“The tips of Buddha’s right toes have a mark of greatness called cloud showing adornments, arrayed with very pleasing pure gold, emanating great rays of light filling all universes in the ten directions, showing therein the boundless ocean of teachings, various virtues, and spiritual powers of all buddhas and enlightening beings. This is the ninety-sixth.
“The tips of Buddha’s left toes have a mark of greatness called cloud showing the mystic transformations of all buddhas, adorned with inconceivable buddhas’ halos, moon glow, pervasive perfume, and wheels of jewel flames, emanating pure lights of the colors of all jewels, filling all oceans of worlds, showing therein all buddhas and enlightening beings expounding the ocean of all Buddha teachings. This is the ninety-seventh.
“Vairocana Buddha has as many such marks of greatness as atoms in ten Flower Treasury oceans of worlds, each limb adorned with sublime marks of myriad jewels.”
BOOK THIRTY-FIVE
The Qualities of the Buddha’s Embellishments and Lights
THEN THE WORLD HONORED ONE said to the enlightening being Jewel Hand, “Offspring of Buddha, the perfectly enlightened one has an embellishment called the foremost sphere, from which emanates a great light called effulgence, with seven million infinities of light rays. When I was an enlightening being in the palace of Tushita heaven, I emanated a great light called lightbanner king, illuminating as many worlds as atoms in ten buddha-lands; the sentient beings in the hells of those worlds who were touched by this light gained respite from their torments, and they obtained ten kinds of pure eyes, ears, noses, tongues, bodies, and minds, and all danced for joy. When their lives ended they were reborn in Tushita heaven. In Tushita heaven is a drum called most delightful; when they had been born in heaven, this drum sounded, declaring to them, ‘O godlings, because your minds were not indulgent and you planted roots of goodness in the presence of buddhas, and because in the past you associated with the wise, and by the great spiritual power of Vairocana, you have been born in this heaven after the end of your life elsewhere.’
“The thousand-spoked wheels on the soles of my feet as an enlightening being were called king of universal light. They had an embellishment, called the foremost sphere, always emanating forty kinds of light, among them a light called pure virtue, illumining as many worlds as atoms in a hundred trillion buddha-lands, causing all sentient beings to develop maturity according to their various actions and inclinations. Sentient beings in excruciating pain in uninterrupted hell, encountering this light, were born in Tushita heaven after their lives ended. When they were born in heaven, they heard the sound of the celestial drum declare to them, ‘Very good! Godlings, the enlightening being Vairocana has entered undefiled concentration; you should pay respects.’ Then the godlings, hearing this exhortation from the sound of the celestial drum, thought, ‘How wonderful—what is the cause of this subtle sound?’ Then the drum answered, ‘The sound I make is produced by the power of roots of goodness. Godlings, just as I speak of myself without attachment to self or to what is mine, so too do the buddhas say they are buddhas, yet have no attachment to “I” or “mine.” Just as my sound does not come from the east or from the west, the south, the north, or the intermediate directions or the zenith or nadir, in the same way the achievement of buddhahood as a consequence of actions does not come from any of the ten directions. It is as when you were in hell before: the hell and your bodies did not come from any of the ten directions; it was only due to your deluded evil deeds and bondage by folly that you were incarnated in hell—this has no basis, it does not come from anywhere. The enlightening being Vairocana, by spiritual power, emanated great light, yet this light did not come from any of the ten directions; in the same way, my sound does not come from any of the ten directions—it is just the power of good roots of concentration and by the spiritual power of transcendent wisdom that produces this pure sound and manifests these various abilities. Just as Sumeru, the polar mountain, has thirty-three celestial palaces of exalted splendor, with various appurtenances that do not come from any of the ten directions, likewise my sound does not come from any of the ten directions. Just as I teach as many sentient beings as there are atoms in a trillion worlds, each in accord with their inclinations, causing them great joy, yet do not get tired of them or shrink from them, and I do not become proud or heedless, so also does the enlightening being Vairocana do the same, while abiding in undefiled concentration. From one embellishment on his right palm he emanates one ray of light that manifests innumerable magical powers such as even individually liberated ones cannot know, much less sentient beings. You should go to that enlightening being and attend and serve him. Do not indulge in the pleasures of the senses anymore—attachment to sensual desires obstructs roots of goodness. Just as the world-ending holocaust completely burns away the polar mountain, so also does craving bind up the mind and prevent it from developing the will to remember Buddha. You should be grateful for your blessings and requite the favor you have received. Many ingrates meet untimely deaths and are reborn in hell. You were formerly in hell, when your bodies were illumined with light and you left there and were reborn here. You should now quickly rededicate and increase your roots of goodness. Just as I, the heavenly drum, am not male or female, yet can produce measureless, boundless, inconceivable things, so too you gods and goddesses are not male or female yet are able to enjoy all kinds of sublime palaces and groves. Just as my heavenly drum is not born and does not perish, the same is true of material form, sensation, perception, action, and consciousness. If you can understand this, know that you will then enter the concentration defined by independence.’
