For the boatman, a later teacher, the substance of discipline was in carrying people across, not staying on this shore or on the further shore. For the night goddess of joyful eyes, another teacher, the substance of discipline was great compassion.2
According to the rank, progress is not the same; but when knowledge penetrates, every rank is included. Therefore the boy said he knew the teaching of higher knowledge of all practical arts and knew about writing, printing, analysis, medicine, industry, agriculture, commerce, and alchemy.
13. PRABHUTA
Then Sudhana went to Samudrapratishthana, saw the lay-woman Prabhuta, and realized the practice of nonopposition.
The city where Prabhuta lived was called Ocean Foundation because her tolerance was like the ocean admitting a hundred rivers. Prabhuta was called Perfected because she perfected all practices through patience and tolerance.
Because of her patience, Prabhuta is depicted as physically beautiful, clothed in pure white, her hair hanging down. Because of her fulfillment of myriad practices, she is depicted as being surrounded by ten thousand maidens.
By means of the distribution of the cosmic network of knowledge of the real universe, the small contains infinity; and by the great heart of willpower of knowledge of the real universe, Prabhuta could satisfy the hunger of all living beings with a tiny morsel of food, yet without diminishing the food.
Because a single morsel of food is as extensive as the universe—food unlimited to inside or outside, center or extremes—Prabhuta said she had attained a way of liberation that was an infinite treasury of blessings and could feed an unlimited number of beings with a small vessel of food and drink.
Countless beings entered Prabhuta’s home by its four doors, because they were received by the four infinite minds—infinite love, infinite compassion, infinite joy, and infinite equanimity.
14. VIDVAN
Then Sudhana went to Mahasambhava, saw the householder Vidvan, and realized the practice of indomitability.
Because his diligence produced great benefit, Vidvan’s city was called Great Production; and because he observed faculties and examined phenomena, Vidvan was called the Knower. He is represented as a householder because he stayed in society to improve customs and morals.
As he used the practices of the four integrative methods and seven branches of enlightenment to live on the road of life and death unwearied, Vidvan was seen at a crossroads in the city, sitting on a pedestal made of seven precious substances.
Using diligence to equip himself with blessings and virtues and to eliminate suffering and poverty, Vidvan said he had attained a way of liberation that enabled him to produce treasuries of blessings at will.
Since both material and metaphysical generosity are produced by knowledge of emptiness and baselessness, therefore when countless beings came from various lands seeking from him what they desired, Vidvan looked up to the sky, and all they wanted descended from the sky; and he taught them truths according to their faculties.
In the first abode, one begins to understand the wisdom of buddha, and one is born in the home of the enlightened. In the fourth abode one quells worldly delusions, pure buddha-knowledge appears, and one is born in the home of the enlightened. In the eighth abode one is born in the house of the effortless knowledge of the enlightened. In the tenth abode, knowledge and compassion help everyone, one ascends to the rank of coronation, and one is born in the house of the enlightened.
Now in the fourth practice, by using the approach of contemplating the emptiness of phenomena, this understanding produces liberation and quells remaining worldly habits; knowledge of the reality body appears, and one is born in the home of the enlightened. Thus Vidvan said that his companions had already been reborn in the family of buddhas.
15. RATNACHUDA
Then Sudhana went to Simhapota, saw the eminent Ratnachuda, and realized the practice of nonconfusion.
The city was called Lion Foundation to represent the fearlessness attained through meditation. The body of concentration pervades all practices: just as Muktaka in the fifth abode contained innumerable lands in himself and took for his meditation the provenance of objects from the body, here in the fifth practice the body is in function; so countless objects are all included in one meditation, reaching the crown of the Teaching—therefore Ratnachuda is called Jewel Topknot.
The silent function of the body of practice is always concentrated, undiminished in the midst of the marketplace of life and death; so Sudhana saw Ratnachuda in a marketplace.
Ratnachuda used meditation to embody the ten transcendent ways and the eight-fold right path, so he is represented as living in a building with ten stories and eight doors.
On the first floor of the building, food was being distributed, representing generosity. The other floors each represent one transcendent way; finally the top floor was filled with buddhas, representing knowledge. These ten floors completely take in the five ranks and include buddhahood. Since the substance was independent meditation in the real universe, the stories of the building were adorned by the ten transcendent ways within meditation.
Ratnachuda said that in the remote past he had played music and burned a ball of incense in offering to a buddha who came to the city and dedicated the merit to three points; and that for this he had been rewarded with such an abode.
The remoteness of that past event symbolizes the trancendence of feelings and entry into concentration. The music symbolizes explanation of truth. This represents producing insight through concentration.
The ball of incense represents one kind of “scent”—concentration—including the five kinds of “scent,” the fivefold spiritual body consisting of discipline, concentration, insight, liberation, and the knowledge and vision of liberation.
The three points are always seeing the enlightened, always hearing truth, and always being free from poverty and misery. The message is that the substance or body of concentration has already been attained in the ten abodes, and now, in the meditational aspect of the ten practices, independence of tranquil function is attained. Ratnachuda’s attainment of liberation of the treasury of infinite blessings means fulfillment of myriad practices within meditation.
