There is a kind of intelligence that does not look like intelligence as we usually picture it. It does not sit behind a desk, does not accumulate as facts, does not announce itself. The forty-chapter *Avataṃsaka Sūtra* (四十華嚴, 《大方廣佛華嚴經》) calls it 廣大智 (vipula-jñāna), literally "vast wisdom" or "boundless knowing," and it devotes some of its most astonishing passages to describing what this wisdom actually does. The texts collected here give us a surprisingly concrete picture. They use daylight, swift wind, and the unobstructed space of the ten directions as metaphors; they speak of a wisdom lamp (智燈), a wisdom wheel (智輪), a great wisdom boat (大智舟), a wisdom moon that knows no birth (無生智月), and an ocean-like deep vast wisdom (廣大深智海). Each of these is not a poetic flourish for the same idea. Each points to a distinct face of the same intelligence.
What follows walks through that constellation carefully, then translates it into the situations a contemporary reader actually lives in — a phone in the morning, a meeting at noon, a child asking an unanswerable question at night — and finally sorts out the misreadings that make this concept harder, not easier, to recognize in one's own life.
What This Concept Is Actually Saying
The forty-chapter *Avataṃsaka* does not offer a tidy definition of 廣大智. It circles around the concept from several sides, each time bringing out a different facet. Taken together, those facets are not redundant — they are different *functions* of the same wisdom, the way light has color, brightness, heat, and direction all at once. Let me walk through them in turn.
1. 遍知與遍入 — Knowing Peripherally, Entering Everywhere
The first face is pervasive knowing and pervasive entry (遍知, 遍入). The bodhisattva with this wisdom looks at the world through what the sūtra calls a pure eye of wisdom (淨慧眼) — not the physical eye, not even ordinary mindfulness, but an organ of understanding that can take in the entire field at once. It perceives where beings are coming from, where they are going, what their roots and dispositions are (根性欲樂), what is happening in their hearts across the three times (past, present, future). The wisdom is described as "dwelling at the universal boundary" (住普遍際) — a striking phrase meaning it has no edge, no place where it stops being able to see.
This knowing is not passive. It *enters* (入). It enters what the sūtra calls the true suchness (真實際) — the actual way things are, without the overlay of conceptual distortion. It enters by means of what the text calls the contemplation of marklessness (無相觀智) and the contemplation of non-duality (無二智). These are technical handles: "without marks" means the wisdom is not grasping at fixed appearances, "non-dual" means it does not split the world into subject and object in the way ordinary cognition does. The point is not that the bodhisattva stops perceiving distinctions — they go on functioning in a world full of distinctions — but that the wisdom underneath those distinctions does not get caught by them.
2. 遍照與破暗 — Illuminating Without Being Blocked
The second face is pervasive illumination, dispelling darkness (遍照, 破暗). The sūtra calls 廣大智 a wisdom lamp (智燈). The metaphor is not casual. A lamp does not argue with the dark; it simply shines, and the dark has nothing to say back. The text says this lamp "lets go of Dharma-light pervading the ten directions" (普放法光照十方界) and "is free of all obscurations with respect to all dharmas" (於一切法離諸暗障).
Crucially, this illumination is described as 不受「有量」「無量」等分別所拘 — it is not bound by the distinction between "measurable" and "immeasurable." That is a precise claim. Ordinary minds either think reality is too vast to grasp (and give up) or think it is graspable piece by piece (and never finish). 廣大智 transcends that split. It illuminates immeasurably many things without itself being divided into fragments, the way a searchlight sweeps a field without itself being chopped into pieces of light.
The corresponding metaphor in the sūtra is sunlight pervading (日光遍照) — not the polite sunlight of a single window, but the kind that fills every corner at once.
3. 自在運用 — Sovereign, Unhindered Function
The third face is sovereign unhindered operation (自在運用). The sūtra gives 廣大智 another name here: the wisdom wheel (智輪), with the note that "the Buddhas of the three times constantly abide in wisdom" (三世諸佛恆依智慧而住). A wheel turns; it does not have to be pushed. Sovereignty (自在) in this technical sense means functioning without being dragged around by conditions.
What does this unhindered function look like? The text gives specific examples that sound almost like a description of how a hologram works: the bodhisattva can make large and small realms interpenetrate (大小境界互相涉入). One direction can enter all directions. Within the formless nature (無色性), all forms can appear. The body can pervade the dharma-realm of the ten directions. Within the tiniest dust-mote of every buddha-land, the bodhisattva can manifest full and complete enlightenment (示現成正覺).
