The Flower Ornament Scripture
Page 48
Then the enlightening being Truth Wisdom, imbued with the power of the Buddha, looked over the ten directions, throughout the cosmos, and spoke these verses:
Seeing the subtle body of the Supremely Wise,
Replete with adorning marks and refinements,
So honorable and rare to meet,
Enlightening beings boldly make their resolve.
Seeing incomparable great spiritual powers,
Hearing tell of mind-reading and appropriate teaching,
And the immeasurable sufferings of mundane beings,
Enlightening beings thereby first become determined.
Hearing the Enlightened Ones, universally supremely honored,
Have perfected all meritorious and virtuous qualities,
Like space, not discriminating,
Thereby do enlightening beings develop resolve.
The causes and effects of past, present, and future are called what is so;
The inherent nature of self and phenomena is called what is not so.
Wanting to know the genuine truth
Do enlightening beings therefore arouse their will.
All the good and evil deeds there be
In past, future, and present worlds
Do they want to know completely;
Therefore enlightening beings are determined.
All meditations, liberations, and concentrations,
Defiled and pure, of countless kinds,
They want to know all—entry, abiding, and exit;
Therefore do enlightening beings arouse their aspiration.
According to the sharpness or dullness of beings’ faculties,
So are their powers of effort also various;
Wanting to understand and know them all distinctly,
Do enlightening beings therefore arouse determination.
Sentient beings have various understandings
And their mental inclinations are each different:
Wanting to know all these innumerable inclinations
Do enlightening beings therefore arouse their will.
The realms of sentient beings are each different;
There is no measure to all the worlds there are:
Wanting to know completely their substance and nature
Do enlightening beings rouse their aspiration.
The paths of all fabricated actions
Each have a destination;
Wanting to know the true nature of all
Do enlightening beings rouse their determination.
The sentient beings of all worlds
Bob and flow according to their deeds, without cease;
Wanting to attain the celestial eye to see them all
Do enlightening beings rouse their will.
Such constitutions and such characteristics
As there were in past ages
They want to know, as former lives,
So enlightening beings arouse aspiration.
The continuity, appearance, and habit energy
Of the binding delusions of all sentient beings
They want to know thoroughly and finally,
So enlightening beings thus rouse their will.
Of all the various philosophies and theories
Which sentient beings may set up
They want to know the worldly truth,
So enlightening beings thus rouse determination.
All things are beyond speech—
Their nature is empty, null, and creates nothing:
Wishing to clearly arrive at this truth
Do enlightening beings therefore rouse their will.
Wanting to shake the worlds of the ten directions
And overturn all the oceans,
Fulfilling the great spiritual powers of the Buddhas,
Do enlightening beings rouse determination.
Wanting to emit lights from a single pore
That will illumine infinite lands in the ten directions,
In each light awakening all,
Do enlightening beings therefore rouse aspiration.
Wanting to take inconceivably many buddha-lands
And put them in their palms, without moving,
Comprehending all is like magic illusions,
So enlightening beings rouse their determination.
Wanting to take the beings of innumerable lands
And put them on a hairtip without crowding,
Knowing all have no person and no self,
Therefore do enlightening beings arouse their will.
Wanting to take drops from the ocean on a hair
So as to dry up all the oceans
While specifically knowing the number of drops,
Therefore do enlightening beings rouse their aspiration.
Reducing entirely to dust
Inconceivable numbers of worlds,
Wanting to know distinctly the number of particles
Do enlightening beings arouse their will.
Wanting to comprehend exhaustively
The signs of becoming and decay of all worlds
In countless eons past and future
Do enlightening beings rouse their aspiration.
Wanting to know all the teachings
Of all the Buddhas of all times,
All self-enlightened ones and Buddhas’ disciples,
Do enlightening beings rouse their determination.
Wanting to pick up with a single hair
Countless, boundless worlds
And know their substances and forms as they are,
Do enlightening beings rouse their will.
Wanting to put in a pore
Countless mountain chains
And know their sizes as they are
Do enlightening beings rouse their aspiration.
Wanting to preach appropriately to all kinds of beings ever
With the single subtle voice of tranquility and peace
And cause them all to purely, clearly comprehend,
Do enlightening beings rouse their determination.