“The godlings, having heard this message, realized unprecedented wonder. Then they all magically produced myriad clouds of flowers, fragrances, music, banners, parasols, and eulogies, and went together to the palace where the enlightening being Vairocana was staying. Joining their palms in respect, they stood to one side and wished to behold him, but they could not see him. The godlings then said, ‘The enlightening being Vairocana has already passed away from here and been born in the human world, in the house of King Shuddhodana. He has mounted the sandalwood bower and is in the womb of Lady Maya.’ Then the godlings, by means of the celestial eye, saw the body of the enlightening being in the family of the king Shuddhodana in the human realm, being attended by gods of the Brahma heavens and heavens of desire. The godlings then thought, ‘If we do not go to the enlightening being and pay our respects, and should give rise to even a single thought of attachment to these celestial palaces, that would not be right.’
“Then each of the godlings, with a retinue of a hundred million, was going to go down to earth. At that point the celestial drum produced a voice telling them, ‘The great enlightening being has not ended his life here and been reborn there: it is just that he has, by spiritual power, caused sentient beings to perceive him according to their psychological needs. Just as I now am not visible to the eye, yet can produce a voice, so also the great enlighening being, in undefiled concentration, is not visible to the eye, yet can appear to be born anywhere, without vain discrimination, free from conceit, without attachments. You should arouse the determination for unexcelled, complete perfect enlightenment, purify your minds, lead well-behaved lives, and repent of and get rid of all obstructions due to past actions, obstructions due to afflictions, obstructions due to retribution, and obstructions due to views; with bodies as many as beings in the cosmos, with tongues as many as beings in the cosmos, with good deeds of body, speech, and mind as many as beings in the cosmos, repent of and get rid of all obstructions and faults.’
“The godlings, hearing this, attained unprecedented wonder and were very joyful. They asked, ‘How does the great enlightening being repent of and get rid of all faults?’ The celestial drum, by the power of roots of goodness of concentration of the enlightening being, said, ‘The enlightening being knows that conditioning acts do not come from any particular location, yet they accumulate and dwell in the mind. They come only f
rom delusion and have no abode. The enlightening being clearly sees this with certainty and has no doubt or confusion. Just as I, the celestial drum, speak of actions and consequences, of practice and discipline, of joy and peace, and of various concentrations, so do buddhas and enlightening beings speak of “I” and “mine,” speak of sentient beings, of covetousness, wrath, and delusion and their various actions, yet there really is no self or possession—all actions performed, the resulting consequences of the six paths of transmigration, cannot be found wherever you may seek. Just as my voice is not born and does not perish, while the celestials who do evil do not hear my voice but the voice waking them up by means of hell, so also are all actions neither born nor perishing, while according to their practice and accumulation their consequences are experienced. My drum sound is eternally inexhaustible and uninterrupted, and neither coming nor going can be apprehended in it; if there were coming or going, there would be extinction and permanence—the buddhas never say there is extinction or permanence, except as an expedient to develop sentient beings. Just as my sound makes itself available to beings in infinite worlds according to their mentalities, so do all buddhas make themselves visible according to the mentalities of beings. Suppose there is a glass mirror called “reflector,” clearly reflecting, equal in size to ten worlds, with the images of all the mountains and rivers, and all the sentient beings, including in the hells, the animals and ghosts, all reflected therein—what do you think, can you say those images enter and exit the mirror?’ The godlings answered, ‘No.’ ‘All actions are also like this; though they can produce resulting consequences, there is no place they come or go. Just as a magician deceives people’s eyes by illusion, so do actions also do the same. If you know this, this is true repentance of all evils so that all are cleared.’
“When this teaching was spoken, the Tushita godlings in worlds as numerous as atoms in ten quintillion buddha-lands attained acceptance of the nonorigination of all things; immeasurable, inconceivable infinities of godlings of the six heavens of the realm of desire were inspired to seek unexcelled, complete perfect enlightenment; all the goddesses of the heavens of the desire realm relinquished the female body and became determined to attain supreme enlightenment. Then the godlings, because of attaining the ten stages on hearing the tremendous dedication of Universal Good told, because of attaining concentration adorned by various powers, and because of repenting of and clearing away all serious hindrances by means of pure physical, verbal, and mental actions equal in number to living beings, thereupon saw lotus blossoms made of all precious substances, as many blossoms as atoms in ten quintillion buddha-lands, with an enlightening being sitting on each blossom emanating great beams of light; in those beams of light were as many buddhas as there are living beings, sitting in the lotus posture expounding the teaching in accordance with the mentalities of sentient beings—yet still not even a little of the power of undefiled concentration was as yet manifested.