These statements are not meant as science fiction. They are describing a quality of cognition that is not locked into the spatial and temporal coordinates of ordinary perception. The wisdom can move through scales without distortion — the way a mathematician can hold a fractal and its zoom-in simultaneously in mind, but without the mathematician's residual attachment to "my" mind.
The corresponding metaphor is swift wind unhindered (疾風無礙) — speed without obstacle.
And then there is the great wisdom boat (大智舟). The bodhisattva boards this boat to cross the sea of birth and death, going everywhere to rescue beings, the journey itself unhindered. The boat image shifts the focus from wisdom as perception to wisdom as liberating action — the same intelligence now understood as the vehicle that carries one across suffering waters and ferries others across too.
4. 說法與受持 — Endless Teaching, Total Retention
The fourth face is teaching and retention (說法, 受持). 廣大智 is not silent. It speaks. The sūtra says the bodhisattva can speak endless phrases of endless Dharma (以無盡句說無盡法), and within a single phrase unfold an entire ocean of sūtras (於一句中演出一切修多羅海). More striking still is what the text calls the body of the great-wisdom dhāraṇī (廣大智慧陀羅尼身): a "body" — not just a mind — that retains what has been heard. What is retained remains intact through uncountable future kalpas, and in a single thought-moment one can recall events from incalculable kalpas past (一念能憶不可說劫宿住之事), and in a single thought-moment know the hearts of all beings across the three times (一念能了三世眾生之心).
This is a memory that does not decay, and a comprehension that does not thin out as the field expands. The sūtra adds a vital qualifier: although such a bodhisattva can skillfully distinguish every Dharma phrase, they remain unattached to all dharmas (雖巧分別一切法句，於諸法仍悉無所著). The wisdom discriminates fully but does not cling.
5. 深廣如海 — Depth as Well as Breadth
The fifth face is deep and vast as the ocean (深廣如海). The text uses two further names here: vast deep wisdom ocean (廣大深智海) and boundless vast wisdom (無邊廣大智). The "deep" is essential. 廣大智 is not the same as wide-but-shallow intelligence. The bodhisattva with this wisdom "awakens to Dharma-nature like empty space" (覺悟法性如虛空), pervades the three times without obstruction (普入三際而無礙), every thought engages all situations (念念普緣一切境), yet every thought is quietly free of discrimination (心心寂靜無分別).
In a single thought they can know the dawns, dusks, suns, moons, years, and kalpas of countless lands; the names, conditions, places of birth and death, the varieties of form and formlessness, perception and non-perception (想無想); and then — the part that brings it back from cosmic knowledge to the human realm — accord with conventional usage to guide beings onto the bodhi path (隨順世俗引導眾生入菩提路).
The corresponding metaphor here is the ten-direction empty space not hindering the lands (十方虛空不礙諸剎). Empty space does not resist the worlds that arise within it; the worlds do not crowd space. Wisdom that is "like empty space" does not push phenomena around and is not pushed by them.
6. 隨順眾生 — According with Beings
The sixth face is according with beings (隨順眾生). The sūtra makes clear that 廣大智 does not just illuminate reality; it adapts itself to the specific condition of each being it meets. It can display spiritual powers in response to whatever moves the heart of the being encountered, crush the divergent views of non-Buddhist teachers, and continue teaching without exhaustion.
This is the face that distinguishes 廣大智 from a merely cognitive faculty. A database can be vast; a search engine can be fast. What they cannot do is read the room — adjust the depth, the metaphor, the angle of approach based on who is asking and what they are ready to hear. The sūtra presents this as intrinsic to 廣大智, not as an add-on.
