DESCRIPTION
The Ninth Ground is called Sādhumatī, ‘Subtle Intellect’ 善慧. Practitioners in this stage gain accurate knowledge of good, bad, neutral, mundane, and transmundane karmic actions. They also know how people get entangled in afflictions, karmic acts, senses, resolutions, dispositions, inclinations, propensities, and habits; and they know what is beneficial or not. Practitioners also know all about the compartmentalization of mind, the complexity of mind, how the mind becomes defiled, how the mind becomes bound and liberated, and how it creates illusions. Learning to become expert teachers, practitioners in this stage develop analytic knowledge of principles, meanings, expressions, and elocution; and they attain mental command of the teachings through dhāraṇīs (concentration spells), learning to teach in accord with the dispositions, faculties, and inclinations of the people with whom they are working.
Entry into the Ninth Ground
Bodhisattvas gain entry into the Ninth Ground through skillful meditative contemplation on the Path and have sought:
- To seek ever more superior depth of realization in quiescent liberation
- To achieve ever more supremely deep reflection upon the wisdom of the Tathāgata
- To achieve entry into the Tathāgata’s profound and esoteric Dharma
- To selectively contemplate and acquire inconceivable great wisdom
- To selectively contemplate the dhāraṇīs and samadhis
- To cause their spiritual superknowledges to become vast
- To adapt to the world’s different practices
- To cultivate the 10 powers, 4 fearlessness, and 18 unique qualities of the Tathāgata
- To accord with the power of the Buddha’s turning of the Dharma Wheel
- To never relinquish the greatly compassionate vows taken on
Abiding in the Ninth Ground
Bodhisattvas dwelling on this ground know in accordance with Suchness:
- The various karmic effects (abhisaṃskāra) of good, bad, and neutral actions
- Entangling difficulties (gahana, ‘thicket’) associated with afflictions, karmic actions, faculties, etc.
- The characteristics of differentiations of being’s minds
- Afflictions (kleśa)
- Karmic actions
- Faculties (indriya)
- Resolute beliefs (adhimukti)
- Sense realms / ‘dispositions’ (dhatu)
- Resolute intentions (āśaya)
- Latent tendencies (anuśaya)
- Rebirth circumstances
- Habitual karmic propensities (vāsanā)
- Fixed and unifixed characteristics
The bodhisattva knows all these various characteristics of the minds of sentient beings in order to create adaptive teachings and liberative techniques.
The Four Types of Unhindered Knowledge
The bodhisattva dwelling on the Ninth Ground becomes a great expounder of the Dharma and always accords with the four types of unhindered knowledge (pratimsaṃvid)
- Unhindered knowledge of Dharma
- Unhindered knowledge of Meaning (artha)
- Unhindered knowledge of Expression, or language (nirukti)
- Unhindered knowledge of Eloquence (pratibhāna)
Acquisition of Dhāraṇīs (’dharma mnemonics’)
The bodhisattva dwelling on the Ninth Ground acquires an immeasurable number of dhāraṇī gateways, enabling them to listen to the Dharma in the presence of all buddhas and, having heard it, not forget it.
Having acquired such dhāraṇī power, unhindered knowledge(s), and powers of eloquence, even if all beings in Three Thousand Great Thousand world-system were to simultaneously present questions to a bodhisattva on the Ninth Ground, each of those beings using measurelessly and boundlessly many different voices asking different questions, the bodhisattva would be able to absorb all such questions in a single mind-moment and then, using only one single voice, could cause all those beings to acquire understanding corresponding to their particular questions.
Analogy of Gold
It is like refining gold to the point where it becomes pure enough to serve in adornments like the jeweled crown of a wheel-turning sage king, with a radiance outshining all other adornments of all other rulers.
Becoming a World Leader
Bodhisattvas dwelling on the first ground often become a Great Brahma Heavenly King.
From Vajragarbha Bodhisattva’s concluding poem:
The bodhisattva knows the sense realms of those in the world Knows the entangling difficulties connected to afflictions and views Knows they remain unserved from the beginningless past, Knows their mental intentions and all their latent tendencies, All of which acting together with the mind, And knows that the tie up the mind and are difficult to sever.
They know all of their latent tendencies and such, Know they are but discriminations arising with discursive thinking, Know that they are devoid of any place wherein they abide, Know that they are also devoid of fixed phenomenal characteristics,
That they do not exist apart from the body, That they are also difficult to become aware of, That one is able to block them through the power of dhyāna-samādhi And know that one becomes able to sever them on the Vajra Path