DESCRIPTION
The Seventh Ground is called Dūraṁgamā, ‘Gone Afar’ 遠行. Practitioners are proficient in concentration on emptiness, characteristiclessness, desirelessness; enter into selflessness and transcend ideas of personality; yet still accumulate virtue and knowledge and do not give up practicing infinite kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity. They detach from the world yet work to beautify the world; whereas practitioners arrive at extinction in the sixth stage, in the seventh stage they plunge into extinction and emerge from it in each mental instant, without being overcome by extinction. They live in the world by willpower for the sake of others, without being stained by the ills of the world; they become calm and serene, yet they can be passionate as an expedient without, however, becoming inflamed by passion.
Entry into the Seventh Stage
“Drawing upon Wisdom and Upaya, bodhisattvas bring forth ten types of sublime practice:
- Although thoroughly cultivating the Three Doors of Liberation developed in the 6th Ground (Emptiness, Characteristiclessness, and Desirelessness) they use the mind of kindness and compassion while residing among beings.
- Although complying with the Dharma of uniform equality, they never relinquish the practice of making offerings to buddhas.
- Although delighting in Emptiness, they still engage in the extensive accumulation of merit.
- Although detached from the Three Realms (Desire, Form, and Formlessness), they engage in the adornment of the Three Realms
- Although having achieved the final extinguishment of the flames of afflictions, they still bring forth for beings the dharmas for extinguishing the flames of the Afflictions: Greed, Anger, Delusion.
- Although in accord with the realization that all dharmas are like dreams, shadows, etc, and the realization of non-duality, they still bring forth distinctions in the many kinds of afflictions and results of karmic action.
- Although having realized that, due to Emptiness, all Buddha Lands are like empty space and that all lands transcend their characteristics, they still purify Buddha Lands.
- Although realizing the Dharma Body is free of any ‘body,’ they still bring forth the self-adornment of the Form Body the 32 auspicious characteristics and 80 subsidiary signs.
- Although realizing the voice of all buddhas is characterized as ineffable, and the speech of the Tathagata is characterized as quiescent, they still bring forth for sentient beings many different sorts of well-adorned voices.
- Although knowing all buddhas achieve penetrating comprehension of all phenomena throughout the three periods of time in a single thought-moment, they still acquire knowledge of the many different appearances, temporal circumstances, and different kinds of kalpas in which buddhas realize anuttarā-saṃyak-saṃbodhi and adapt to sentient beings minds and resolute beliefs and teach in accord with that.
Abiding in the Seventh Ground
When abiding in the Seventh Ground the bodhisattva acquires twenty kinds of penetrating comprehension of: measurelessly many realms of beings, measurelessly many dharmas, kalpas, time, languages, etc.
Associated with the Ten Paramitas
“In each successive mind-moment, this bodhisattva achieves complete fulfillment of the bodhisattva's Ten Paramitas and the ten grounds' practices. And how is this the case? This is because, in each successive mind-moment, this bodhisattva takes the great compassion as what is foremost and it is also because, as they cultivate all of the dharmas of the Buddha, they direct all of this to the realization of the Tathagata's knowledge.
As for the ten paramitas:
- The bodhisattva's transference to all beings of all roots of goodness they cultivate in pursuing the path to buddhahood constitutes dāna pāramitā (generosity).
- The ability to extinguish all heat of the afflictions constitutes śīla pāramitā (disicipline)
- The taking of kindness and compassion as foremost and refraining from harming any being constitute kṣānti pāramitā (patience).
- The insatiable striving to acquire ever more supreme roots of goodness constitutes vīrya pāramitā (determination).
- The preventing the path-cultivating mind from becoming scattered while always progressing toward all-knowledge constitutes dhyāna pāramitā (meditation).
- The patient tolerance of the unproduced nature of all dharmas constitutes prajñā pāramitā (wisdom).
- The ability to bring forth countless gateways to knowledge constitutes upāya pāramitā (skillful means).
- The aspiration to ever more superior wisdom constitutes praṇidhāna pāramitā (vows).
- The ability to remain invulnerable to obstruction or ruination by any followers of non-Buddhist paths or by any of Maras constitute bala pāramitā (powers).
- The accomplishment of knowing the characteristic aspects of all dharmas in accordance with reality constitutes jñāna pāramitā (knowledge).
Use of the Four Means of Unification
Even as this bodhisattva perfects the ten pāramitās in each successive mind-moment, the also perfect the Four Means of Unification and the thirty-seven factors facilitating realization of bodhi, and the three gates to liberation.
Naturally Reaching the Eighth Ground (’Immovable’)
It is on this Seventh Ground that the bodhisattva-mahasattva acquires all paths reached through Wisdom. Due to the power arising from this, they naturally succeed in reaching the Eighth Ground. It is as if there were two great tri-sahasra-mahāsahasra-lokadhātus of which one is definitely pure and the other is definitely defiled and it is so difficult to pass from one to the other that it is only by resorting to the power of great vīrya, great spiritual superknowledges, and great vows that one may then successfully pass from one to the other. So too with the bodhisattva going beyond the ‘mixed’ path of the lower grounds.
The bodhisattva abiding in the Seventh Ground ‘leaves behind’ the path of deliberately effortful practice, for the most part ‘going beyond’ the multitudes who are best by desire, with the exception of still desiring to acquire all-knowledge, ‘passing beyond’ defiled karmic action.
The bodhisattva on the Seventh Ground has not yet reached the point wherein all of the dhyanas, spiritual superknowledges, liberations, and samadhis are spontaneously produced as a matter of karmic reward, they are still freely able to invoke them at will, thus ‘passing beyond, the grounds of śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas.
Question: ‘Aren’t bodhisattvas on the First Ground already ‘beyond’ śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas?
Answer: They are, but only due to the nature of the Bodhisattva Vow, not yet due to the power of their actual practice - like the child of a monarch who is royal but not yet a monarch. On the Seventh Ground it is due to actual practice.
Practices associated with the Seventh Ground
The bodhisattva dwelling on this ground engages in countless ‘characteristicless’ practices related to physical, verbal, and mental karma. Due to the purification of these practices, this bodhisattva manifests the illumination of the patient tolerance of the birthlessness of all dharmas.
The bodhisattva dwelling on the Seventh Ground acquires the ability to engage in extremely profound and secluded non-practice even as, in body, speech, and mind they strive to acquire the supreme Dharma and refrain from entering ultimate cessation.
“It is like a person who has set sail in a boat into the great ocean and who, well versed in the methods of such travel, skillful in recognizing the signs occurring on the water so that they are able to avoid injury through a calamity at sea. In the same way, the bodhisattva mahasattva dwelling of the Seventh Ground, who has set sail on the great ship of the paramitas, is able to travel along in the sphere of ultimate reality and yet refrain from absolute realization of ultimate reality.”
Analogy of Gold
It is like inlaying real gold with fine jewels in fashioning adornments, thus making it ever more supremely fine in radiance.
Becoming a World Leader
Bodhisattvas dwelling on the first ground often become lords of the Paranirmita-vaśavartin Heaven
Acquisition of Samadhis, vision of buddhas, etc
The bodhisattva on the Gone Afar Ground encounters hundreds of thousands of kotis of myriads of nayutas of buddhas…