The Inner Constellation
The forty-chapter *Avataṃsaka* does not use a single fixed label for this wisdom but a family of them. Each name emphasizes a different face, and the faces are not interchangeable:
- 智燈 (wisdom lamp) — illuminates without being blocked - 智輪 (wisdom wheel) — what the Buddhas of the three times constantly abide in - 大智舟 (great wisdom boat) — the vehicle that ferries beings across the sea of suffering - 無生智月 (birthless wisdom moon) — cool clarity that dispels the heat of worldly existence - 廣大深智海 (vast deep wisdom ocean) — deep and broad as the sea - 無邊廣大智 (boundless vast wisdom) — reaching through all three times
And the related concepts in the same textual field form a tight internal grammar. 淨慧眼 (pure wisdom eye) is how 廣大智 sees beings. 一切法無礙智慧 (unobstructed wisdom regarding all dharmas) is how it knows the dharma-realm. 圓滿智 (perfected wisdom) is its fruit across buddha-lands. 自在智 (sovereign wisdom) is its capacity for interpenetration of realms. 無生智月 (birthless wisdom moon) is its cool, illuminating aspect. 大智舟 (great wisdom boat) is its rescuing function. The cluster is one organism seen from different angles; pull on any term and you end up describing the whole.
Walking Through This in a Day
It is tempting to leave 廣大智 in the grandeur of buddha-fields, but the sūtra itself is insistent that this wisdom is operative in the ordinary. Let me take one composite contemporary day and run each face of 廣大智 against it. Where the mapping breaks down, the classical definition will tell us why.
7:42 a.m. — The Phone and the Eye
You wake up. Before your feet touch the floor, your hand is on the phone. In ninety seconds you have read a news headline, three messages from a colleague who is annoyed, a marketing email, a notification from a meditation app reminding you that you have not meditated, and an image of a former classmate's newborn. By the time you stand up, your mind is already several places at once.
What 廣大智 says about this moment. The face of *遍知* (pervasive knowing) is not "be aware of everything at once" — that is the trap this moment stages. The pure wisdom eye (淨慧眼) in the sūtra is described as dwelling at the "universal boundary," which sounds like being aware of more and more. But the next phrase is critical: it enters by means of *non-dual contemplation*. That means the knowing does not split into hundreds of little selves, each attached to a different feed. It knows without becoming a thousand separate observers. The phone is showing you what happens when you try to be vast without depth: you get thin instead of wide.
What goes wrong in the mapping. Most contemporary self-help advice hears "pervasive knowing" and prescribes "more awareness." That is a partial translation. The classical text's *遍知* includes *遍入* — the knowing enters (入) the actual nature of each item, including your own reaction to it. The phone example is a place where you can know you are awake without yet entering what waking up actually is. 廣大智 would also, in this moment, do what the wisdom lamp (智燈) does: illuminate which of those notifications are conditioning your day and which are simply noise, without lecturing the noise or arguing with the conditioning.
8:30 a.m. — The Commute and the Wheel
You are on the subway, earbuds in, two podcasts queued. The train lurches, someone coughs, a baby cries. Your job today is to mentally rehearse what you will say in a meeting at 10 a.m.
What 廣大智 says about this moment. The *wisdom wheel* (智輪) — what the Buddhas of the three times "constantly abide in" — is described as unhindered function: it can move across contexts without being deformed by the context. Practically, this looks like the capacity to prepare for the meeting *without* losing the field that is also present (the lurch, the cough, the crying baby, your own hunger). The wisdom is not multitasking; it is non-deformation under changing conditions. When you arrive at work, the rehearsal and the commute have not flattened each other.
What goes wrong in the mapping. Contemporary talk often flattens 智輪 into "be in flow" or "be productive." But flow can be subtly attached — you can be in flow and still defending. The sūtra's image is specifically a wheel that turns because that is its nature; it is not pushed. *Unhindered* (無礙) here does not mean "fast" or "smooth." It means: nothing in the environment becomes a wall against the function of wisdom.
10:00 a.m. — The Meeting and the Lamp
The meeting. Your colleague opens with the complaint from the morning message. A second person piles on. The agenda item you care about is being skipped. You feel your shoulders rise.
What 廣大智 says about this moment. This is the *wisdom lamp* (智燈) face. A lamp illuminates the room. It does not argue with the room. Here, the room includes the colleague's frustration, the second person's defensiveness, the unspoken politics of skipped agenda items — and your own shoulders. 廣大智 in the sūtra is precisely "free of obscurations with respect to all dharmas" (於一切法離諸暗障), which does not mean seeing no darkness. It means the wisdom itself is not darkened by what it sees.
A small practical move that belongs to this face: notice that your shoulders rising is itself part of what the lamp can illuminate. You are not asked to *first* calm down and *then* respond wisely. The lamp's illumination includes the shadows.