16. SAMANTANETRA
Then Sudhana went to Vetramulaka, saw the perfumer Samantanetra, and realized the practice of good manifestation.
The land was called Reed Roots, because wisdom is deep and stable, penetrating to the wellspring of truth, just as reed roots reach deeply into the water table.
Samantanetra was called Universal Eye because he knew all through wisdom.
Because the gates of wisdom are manifold, lofty, and hard to enter, the city where Samantanetra lived was seen to have high walls. Because insight into emptiness has no boundaries, the streets were wide and even.
Samantanetra said he was skilled in curing diseases, meaning that he had learned conventional medicine; this also represents the Teaching. For example, illnesses associated with wind represent people who think too much, an affliction cured by counting breaths. Jaundices represent people with too much desire, an affliction cured by contemplation of impurity. Inflammatory illnesses represent people with too much foolishness, an affliction cured by contemplation of conditioning. Mental illnesses represent people who cling to subtle forms and are not free from bewilderment and extraordinary perceptions, an affliction cured by contemplation of the emptiness of phenomena. Illnesses caused by toxins represent the way possessiveness can produce binding and harmful actions. Illnesses associated with water represent craving, illnesses associated with fire represent anger. All these illnesses can be treated by the Teaching.
Samantanetra also said he was skilled at compounding perfumes. This means he practiced worldly arts, and it also represents the Teaching, as wisdom skillfully expounds the Teaching, whose fragrance perfumes the odors of evildoing to turn them into the scent of knowledge.
Samantanetra said he knew how to induce sentient beings to see buddhas everywhere and rejoice
, using wisdom to cause all realms to enter the realm of buddhahood.
17. ANALA
Then Sudhana went to Taladhvaja, saw the king Anala, and realized the practice of nonattachment.
Taladhvaja is called Bright and Clean, because the bright and clean knowledge and wisdom that goes beyond the world also enters the world to practice compassion, observing people’s faculties so as to be able to harmonize with them, not contacting people randomly—hence the name of the city.
King Anala is called Tireless because he helped beings masterfully and never tired of helping them. Because King Anala used myriad activities to enter the world, Sudhana saw him surrounded by ten thousand ministers, collectively ordering the affairs of state.
Anala used his knowledge of skill in means to manifest the appearance of horrifying scenes in order to govern, so there were ten thousand fierce soldiers cutting off the heads of criminals, or gouging out their eyes, or any number of similar horrors.
The king had Sudhana enter his palace and look at its superlative adornments; then he said he knew magical liberation, explaining that these punishments, the criminals, and the soldiers, were all magical projections of great compassion to frighten actual people into giving up evil. In reality, not even a single gnat or a single ant was harmed, much less any humans. This was why he had been rewarded with such splendor, to make it clear that he would, on the contrary, have been doomed if he had been torturing people intentionally because of his own subjective feelings.
18. MAHAPRABHA
Then Sudhana went to Suprabha, saw the king Mahaprabha, and realized the practice of the difficult-to-attain.
The city is called Beautiful Light to represent the subtle function of differentiation within effortless knowledge.
King Mahaprabha is called Great Light to represent fundamental effortless independent knowledge.
One gains access to effortless, subtle function only when one has remedied the unfulfilled knowledge and compassion of earlier stages and balanced them masterfully; thus in the story Sudhana wandered through the human world, eventually to make his way to the city of Beautiful Light.
Effortless knowledge and compassion are difficult to attain; even though Sudhana looked around, he still sought certainty through direction. So when he had reached the city he inquired further of the longtime inhabitants.
Because Sudhana had embodied a variety of practices of knowledge and compassion, he saw the ground, trees, buildings, terraces, and flower ponds of the city to be all adorned with jewels.
The story says the city was octagonal, with ten leagues to a side, and also that it had ten million streets, on each of which lived countless beings. Ten million streets could not fit into a ten-league octagon; these are not worldly measurements, but representative of the great metropolis of fundamental knowledge, with streets representing the infinity of interactions of the ten ways of transcendence.
Therefore beings saw the city differently, according to their faculties and their ways of acting—some saw it as large, some as small, some as clean, some as polluted, and so on. In this way the king of knowledge showed everyone the laws of reality.
When one uses independent knowledge to enter into minds as many as beings and identify with them, there is no separate nature—the sentient and insentient are of one nature, and all are transformed according to knowledge into agents of buddha-work.
In the world when a national leader is enlightened, even the animals dance, and phoenixes appear. When ordinary people are perfectly filial, they also experience phenomena like finding leaping fish in frozen ponds and bamboo shoots sprouting in winter. How much the better when knowledge penetrates the fountainhead and practice is equal to the real world—kindness takes in all beings, spirituality gathers all awarenesses; one has no subjective mind but takes to heart the minds of all beings, just as a clear jewel may take on all colors.
As the king had entered the door of absorption in great kindness adapting to the world, so the people, birds, and animals of the city and its environs all came to pay him respect. The trees and grasses of the mountains and plains all bowed towards him; the lakes, springs, rivers, and seas all flowed towards him; and the celestial spirits showered him with gifts.
