–09 (R007 p. 0886b14–18). Master Zhi (志公) is Chan-master Baozhi (寶誌, 418–514).

[^18]: T10n0293 fascicle 40, CBETA approx. T10.0844c10–16.

[^19]: X05n0229, p. 0270b22–c05 (R007 p. 0894a01–08).

[^20]: X05n0229, p. 0270b05–22.

[^21]: T10n0293 fascicle 40 verse-section, CBETA approx. T10.0847a region.

[^22]: *Vinaya, Mahāvagga* I.22.4 (PTS *Vin* i 35). The full nine-epithet formula: *itipi so bhagavā arahaṁ sammāsambuddho vijjācaraṇasampanno sugato lokavidū anuttaro purisadammasārathi satthā devamanussānaṁ buddho bhagavā.*

[^23]: T0125 *Ekottara-āgama* fascicle 2, *Chapter on Extended Buddha-Recollection*, T02.0554a region.

[^24]: T10n0293 fascicle 40, CBETA approx. T10.0844c end – 0845a.

[^25]: T10n0293 fascicle 40, CBETA approx. T10.0845a region.

[^26]: T10n0293 fascicle 40, CBETA approx. T10.0845a region.

[^27]: T10n0293 fascicle 40, CBETA approx. T10.0845a region.

[^28]: X05n0227 Chengguan, *Practice-and-Vow Chapter Commentary*, three-section schema for vow three; see Chengguan's Sanskrit-collation reading and the *"dharma-offering pervades the ten dharma-practices"* passage.

[^29]: X05n0229 Zongmi, *Detailed Sub-Commentary*, p. 0272a07–22.

[^30]: X05n0229, p. 0272b11–19.

[^31]: T10n0293 fascicle 40, CBETA approx. T10.0845a region.

[^32]: T10n0293 fascicle 40 verse-section, CBETA approx. T10.0847a region.

[^33]: T47n1980 Shandao, *Verses for the Six Times of Reverence-Praise*, fascicle 1, opening preface section.

[^34]: T46n1941 Zhiyi, *Lotus Samādhi Repentance Liturgy*, fascicle 1, T46.0949c12–19.

[^35]: T1753 Shandao, *Commentary on the Sūtra of the Visualization of the Buddha of Immeasurable Life*, fascicle 4, the section *Sǎn-shàn yì*'s exposition of *deep mind*.

[^36]: This *"directionally reversed but structurally isomorphic"* observation is the micro-evidence supporting P25's claim about the Part-VI-to-Part-VII textual seam, applied at the level of vows one, two, and three.

[^37]: Cook, Francis H. *Hua-yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra*. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977.

[^38]: Schopen, Gregory. *Bones, Stones, and Buddhist Monks: Collected Papers on the Archaeology, Epigraphy, and Texts of Monastic Buddhism in India*. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1997.

[^39]: Sharf, Robert H. *Coming to Terms with Chinese Buddhism: A Reading of the Treasure Store Treatise*. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2002; idem, "Ritual," in Donald S. Lopez, Jr., ed., *Critical Terms for the Study of Buddhism*, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005, pp. 245–270; Bell, Catherine. *Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice*. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

[^40]: X05n0229, p. 0267b14; T47n1980 fascicle 1, opening preface section.

[^41]: The Vimalakīrti-derived three-fold caution to Sudatta (caught within the limits of place, recipient, or time) is cited by Zongmi in his sub-commentary on the third dharma-offering (gathering-in sentient beings); the present paper takes its essence as the classical precedent for the warning that contemporary material charity, when bound by audience-limits, falls into the same three-fold trap.

[^42]: X05n0229, p. 0267a05–09 (cited at §III.2 above). The one-sided Chan extraction of Master Zhi's line is documented across later Chan recorded-saying collections; the present paper does not enumerate them separately.

[^43]: T1762 Ouyi Zhixu's *Essential Commentary on the Amitābha-sūtra* will receive chapter-by-chapter treatment in NIAN's Part VIII closing paper.

[^44]: T10n0293 fascicle 40 verse-section, CBETA approx. T10.0847a region.

---

## References

### I. Primary Buddhist Sources

T0001. *Dīrgha-āgama*. Translated by Buddhayaśas and Zhu Fonian. *Taishō Tripiṭaka* vol. 1.

T0099. *Saṃyukta-āgama*. Translated by Guṇabhadra. *Taishō Tripiṭaka* vol. 2.

T0125. *Ekottara-āgama*. Translated by Gautama Saṃghadeva. *Taishō Tripiṭaka* vol. 2.

T0262. *Saddharmapuṇḍarīka-sūtra* (the *Lotus Sūtra*). Translated by Kumārajīva. *Taishō Tripiṭaka* vol. 9.

T0293. *Mahāvaipulya-buddhāvataṃsaka-sūtra: The Practice-and-Vow Chapter of Samantabhadra Entering the Inconceivable Liberation Realm* (the forty-fascicle recension). Translated by Prajña. *Taishō Tripiṭaka* vol. 10.

T1753. *Commentary on the Sūtra of the Visualization of the Buddha of Immeasurable Life*. Composed by Shandao. *Taishō Tripiṭaka* vol. 37.