“Then the godlings, by means of the flowers and other things they had produced before, again magically produced in each pore of their bodies as many clouds of fine flowers and so on as there are living beings, to offer to the realized one Vairocana, and took them and scattered them on the Buddha; all of them hovered over the Buddha’s body while the fragrant clouds rained over worlds as many as atoms in countless buddha-lands. Any sentient beings who were enveloped in that fragrance became physically peaceful and blissful, like a mendicant who has entered the fourth stage of meditation, in whom all obstructions due to past actions vanish. Sentient beings have five hundred internal afflictions and five hundred external afflictions relating to form, sound, smell, flavor, and tactile feeling; those rife with covetousness have 21,000, those rife with anger have 21,000, those rife with delusion have 21,000, and those equally habituated to all three also have 21,000—but if they smell this fragrance, they realize that all these are unreal. Once they realize this, they develop pure roots of goodness with the light of mystic power, like clouds of fragrant banners.
“Those who see the canopies produced by the enlightening beings plant the innumerable roots of goodness of universal monarchs of the pure gold net of the tenth stage of enlightening. When enlightening beings are in this status of universal monarch, they edify beings in worlds as numerous as atoms in ten quintillion buddha-lands. In the case of the buddha called Knowledge Like the Moon, of the world called Clear Mirror, there are always monks, nuns, laymen, laywomen, and others from countless worlds who project their bodies to come listen to the Teaching; that buddha, without a moment’s pause, relates to them the events of former lives. Any sentient beings who hear the name of the buddha will surely be reborn in the land of the Buddha. That case of enlighening beings in the rank of universal monarch with the pure golden net is also like this: any who encounter their light will surely attain the tenth stage of enlightening beings, because of the power of roots of goodness previously cultivated. When one has attained the first meditation, though one’s life has not yet ended, one can see the palaces in the Brahma heaven and can experience the bliss of the Brahma world; likewise those who attain the other stages of meditation. The great enlightening beings in the rank of universal monarch with the pure golden net radiate pure light such that any beings who are touched by it all gain the tenth stage of enlightening and attain immeasurable light of knowledge, acquire ten kinds of pure eyes, ten kinds of pure ears, noses, tongues, bodies, and ten kinds of pure intellects; they accomplish immeasurable profound concentrations and achieve such a pure physical eye.
“Suppose someone took ten trillion buddha-lands and reduced them to atoms, and then reduced to atoms as many buddha-lands as those atoms, then put all those atoms in his left hand and carried them past an equal number of worlds to the east, and then put down one atom, and continued this way to the east until all the atoms were exhausted, and did the same in the other nine directions: if all the worlds in the ten directions, both those in which he had deposited an atom and those in which he had not, were all assembled to form a single buddha-land, do you think that the immeasurable vastness of this buddha-land would be conceivable or not?”
Jewel Hand said, “It would not be conceivable. The enormous size of such a land would be immeasurable, extraordinary, inconceivable. If any sentient beings heard this comparison and believed and understood it, that would be even more extraordinary.”
The Buddha said, “This is so, Jewel Hand. It is as you say. If any good man or woman should hear this example and believe in it, I would give them the prediction that they will certainly attain unexcelled, complete perfect enlightenment and will acquire the unsurpassed knowledge of buddhas.
“Suppose again, Jewel Hand, that someone reduced to atoms as many enormous buddha-lands of the magnitude described above as atoms in a hundred billion buddha-lands, and deposited each of these atoms, as in the foregoing example, and all of these worlds, those on which an atom was deposited as well as those in between, were united in a single buddha-land. Then again suppose this buddha-land were reduced to atoms, and so on, repeating this process eighty times: the enlightening being’s pure physical eye, a consequence of action, can clearly see in a single instant every particle in all those immense buddha-lands, and also see buddhas as numerous as atoms in ten billion immense buddha-lands, just as the pure light of the crystal mirror reflects as many worlds as atoms in ten buddha-lands. Jewel Hand, all this is accomplished by the virtues of the most profound concentration of the universal monarch of the pure gold net.”
BOOK THIRTY-SIX
The Practice of Universal Good
AT THAT TIME the great enlightening being Universal Good also said to the great congregation of enlightening beings, “Offspring of Buddha, what has been expounded up till now is just a brief exposition of a little bit of the realm of buddhas, adapted so as to be appropriate to the faculties and capacities of sentient beings. Why? The buddhas emerge in the world because sentient beings are ignorant and do what is bad, they conceive of self and possessions,
they cling to the body, they are deluded and confused, they discriminate on the basis of false views and are always in bondage, following the flow of birth and death away from the path of enlightenment.