The reason that the seventh and this eighth practice are both represented by kings is to illustrate that while the power and function of compassion and knowledge differ according to the rank, there are not two paths. Therefore the seventh and eighth abodes are both represented at the seashore, and the seventh and eighth dedications are represented in the same assembly. The appearance of the teachers as various persons in various walks of life symbolizes the differences in power and function.
19. ACHALA
Then Sudhana went to the kingdom of Sthira, saw the devout woman Achala, and realized the practice of good teaching.
The location is called a kingdom to represent mastery of teaching, the devout woman is called Immovable because of her spiritual power to remain unaffected.
Protected by the mother of knowledge and the father of skill in means, the mind is not influenced by objects; to represent this and the compassion of humility, Achala is said to be a young woman in the care of her mother and father.
When Sudhana went into her house, upon contact with the golden aura of the house he attained five hundred trances; illumined by the edifying light of the chamber of compassion, he gained access to five hundred entryways into the five ranks. The trances were subtle as the consciousness of a new embryo, because when knowledge enters compassion, it is harmonized and becomes comfortable.
No one who saw this young woman became enamored of her; because her behavior was unaffected by emotional love, her body was not erotic but caused the minds of all who saw her to become upright and correct.
Achala said that long ago in the time of an ancient buddha she had been a princess, daughter of a king named Vidyuddatta, called Lightning-bestowed. At that time she was inspired with the thought of enlightenment on seeing the magnificence of the buddha, and in all the eons since that time she had not so much as had a lustful thought, let alone acted on lust.
The buddha of that time was called Arms Extended Downward, representative of carrying out transcendent vows from effortless knowledge to guide sentient beings. The king was called Lightning-bestowed because knowledge sees the path of enlightenment quickly. Achala was a princess because from knowledge she cultivated kindness.
Before the eighth practice one is still affected by the habit of sadness; here in the ninth there are no ingrained habits. That is why Achala said she had no lust. In the rank of teacherhood one overcomes obstacles to mastery of teaching, requiring tireless effort; so she said she had attained absorption in tireless search for all truths.
20. SARVAGAMIN
Then Sudhana went to Tosala, saw the mendicant Sarvagamin, and realized the practice of truth.
Tosala is called Production of Happiness, to represent the use of ubiquitous physical manifestation through fulfillment of transcendent knowledge in order to benefit ordinary people and make them happy.
Sarvagamin is represented as a mendicant because his knowledge was equal to a buddha’s. He is called Going Everywhere because he appeared to assimilate to false ideas and to the three vehicles of Buddhism. The Confucian and Taoist sages were also in this category.
Ordinarily, learners are called outsiders as long as they have not yet entered into the real universe, where there is interpenetration of noumenon and phenomena, of bodies and lands. In this case, Sarvagamin appeared to be an outsider, helping beings according to type, yet in reality he was not an outsider.
In the middle of the night Sudhana saw the flora on the mountain east of the city of Tosala radiate light like the rising sun, representing the sun of great knowledge in the middle of the night of birth and death.
Sudhana saw Sarvagamin walking around on the flat mountaintop: the mountaintop symbolizes the lofty supremacy of knowledge, the flatness symbolizes the evenness of compassion. Walking around i
llustrates not dwelling partially on either knowledge or compassion.
Sarvagamin said he knew the enlightening practice of going everywhere; by means of knowledge he penetrated all existences, and appeared in corresponding physical forms, as echoes respond to sounds without there being any substance coming or going.
After this the ten dedications are set up. By means of the ten practices one can perfect worldly arts of government and education, yet one is still unable to remain in the ocean of birth and death, neither emerging nor sinking, based on unobstructed action in the real universe by the universally good practice of inherent buddhahood. Therefore the ten dedications are needed.
21. UTPALABHUTI
Then Sudhana went to Prthurashtra, saw the eminent perfumer Utpalabhuti, and realized dedication to saving all beings without clinging to any image of beings.
The land is called Vast Territory to represent far-ranging vows. Utpalabhuti’s being a perfumer symbolizes the combining of knowledge and compassion, noumenon and phenomena, nirvana and samsara, and ideas of defilement and purity all into one ball while still freely totalizing or distinguishing them. He is a layman on account of his great compassion, entering birth and death without being affected.
The nature of fragrance rests on nothing, yet it radiates good and extinguishes bad; this symbolizes great vows that rely on nothing yet radiate deeds that benefit beings.
The regal fragrance of fundamental knowledge emerges within ignorance, the fragrance of differentiating knowledge emerges within myriad objects; so the eminent said he knew where the king of fragrances came from and knew how to compound fragrances.
According to Utpalabhuti there is in the human world a fragrance that comes from the struggle of water spirits and that causes those anointed with it to become golden in color. This represents the first abode, in which tranquillity and insight struggle with conditioning, producing the fragrance of knowledge; those who enter thereupon attain true awakening.
The Flower Ornament Scripture Page 217