A Boundary Free of Craving
Good-Wealth sees her at last, and the sūtra describes her beauty without flinching from it — then tells us what her voice can do, and what her light does to anyone it touches. The liberation she names is not freedom from being desired; it is a boundary standing exactly where craving would be.
Beauty, and Then Everything Else
The description begins with her body and does not apologize for it — and then keeps going, into her voice, her languages, her grasp of what words mean, and the company she keeps.
爾時，善財見此女人，顏貌端嚴，色相圓滿，皮膚金色，目髮紺青，不長不短，不麁不細，欲界人、天無能與比；音聲美妙超諸梵世，一切眾生差別言音，悉皆具足，無不解了；深達字義，善巧談說，得如幻智，入方便門；眾寶瓔珞及諸嚴具莊嚴其身，如意摩尼以為寶冠而冠其首；復有無量眷屬圍遶，皆共善根同一行願，福德大藏具足無盡。
At that time Good-Wealth saw this woman. Her face and features were upright and dignified, her form and appearance complete, her skin the color of gold, her eyes and hair indigo-blue, neither tall nor short, neither coarse nor slight, with none among the humans or gods of the desire realm able to compare with her. Her voice was beautiful and wondrous, surpassing the Brahmā worlds, and she was complete in every one of the distinct languages and sounds of all beings, with not one she failed to understand. She had penetrated deeply into the meaning of words and spoke with skillful artistry; she had attained the wisdom that knows things as conjured, and had entered the gate of skillful means. A multitude of jewelled necklaces and every kind of ornament adorned her body, and a wish-fulfilling maṇi served as the jewelled crown upon her head. There was, moreover, a measureless retinue encircling her, all of them sharing the same roots of goodness and the same practices and vows, complete in a great treasury of merit that never runs out.
不長不短，不麁不細 — neither tall nor short, neither coarse nor slight. The sūtra's ordinary formula for a perfected body is being applied here to a woman the townspeople have just treated as a scandal, and the same clause 欲界人、天無能與比, none among the humans or gods of the desire realm can compare with her, is used of buddhas and great bodhisattvas elsewhere in this translation.
深達字義，善巧談說，得如幻智 — she had penetrated deeply into the meaning of words, spoke with skillful artistry, and had attained the wisdom that knows things as conjured. Three clauses in a row that have nothing to do with appearance. The order of the passage is the argument: it gives her beauty the space the story requires, and then buries it under her competence.
The Light That Cools
Before a word is exchanged, her body answers the question the city was asking — and the effect of her light is the opposite of what the city feared.
時，婆須蜜多女從其身出廣大光明，普照宅中一切宮殿；遇斯光者，身得清涼。
At that time the woman Vasumitrā sent forth from her own body a vast radiance that universally illuminated every palace within the house; and those the light reached felt their bodies grow cool and clear.
遇斯光者，身得清涼 — those the light reached felt their bodies grow cool and clear. 清涼, coolness, is this sūtra's standing image for the quenching of the 熱 or fever of affliction — the same word used of Lion's Roar in Part 1056, where she could cool the mind of anyone who saw her. The woman the town suspects of inflaming desire radiates, physically, its cooling.
She Appears as You Wish Her To
The question is the one Good-Wealth has asked twenty-five times before. Her answer names the liberation, then states its mechanism in one clause that would be alarming from anyone else.
爾時，善財前詣其所，頂禮其足，合掌而住，白言：「聖者！我已先發阿耨多羅三藐三菩提心，而未知菩薩云何學菩薩行？云何修菩薩道？我聞聖者善能教誨，願為我說！」
At that time Good-Wealth came forward to where she was, bowed his head at her feet, and stood with his palms joined, saying: "Noble one, I have already given rise to the mind of anuttara-samyak-sambodhi, but I do not yet know how a bodhisattva learns the bodhisattva practices, or how a bodhisattva cultivates the bodhisattva path. I have heard that the noble one is skillfully able to teach and instruct — please, explain it to me!"
彼即告言：「善男子！我得菩薩解脫，名：離貪欲際，隨其欲樂而為現身。若天見我，我為天女，形貌、光明殊勝無比；如是乃至人、非人等而見我者，我即為現人、非人女，隨其樂欲皆令得見。
She then said to him: "Good son, I have attained a bodhisattva liberation named the Boundary Free of Craving and Desire, and I manifest a body in accordance with what each one desires and delights in. If a god sees me, I become for him a goddess, my form and my radiance surpassing beyond compare; and so on in this way down to humans and non-humans — whoever among them sees me, for them I manifest a human or a non-human woman, and in accordance with what each delights in and desires, I cause them all to see.
離貪欲際 — the Boundary Free of Craving and Desire. 際 is a limit, edge, or boundary-line, not a mere absence; the liberation is named for a frontier rather than for a lack. This translation has rendered the same phrase as a boundary free of craving and desire since its appearance among the bodhisattva's dedications in the Ten Dedications chapter, and keeps that here.
隨其欲樂而為現身 — I manifest a body in accordance with what each one desires and delights in. Every teacher in this pilgrimage meets beings where they are; she is the only one who does it by becoming the object of their desire. The technique is 隨其所應 — adaptation to what a being can receive — carried to the single place it is least expected, and the passage that follows will show what happens to the desire once it arrives.
Part 1062 Complete
This continues chapter thirty-nine, 入法界品, in fascicle sixty-eight. Part 1063 gives the ten kinds of contact — seeing her, speaking with her, taking her hand, embracing her, kissing her — and the samādhi that each one turns into, before Good-Wealth asks what she did in the past to be capable of this.