To utter in a single word
What is spoken by all sentient beings:
Wanting to know all their inherent natures
Do enlightening beings rouse their will.
Producing all spoken sounds of the worlds
To make all realize peaceful dispassion:
Wanting to attain such a marvelous tongue
Do enlightening beings rouse their aspiration.
Wanting to cause all to see
The signs of becoming and decay of all worlds
And know they are born of conceptions
Do enlightening beings rouse their determination.
All worlds in the ten directions
Are filled with countless Buddhas;
Wanting to know all the teachings of those Buddhas
Do enlightening beings arouse their will.
Countless bodies of various transformations,
Numerous as atoms in all worlds:
Wanting to comprehend they all come from mind
Do enlightening beings rouse this determination.
Wanting to know in a single thought
The measureless, countless Buddhas
Of past, future, and present worlds
Do enlightening beings rouse this aspiration.
Wanting to expound the one phrase teaching
For incalculable eons without exhausting it
Yet have the expressions and nuances be each different
Do enlightening beings therefore arouse this will.
Wanting to know in a single thought
The signs of cylic births and deaths
Of all sentient beings everywhere
Do enlightening beings rouse their aspiration.
Wanting to go everywhere unhindered
Through physical, verbal, and mental action
And comprehend all times are empty and null
Do enlightening beings rouse determination.
Having thus
determined to become enlightened
They should be made to go to all lands
To honor and provide for the Enlightened Ones,
Whereby to cause them not to regress.
Enlightening beings bravely seeking the Buddha-way
Stay in birth and death unwearied
For others extolling what will make them follow the way
And thus cause them never to regress.
Being honorable leaders in countless lands
In the worlds of the ten directions,
Teach like this for the enlightening beings
Whereby to cause them not to regress.
The supreme, the highest, the foremost,
Profound and subtle purest teaching,
Urge enlightening beings to teach to people
Whereby to cause them to be rid of afflictions.
The unshakable realm of victory,
Peerless in all the worlds,
Always extols for other enlightening beings
To cause them not to regress.
Buddha is the great powerful leader of the world,
Replete with all merits and virtues,
Causing enlightening beings to abide herein,
Thereby teaching them to be superior people.
To countless, boundless Buddhas’ places
They can go and draw near,
Always taken in to the company of Buddhas,
Thus causing them not to regress.
To destroy the wheels of birth and death
And turn the wheel of the pure wonderous teaching
Without attachment to any world:
Such is the teaching for enlightening beings.
All sentient beings fall into evil ways
Bound and oppressed by measureless pains:
To be saviors and reliances for them
Is the teaching for enlightening beings.
This is enlightening beings’ abode of initial determination:
With single-minded will seeking the unexcelled path;
As is the teaching of which I speak,
So is the teaching of all the Buddhas.
In the second abode, of preparing the ground,
Enlightening beings should form this thought:
“All sentient beings everywhere
I vow to induce to follow the Buddhas’ teaching.”
With a mind to aid them, with compassion, to give them peace and ease,
To establish them securely, with sympathy and acceptance,
Protecting sentient beings, looking upon them as the same as themselves,
As teachers and as guides—
Once abiding in these sublime states of mind
Next they are directed to study and learn,
To always enjoy peace and quiet and right meditation,
And draw near to all good associates.
Speaking gently, with no roughness or harshness,
Always speaking appropriately to the situation, without fear,
Comprehending the meaning of the teaching and acting in accord,
Leaving ignorance and delusion behind, the mind unmoving:
This is the practice of beginning study for enlightenment;
Those who can do these things are true children of the Buddhas.
I now explain what they should practice;
Thus should Buddha-children diligently study:
In the third abode of enlightening beings, practice,
They should earnestly contemplate, according to Buddha’s teaching,
The impermanence, painfulness, and emptiness of all things,
The absence of self, person, and activity.
All things cannot be enjoyed,
None accord with their names, they have no location,
There’s nothing of what is conceived, no true reality in them:
Those who contemplate thus are called enlightening beings.
Next they are made to observe the realms of sentient beings
And urged to contemplate the elemental cosmos:
All the various differentiations of the worlds
They all should be urged to contemplate and observe.