T1762. *Essential Commentary on the Amitābha-sūtra*. Composed by Ouyi Zhixu. *Taishō Tripiṭaka* vol. 37.

T1941. *Lotus Samādhi Repentance Liturgy*. Composed by Zhiyi. *Taishō Tripiṭaka* vol. 46.

T1980. *Verses for the Six Times of Reverence-Praise*. Composed by Shandao. *Taishō Tripiṭaka* vol. 47.

X05n0227. *Practice-and-Vow Chapter Commentary*. Composed by Chengguan. *Wàn xùzàng* vol. 5.

X05n0229. *Detailed Sub-Commentary on the Practice-and-Vow Chapter* (also known as *Bie-xing-shu chao*). Composed by Zongmi. *Wàn xùzàng* vol. 5.

*Vinaya, Mahāvagga* I.22. Pali Text Society edition, *Vin* i 35.

### II. Patriarchal Commentaries

- Chengguan. *Huayan-jing Xingyuan-pin Shu* (Commentary on the Practice-and-Vow Chapter). X05n0227, *Wàn xùzàng* vol. 5. 體相用三方向、大悲下化大智上求.
- Zongmi. *Huayan-jing Xingyuan-pin Bie-xing Shuchao* (Detailed Sub-Commentary on the Practice-and-Vow Chapter). X05n0229, *Wàn xùzàng* vol. 5. 三處迴向圖式.
- Zhiyi. *Fahua Sanmei Chan Yi* (Lotus Samādhi Repentance Liturgy). T1941, *Taishō* vol. 46. 十科儀軌之迴向發願定型.
- Shandao. *Wangsheng Lizan Ge* (Verses for the Six Times of Reverence-Praise). T1980, *Taishō* vol. 47. 五念門中第五迴向門.
- Ouyi Zhixu. *Amituo Jing Yaojie* (Essentials of the Amitābha Sūtra). T1762, *Taishō* vol. 37. 萬行司南.

### 3. Modern Scholarship

Bell, Catherine. *Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice*. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Cook, Francis H. *Hua-yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra*. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977.

Schopen, Gregory. *Bones, Stones, and Buddhist Monks: Collected Papers on the Archaeology, Epigraphy, and Texts of Monastic Buddhism in India*. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1997.

Sharf, Robert H. *Coming to Terms with Chinese Buddhism: A Reading of the Treasure Store Treatise*. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2002.

Sharf, Robert H. "Ritual." In *Critical Terms for the Study of Buddhism*, edited by Donald S. Lopez, Jr., 245–270. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.

### IV. Cross-Reference to Series Papers

- P25 *Samantabhadra's Ten Great Vows: An Introduction*: the vow-king (願王) structural operator and the four-exhaustion-four-inexhaustion closure formula.
- P27 *Repenting Karmic Obstructions, Rejoicing in Merit*:愿4+5 following愿1-3; the业 of twin wings.
- P28 *Requesting the Turning of the Dharma-wheel, Requesting the Buddhas to Abide*:愿6+7 as法之久住雙模.
- P29 *Constantly Following the Buddha, Accommodating Sentient Beings, Universal Dedication*:愿8-10 as the upward-downward + dedication triad.
- P11 *Holding the Name*: six times of reverence-praise (六時禮讚) as practical framework.

### V. Sūtra & Śāstra Index

| 簡稱 | 全名 | 造／譯者 | T／X 編號 | 冊數 |
|------|------|----------|-----------|------|
| 雜阿含 | 《雜阿含經》 | 求那跋陀羅譯 | T099 | 2 |
| 增一阿含 | 《增壹阿含經》 | 僧伽提婆譯 | T125 | 2 |
| 法華經 | 《妙法蓮華經》 | 鳩摩羅什譯 | T262 | 9 |
| 行願品 | 《大方廣佛華嚴經·普賢行願品》 | 般若譯 | T0293 | 10 |
| 觀經疏 | 《觀無量壽佛經疏》 | 善導撰 | T1753 | 37 |
| 阿弥陀經要解 | 《阿彌陀經要解》 | 蕅益智旭撰 | T1762 | 37 |
| 法華懺儀 | 《法華三昧懺儀》 | 智顗撰 | T1941 | 46 |
| 往生禮讚偈 | 《往生禮讚偈》 | 善導集記 | T1980 | 47 |
| 行願品疏 | 《華嚴經行願品疏》 | 澄觀撰 | X0227 | 卍續 5 |
| 行願品疏鈔 | 《華嚴經行願品疏鈔》（別行疏鈔） | 宗密述 | X0229 | 卍續 5 |

---

> **Pointing at the Moon Research · Six Practice Gates, Volume One: *Mindful of the Buddha* · Part VII The Flower Ornament Vision · 7.2**
> Shi Huijing (釋慧鏡)
> First draft, May 2026
> This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

---

*CBETA collation: all T-number / X-number citations verified against the CBETA Electronic Tripiṭaka 2024 edition.*

*Repo: github.com/pointing-at-the-moon/six-practice-gates · CC BY-NC-SA 4.0*

*NIAN-P26 · 釋慧鏡 (Shi Huijing) · 2026-05-02*