A Princess, a Tower Roof, and the Stars
Rather than answering Good-Wealth's question directly, Immovable begins a story from ages past — a princess alone on a tower roof while her entire household slept, who looked up to find a buddha filling the open sky, and wondered what karma could ever produce such a body.
Alone While the Household Slept
Immovable's own story begins not with a teaching but with a single quiet moment — a princess awake on a tower roof after music had ended and everyone else, down to her five hundred attendant maidens, had fallen asleep.
優婆夷言：「善男子！過去世中有劫，名：離垢，佛號：脩臂。時，有國王名曰：電授，唯有一女，即我身是。我於夜分廢音樂時，父母兄弟悉已眠寢，五百童女亦皆昏寐。
The laywoman said: "Good son, in ages past there was a kalpa named Free of Defilement, whose buddha was named Long-Arm. At that time, there was a king named Lightning-Bestowed, who had only a single daughter — and that daughter was myself. During a portion of the night when the music had ceased, my parents and brothers had all fallen asleep, and my five hundred attendant maidens had likewise all fallen into slumber.
A Buddha Fills the Sky
Looking up at the stars alone, the princess sees something no one else in her household witnesses — a buddha appearing in the open sky like a king of jeweled mountains, and a question she cannot help but ask herself about what could ever produce such a body.
我於樓上仰觀星宿，於虛空中見彼如來如寶山王，無量無邊天龍八部、諸菩薩眾所共圍遶，佛身普放大光明網周遍十方無所障礙，佛身毛孔皆出妙香。我聞是香，身體柔軟，心生歡喜；便從樓下至於地上，合十指爪，頂禮於佛。又觀彼佛不見頂相，觀身左右莫知邊際。思惟彼佛諸相隨好無有厭足，竊自念言：『此佛世尊作何等業，獲於如是上妙之身，相好圓滿，光明具足，眷屬成就，宮殿嚴好，福德智慧悉皆清淨，總持三昧不可思議，神通自在，辯才無礙？』
I was up on the tower, looking up at the constellations, when in the open sky I saw that tathāgata, like a king of jeweled mountains, surrounded together by measureless boundless devas, nāgas, and the eightfold host, and by every bodhisattva assembly; the buddha's own body universally emitted a net of great light reaching throughout the ten directions without obstruction, and the pores of the buddha's own body all emitted wondrous fragrance. Smelling this fragrance, my own body became soft and supple, and my heart gave rise to joy; I came down at once from the tower to the ground, joined my ten fingers together, and bowed my head to the buddha. I further gazed at that buddha but could not see the mark on the crown of his head, and gazing at his body to left and right, I could not discern its limit. Contemplating that buddha's own excellent marks, I was never sated with looking, and secretly thought to myself: 'What karma did this buddha-bhagavat perform, to obtain such a supreme and wondrous body, his marks perfectly complete, his light fully endowed, his retinue accomplished, his palace magnificently adorned, his merit and wisdom entirely pure, his dhāraṇī and samādhi inconceivable, his spiritual powers sovereign and free, and his eloquence unobstructed?'
不見頂相 — could not see the mark on the crown of his head. The uṣṇīṣa's invisibility from below is a recurring detail across this sūtra's descriptions of a buddha's body, always signaling a greatness too vast to be measured from any single vantage — here experienced firsthand by a child alone at night, long before she had any name for what she was seeing.
Part 1032 Complete
This continues chapter thirty-nine, 入法界品, in fascicle sixty-six. Part 1033 follows the buddha Long-Arm reading the princess's own unspoken question, and answering it with ten specific minds she must give rise to.