The worlds of the ten directions, and space,
Their earth, water, fire, and air,
The realms of desire, form, and formlessness,
They are exhorted to investigate thoroughly.
Examining the individual distinctions of those realms,
Their substances and natures, exhaustively,
Receiving this teaching, diligently cultivating its practice,
Is what is called being true Buddha-children.
Enlightening beings in the fourth abode, noble birth,
Are born from the teachings of the sages;
Comprehending that existents have no existence,
They transcend things and are born in the realm of reality.
Their faith in Buddha is firm and unbreakable,
Their dispassionate mind contemplating things is at peace.
Whatever beings there be, they comprehend all
Are essentially false, without true reality.
Worlds, lands, actions and rewards,
Birth, death, and nirvana are all like this:
Buddha-children, contemplating things this way,
Are born from Buddha-parents and called Buddha-children.
To know the accumulation and fulfillment
Of all the Buddhas’ teachings
In past, present, and future worlds,
Thus they study, to the ultimate end.
All the enlightened ones of past, present, and future
They can contemplate, all equal,
In which various distinctions cannot be found:
Those who meditate thus comprehend the three time frames.
If any can practice diligently, according to the teaching,
The virtues of this fourth abode
Such as I am now extolling,
They will soon accomplish unsurpassed enlightenment.
From here, enlightening beings of the fifth abode,
Called the abode of fulfilling skill in means,
Enter deeply into infinite expedient skills,
Developing ultimate virtuous action.
The virtues produced by enlightening beings
Are all to rescue living beings:
Dedicated to aiding and comforting them,
They wholeheartedly pity them and liberate them.
Removing difficulties for all beings,
Drawing them out of existences, making them happy,
They pacify all, leaving none out,
Making them all turn to nirvana, full of virtue.
Sentient beings are boundless,
Incalculable, countless, inconceivably many,
And cannot be told of or measured:
Enlightening beings accept this teaching of the Buddha.
These Buddha-children in the fifth abode
Develop skillful means to liberate sentient beings;
The Saint of Great Knowledge, with all virtues,
Enlightens them with teachings like this.
In the sixth abode, the fulfillment of right mindfulness,
There is no confusion about the inherent nature of things;
Meditating with right mindfulness, detaching from discrimination,
One cannot be moved by any god or man.
Hearing praise or slander of the Buddhas or their teachings,
Of enlightening beings and the practices they perform,
Or that sentient beings are finite or infinite,
Defiled or undefiled, easy or hard to liberate,
Or that the cosmos is great or small, becomes or decays,
Or exists or does not, the mind is unmoved:
Past, future, and present,
Thinking clearly, always sure;
All things are signless,
Insubstantial, without inherent nature, empty, unreal,
Like illusions, like dreams, beyond
conception:
They always delight in hearing such doctrines.
Enlightening beings of the seventh abode of nonregression
Never regress in spite of whatever they hear
About Buddhas, the Teaching, or enlightening beings—
Whether or not they exist, whether or not they escape,
Whether or not there are Buddhas
Past, present, and future,
Whether Buddha-knowledge is finite or infinite,
Whether the past, present, and future are uniform or various.
One is many, many are one;
Expression follows meaning, meaning follows expression;
Thus do all interdependently become:
This is what those who don’t regress should explain.
Whether things have signs or are signless,
Whether they have inherent nature or not;
Various distinctions subsume each other:
These people, hearing this, attain the ultimate.
Enlightening beings in the eight abode, youthful nature,
Fulfill physical, verbal, and mental actions
All pure, without mistakes;
They are freely born as they will
And know the inclination of sentient beings,
Their various understandings, each different,
And all the factors involved therein
And the signs of becoming and decay of all lands.
Attaining to wondrous psychic powers of swiftness,
They go anywhere as soon as they think of it:
Listening to the teachings from various Buddhas,
They praise and practice unflagging.
They comprehend all Buddha-lands,
Shaking, supporting, and contemplating,
Going beyond incalculable buddha-lands,
They travel in worlds without number,
To ask about innumerable principles;
Free to take on any physical form,
Their skill in speech pervades everywhere
As they serve countless Buddhas.
Enlightening beings in the ninth abode, of the prince,
Can see the difference in births of sentient beings;
Knowing their afflictions and habits,
They understand which techniques to employ.