What goes wrong in the mapping. Contemporary mindfulness language tends to split "mindful awareness" from "the content" and recommends labeling the content as just another sensation. The sūtra's 智燈 is doing something more: it is illuminating in a way that lets the actual situation — including the colleague, including the politics — be seen as it is. The trap is to use the lamp only on yourself and leave the room dark.
1:15 p.m. — The Lunch and the Boat
You eat alone at your desk. You have forty minutes. The forty minutes could be used to think more about the morning meeting, or to doomscroll, or to call your mother, who has been hinting that she misses you.
What 廣大智 says about this moment. This is the *great wisdom boat* (大智舟) face, where wisdom is not just perception but vehicle. The sūtra says the bodhisattva boards this boat to cross the sea of birth-and-death and to ferry others across. The metaphor of a boat is not a metaphor of escape. A boat carries. The lunch hour is, materially and emotionally, a small body of water. What does it carry? In the moment of choosing, 廣大智 would *know what the boat is for* — it would see that one of these three options is a ferry that serves another being (your mother), and the wisdom, in the sūtra's sense, would naturally tend toward the option that fulfills its function. Not as a moral rule but as water finding its way downhill.
What goes wrong in the mapping. Most contemporary readers hear "great wisdom" and assume it is contemplative, withdrawn, even otherworldly. The 四十華嚴 insists the opposite. 廣大智 *boards a boat.* It moves toward beings. The contemporary error is to imagine wisdom as a private experience; the sūtra's structure is that wisdom is structurally relational.
6:30 p.m. — The Child's Question and the Ocean
You are home. Your child, age seven, asks: "Why is the sky blue?" You have a half-remembered explanation involving Rayleigh scattering. You also have the suspicion that the actual question is something else: *why is the world the way it is, and who decided it.*
What 廣大智 says about this moment. This is the *vast deep wisdom ocean* (廣大深智海) and *birthless wisdom moon* (無生智月) face. The text says this wisdom "awakens to Dharma-nature like empty space" — it is at home with a question that does not have a final answer. Empty space does not panic when asked "how big are you?" The ocean does not refuse to be measured. The moon does not get hot with the question.
In the actual moment, this looks like: you give the Rayleigh scattering answer (the discriminative function — 巧分別一切法句) and you do not cling to it as the final word (於諸法仍悉無所著). The wisdom discriminates fully; it is also unattached. The "depth" of the wisdom here is precisely its capacity to hold a child's question as both scientifically answerable and unspeakably more than any answer can cover.
What goes wrong in the mapping. Most contemporary adults collapse this face into either "be wise and say something profound" or "admit you don't know." The sūtra describes a function that does both at once and is attached to neither. This is also where the metaphor of empty space not hindering the lands is helpful. The Rayleigh explanation and the unspeakable mystery are both "lands" arising in the same "space" — and the space is not crowded, not reduced, not damaged by either.
10:00 p.m. — The Quiet and the Wheel Again
You are in bed. The day replays. You mentally redo three conversations. You rehearse tomorrow. You are not asleep yet.
What 廣大智 says about this moment. The sūtra's description that such a wisdom "in a single thought can know the hearts of all beings across the three times" (一念能了三世眾生之心) is sometimes read as cosmic braggadocio. Practically, it describes the recognition that the mind replaying conversations is, in this moment, encountering the three times at once: yesterday's actual conversation, today's imagined redo, tomorrow's anticipated continuation. *廣大智* knows all three, not as separate files, but as one movement of mind. It also knows that this single thought-moment is being lived by an uncountable number of beings — the colleague from the meeting, the child who asked the question, the mother not yet called, even the strangers on the subway.
What goes wrong in the mapping. Modern contemplative training often treats this moment as a place to apply a single technique — breath counting, body scan, prayer. The 廣大智 model is different: it does not exclude any of those, but it adds a quality of pervasive engagement without being trapped. The wisdom is not withdrawing from the day's residues; it is *knowing* them at a depth that lets them settle.
Why a Contemporary Reader Actually Needs This
There is a quiet reason to engage with 廣大智 that has nothing to do with buddhahood and everything to do with the shape of contemporary cognition.
The dominant forms of intelligence our culture rewards are narrow, fast, and scalable. They are excellent at what they do. But they share a structural feature: they are not interpenetrating. A specialist can know their domain in depth and another specialist can know theirs, and the two domains do not, by default, enter each other. A search engine can be vast and a memory can be large and a calculator can be fast, and none of these things *knows*. Knowing, in the sūtra's sense, is a different capacity — one that holds depth and breadth at once, holds the discriminative and the unattached at once, holds the perception and the response at once.