“I do not see anything that is a bigger mistake than for enlightening beings to become angry at other enlightening beings. Why? Because if enlightening beings become angry at other enlightening beings, that creates a million obstacles. What are those million obstacles? They are the obstacle of not seeing enlightenment, the obstacle of not hearing the true Teaching, the obstacle of being born in an impure world, the obstacle of being born in miserable states, the obstacle of being born in places where it is difficult to become enlightened, the obstacle of sickliness, the obstacle of being the object of much slander, the obstacle of being born stupid, the obstacle of loss of right mindfulness and recollection, the obstacle of lack of intelligence, obstacles of eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind, the obstacle of bad advisers, the obstacle of bad companions, the obstacle of inclination toward practice of individualistic liberation, the obstacle of inclination toward associating with the vulgar, the obstacle of not believing in people of great spiritual power, the obstacle of living with people who have strayed from correct perception, the obstacle of being born in a family of heretics, the obstacle of dwelling in the realm of demons, the obstacle of being estranged from the right Teaching of Buddha, the obstacle of not seeing good companions, the obstacle of blockage of roots of goodness, the obstacle of increase of bad conditions, the obstacle of meanness, the obstacle of being born in a remote area, the obstacle of being born in a family of evil people, the obstacle of being born among evil spirits, evil ghosts, hobgoblins, demons, titans, vipers, and so on, the obstacle of not caring for the Buddha teachings, the obstacle of habituation to infantile behavior, the obstacle of clinging to the small vehicle of individual salvation, the obstacle of not liking the Great Vehicle of universal salvation, the obstacle of fearfulness, the obstacle of anxiety, the obstacle of clinging to mundane routines, the obstacle of not concentrating on the way to enlightenment, the obstacle of not liking to see or hear of the spiritual powers of Buddha, the obstacle of not acquiring the faculties of enlightening beings, the obstacle of not applying the purifying practices of enlightening beings, the obstacle of shrinking from the determination of enlightening beings, the obstacle of not making the great vow of enlightening beings, the obstacle of not developing the determination for omniscience, the obstacle of slacking off from the practice of enlightening beings, the obstacle of not being able to purify acts, the obstacle of not being able to incorporate great virtues, the obstacle of the power of knowledge not being clear and keen, the obstacle of shutting off great wisdom and knowledge, the obstacle of not preserving the practices of enlightening beings, the obstacle of inclination to repudiate all words of wisdom, the obstacle of estrangement from the enlightenment of the buddhas, the obstacle of inclination to abide in the realms of demons, the obstacle of not concentrating on cultivating the realm of buddhahood, the obstacle of not definitively making the universal commitment of enlightening beings, the obstacle of not liking to live with enlightening beings, the obstacle of not seeking the roots of goodness of enlightening beings, the obstacle of being opinionated and suspicious, the obstacle of the continual befuddlement of the mind, the obstacle of being unwilling to give because of inability to practice the impartial generosity of enlightening beings, the obstacle of transgression of precepts by being unable to maintain the precepts of the Buddha, the obstacle of foolish malevolence and anger due to inability to achieve tolerance and forbearance, the obstacle of the defilement of laziness due to inability to act with the great vigor of enlightening beings, the obstacle of distraction and confusion due to inability to attain concentration, the obstacle of misused intellect due to failure to cultivate transcendent wisdom, the obstacle of lack of familiarity with what is so and what is not so, the obstacle of having no means to liberate beings, the obstacle of inability to contemplate the knowlege of enlightening beings, the obstacle of not knowing enlightening beings’ means of emancipation, the obstacle of failure to develop the ten great eyes of enlightening beings and therefore being as if blind, the obstacle of being dumb as an animal due to not hearing the teaching of nonobstruction, the obstacle of destruction of the nose due to not having the marks and embellishments of buddhahood, the obstacle of inability to understand speech and the consequent inability to speak, the obstacle of physical problems due to demeaning sentient beings, the obstacle of mental problems due to lack of control of mind, the obstacle of physical actions due to not keeping the precepts, the obstacle of verbal actions due to continually committing faults of speech, the obstacle of mental actions due to conceiving much covetousness, anger, and erroneous views, the obstacle of seeking the teaching with a thieving mind, the obstacle of cutting off the perspective of enlightening beings, the obstacle of shrinking from the effort of enlightening beings, the obstacle of laziness of mind on the enlightening beings’ way to emancipation, the obstacle of the mind stopping at the entry of the light of knowledge of enlightening beings, the obstacle of becoming weak-minded and incapable of the recollective power of enlightening beings, the obstacle of being unable to retain the teachings of the buddhas, the obstacle of being unable to approach enlightening beings’ path of detachment from birth, the obstacle of inability to cultivate the incorruptible path of enlightening beings, the obstacle of following the absolute state of one-sided detachment, the obstacle of estrangement from the family of the buddhas and enlightening beings of all times.
The Flower Ornament Scripture Page 125