Several specific pressures of the present make this worth the trouble:
1. The cost of fragmentation. We are living through an unprecedented multiplication of small, high-quality intelligences — human and artificial — each excellent within its lane. The result is not deeper wisdom but a wider field of unrelated competencies. The sūtra's 廣大智 points to an intelligence that is structurally integrative, not by adding more lanes but by operating at a level where the lanes can interpenetrate. This is not a problem any current technology solves, because interpenetration requires *non-attachment* along with discrimination, and machines do not practice non-attachment.
2. The cost of speed without depth. Fast responses, rapid context-switching, real-time everything — these reward a particular cognitive style. The 廣大智 face of "vessel for rescue" (大智舟) is not fast in that sense. It is grounded. It can take its time because it is not racing against conditions; it is moving through them. Contemporary burnout is, in part, a consequence of a cognitive style that has lost the *unhindered* quality and replaced it with *unrelenting*. The sūtra's *疾風無礙* (swift wind unhindered) is unhindered in the way that a sailboat is unhindered — it moves by working with what is already there, not by pushing harder.
3. The cost of vastness without center. Modern life is full of "boundless" feeds, "infinite" libraries, "endless" entertainment. None of these is 廣大智. They have breadth; they do not have the *deep* that the sūtra insists on. The metaphors of *empty space not hindering the lands* and *ocean* are deliberate. Breadth that is not also depth is a flat surface that goes on forever; it produces vertigo rather than wisdom. The sūtra's 廣大智 is "deep *and* vast" (深廣), with the emphasis on depth as much as breadth.
4. The cost of knowing without responding. Modern information systems are extraordinarily good at knowing. They are weak at *according with beings* (隨順眾生). The sūtra places this face of 廣大智 — the capacity to adjust expression to the listener — as intrinsic, not as a social skill layered on top. Contemporary communication desperately needs this. Most of what passes for misunderstanding between people is not a failure of knowing but a failure to *accord*.
5. The cost of memory without release. We are building, collectively, a memory that does not decay. The sūtra's image of the *dhāraṇī body* (廣大智慧陀羅尼身) — that retains everything through uncountable kalpas — names a power we are technically approaching without spiritually preparing for. The classical text's qualifier is what matters: *although it can distinguish all Dharma phrases, it remains unattached to all dharmas*. We have the first half without the second. The result, in many people, is the experience of total recall that paralyzes — every past slight recoverable at full resolution, every option held open forever. 廣大智 is a memory that does not paralyze because it does not cling.
Common Misreadings and Clarifications
This concept accumulates misreadings the way a deep ocean accumulates sediment — slowly, and in layers. Here are the ones I have watched settle.
Misreading 1: "Vast wisdom means knowing a lot."
The most common flattening. 廣大智 is not encyclopedic intelligence. The sūtra is precise that it is not even *primarily* cognitive — it is liberative. Its six faces include teaching, rescuing, interpenetrating, illuminating, retaining, and according. Knowing-a-lot might be a *byproduct* of 遍知, but it is not the function. A person with encyclopedic knowledge and total attachment to their correctness is, by the sūtra's own criteria, *not* in 廣大智 — they are missing the unattached qualifier (於諸法仍悉無所著). As an analogy, a current language model has access to more text than any human can hold, and it is unable to be unattached in the relevant sense. The vastness is present; the wisdom is not.
Misreading 2: "Wisdom lamp means bright ideas."
智燈 (wisdom lamp) is often taken as insight or aha-moments. But the sūtra's image is structural: the lamp illuminates a room without arguing with the dark, and the lamp itself is "free of obscurations." It is the *non-resistance* of the wisdom that is being named, not its brilliance. A bright idea that you defend against alternatives is not a wisdom lamp. A wisdom lamp holds the field — including the things that contradict what you think you know.
Misreading 3: "Wisdom wheel means being productive or in flow."
智輪 (wisdom wheel) sounds like efficiency, like "things turning smoothly." The sūtra's qualifier — that it is what the Buddhas of the three times *constantly abide in* — shifts the meaning. The wheel is not about output. It is about a quality of abiding. The bodhisattva does not have to *get into* the wheel; the wheel is what they rest in. Contemporary productivity language does not capture this. *Abiding* is closer to *tending* or *stewarding* than to *producing*.
Misreading 4: "Great wisdom boat means escaping to safety."
大智舟 (great wisdom boat) sounds like rescue *from* the world. The sūtra's image is the opposite: it is a vehicle that crosses the sea of birth-and-death *and ferries others across*. The boat goes into the sea, not out of it. In contemporary terms, 廣大智 does not retreat from difficult relationships, exhausting jobs, or painful family histories; it boards a vessel that can move *through* them with others on board. Many spiritual cultures frame liberation as departure; the 四十華嚴 frames it as a crossing made together.
Misreading 5: "Deep wisdom ocean means being profound or mysterious."
廣大深智海 (vast deep wisdom ocean) easily gets mistaken for being esoteric or unfathomable in the mystical sense. But the sūtra pairs the depth with two specific functions: 普入三際而無礙 (pervading the three times without obstruction) and 隨順世俗引導眾生入菩提路 (according with convention to guide beings onto the bodhi path). The depth is in service of *pervasive engagement across time and adaptive teaching in the conventional world*. This is not obscurity. It is the opposite of obscurity: it can function in the daylight of ordinary language because it is not clinging to any particular level of speech.
Misreading 6: "According with beings means being nice or agreeable."
隨順眾生 (according with beings) is sometimes read as accommodation, as in "going along to get along." The sūtra's description does not support this. The wisdom "can display spiritual powers in response to whatever moves the heart of the being encountered, *crush the divergent views of non-Buddhist teachers*, and continue teaching without exhaustion." According with beings is not capitulation; it is the capacity to read the precise condition of the listener and respond at the right level — including the level of *challenge*. A physician who flatters the patient is not practicing medicine. A wisdom that only agrees is not 廣大智.
Misreading 7: "Boundless vast wisdom means infinite scope, period."
無邊廣大智 (boundless vast wisdom) is taken as a quantitative claim — that the field is very large. But the sūtra is making a structural claim. The wisdom is "not bound by the distinction between measurable and immeasurable" (不受「有量」「無量」等分別所拘). That is a different thing from being infinitely large. An actually infinite scope could still be bound by the *concept* of infinity. What the text is pointing to is a wisdom that is free of the *frame* itself — free of the question "is this measurable or not." Practically, this is the difference between a person who can handle very large problems and a person whose relationship to scale has become unconstricted.
Misreading 8: "I am not a bodhisattva, so this is not for me."
The forty-chapter *Avataṃsaka* describes 廣大智 as a quality cultivated and eventually perfected by bodhisattvas and fully realized by Buddhas. It would be a mistake to read it as a description of an attainable experience for an ordinary contemporary reader. But it would be an equal mistake to read it as utterly inaccessible. The sūtra presents 廣大智 as the *direction* in which a mind can turn. The six faces — knowing, illuminating, functioning, teaching, retaining, according — are present, in fragmentary form, in anyone who has ever, even briefly, *seen without grasping*, *spoken without manipulating*, *remembered without clutching*, *helped without positioning*. The concept is best held as a mirror for the moments when one already had a glimpse of it, rather than as a checklist for an experience to manufacture.
A Final Note on the Metaphors
I want to leave the three classical images lined up one more time, because they are easy to lose in translation.
The sūtra gives sunlight pervading (日光遍照) for the *illuminating* face — everything lit, no corners missed, the light itself not diminished by what it lights. It gives swift wind unhindered (疾風無礙) for the *functioning* face — movement that does not push, speed that is not strained, the wind itself unmoved by what it passes through. And it gives ten-direction empty space not hindering the lands (十方虛空不礙諸剎) for the *accommodating* face — the spaces do not crowd the worlds, the worlds do not crowd the spaces, neither needs to win.
If those three images feel at all familiar — if you have ever felt your attention light up a whole room without losing anything; if you have ever been in motion and felt the motion was not costing you anything; if you have ever held a great many things at once and felt none of them were competing with the others — then you have met a relative of 廣大智. The bodhisattva cultivates that relative into the thing itself. The contemporary reader does not need to wait for the cultivation to be complete to recognize what is being pointed at.
That, I think, is the practical use of a concept like this. Not as a goal to chase, but as a quality of intelligence already partially native to being human — easier to recognize than to manufacture, easier to honor than to acquire.