No Buddha Has Ever Entered Nirvāṇa
Vasumitrā hands Good-Wealth on to a householder who keeps a stūpa, and the householder's liberation turns out to be a refusal — he will not entertain the thought, in any tense, that a buddha has gone. What he gets instead, each time he opens the stūpa door, is the sight of them all.
A Twenty-Seventh Teacher
Vasumitrā's confession is one of the shortest in the pilgrimage, and her successor is described by what he does rather than by what he knows — he keeps up offerings at a stūpa.
「善男子！我唯知此菩薩離貪際解脫。如諸菩薩摩訶薩，成就無邊巧方便智，其藏廣大，境界無比；而我云何能知能說彼功德行？
"Good son, I know only this bodhisattva liberation of the boundary free of craving. But the bodhisattva-mahāsattvas have accomplished a boundless wisdom of skillful means, its treasury vast, its domain beyond compare. How, then, could I know or speak of their meritorious practice?
「善男子！於此南方有城，名：善度；中有居士，名：鞞瑟胝羅，彼常供養栴檀座佛塔。汝詣彼問：菩薩云何學菩薩行、修菩薩道？」時，善財童子頂禮其足，遶無量匝，慇懃瞻仰，辭退而去。
"Good son, to the south of here there is a city named Good Crossing; in it there is a householder named Veṣṭhila, who constantly makes offerings at the stūpa of the Buddha Sandalwood Seat. You should go to him and ask: how does a bodhisattva learn the bodhisattva practices, and cultivate the bodhisattva path?" At that time, Good-Wealth bowed his head at her feet, circled her measureless times, gazed up at her with earnest devotion, took his leave, and departed.
彼常供養栴檀座佛塔 — he constantly makes offerings at the stūpa of the Buddha Sandalwood Seat. 常, constantly, is the whole of his introduction. After the ten samādhis of the previous teacher, the twenty-seventh is presented as a man who does one ordinary devotional thing without stopping — and it will turn out to be enough.
The Question at the Door
The journey is given in a single clause and the question in the pilgrimage's standard words. Nothing about the city or the house is described; the sūtra is in a hurry to reach what he says.
爾時，善財童子漸次遊行，至善度城，詣居士宅，頂禮其足，合掌而立，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？我聞聖者善能誘誨，願為我說！」
At that time, Good-Wealth journeyed onward by stages until he reached the city of Good Crossing, went to the householder's house, bowed his head at his 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 guide and instruct — please, explain it to me!"
Not in Any Tense
His liberation is stated first as a name, then as a thought he does not permit himself — laid out across all three tenses — and then as what he actually knows.
居士告言：「善男子！我得菩薩解脫，名：不般涅槃際。善男子！我不生心言：『如是如來已般涅槃，如是如來現般涅槃，如是如來當般涅槃。』我知十方一切世界諸佛如來，畢竟無有般涅槃者，唯除為欲調伏眾生而示現耳。
The householder said to him: "Good son, I have attained a bodhisattva liberation named the Boundary of Not Entering Parinirvāṇa. Good son, I do not give rise to a mind that says: 'This tathāgata has already entered parinirvāṇa; this tathāgata is entering parinirvāṇa now; this tathāgata will enter parinirvāṇa.' I know that of all the buddhas and tathāgatas in every world throughout the ten directions, there is ultimately not one who enters parinirvāṇa — except that they display it in order to tame and train beings.
已般涅槃 … 現般涅槃 … 當般涅槃 — has already entered, is entering now, will enter. The three tenses are spelled out one by one, which is the point: what he refuses is not a doctrine but a habit of mind that would locate a buddha's departure anywhere in time at all. 不生心言, I do not give rise to a mind that says — the discipline is at the level of the arising thought, before the statement.
唯除為欲調伏眾生而示現耳 — except that they display it in order to tame and train beings. The exception preserves the whole of the traditional account: the Buddha did lie down at Kuśinagara, and that event is not being denied. It is reclassified as 示現, a display made for the sake of those who needed to see it. The particle 耳, which closes the clause, carries a slight dismissiveness — that, and nothing more.
What Opens When the Door Opens
The samādhi is not reached by sitting. It arrives at the moment he unlocks the stūpa — and what it shows him is the entire past, buddha by buddha, in order.
「善男子！我開栴檀座如來塔門時，得三昧，名：佛種無盡。善男子！我念念中入此三昧，念念得知一切無量殊勝之事。」善財白言：「此三昧者，境界云何？」
"Good son, when I open the door of the stūpa of the Tathāgata Sandalwood Seat, I attain a samādhi named the Inexhaustible Buddha-Seed. Good son, in thought after thought I enter this samādhi, and in thought after thought I come to know measureless and surpassing things beyond number." Good-Wealth said: "As for this samādhi, what is its domain?"
居士答言：「善男子！我入此三昧，隨其次第，見此世界一切諸佛，所謂：迦葉佛、拘那含牟尼佛、拘留孫佛、尸棄佛、毘婆尸佛、提舍佛、弗沙佛、無上勝佛、無上蓮華佛；如是等而為上首，於一念頃，得見百佛，得見千佛，得見百千佛，得見億佛、千億佛、百千億佛、阿庾多億佛、那由他億佛，乃至不可說不可說世界微塵數佛，如是一切，次第皆見。
The householder answered: "Good son, when I enter this samādhi, I see, each in its own sequence, every buddha of this world — namely, Kāśyapa Buddha, Kanakamuni Buddha, Krakucchanda Buddha, Śikhin Buddha, Vipaśyin Buddha, Tiṣya Buddha, Puṣya Buddha, Unsurpassed Victory Buddha, and Unsurpassed Lotus Buddha. With such buddhas as these as the foremost, in the space of a single thought I come to see a hundred buddhas, to see a thousand buddhas, to see a hundred thousand buddhas, to see a million buddhas, a thousand million buddhas, a hundred thousand million buddhas, ayuta millions of buddhas, nayuta millions of buddhas, and on up to buddhas as numerous as the motes of dust in unspeakably unspeakable worlds — all of them, each in its own sequence, I see.
我開栴檀座如來塔門時，得三昧 — when I open the door of the stūpa of the Tathāgata Sandalwood Seat, I attain a samādhi. The trigger is a physical act performed as part of a caretaker's routine. His liberation is not separate from his maintenance work; the door and the samādhi are the same motion, which is why the sūtra introduced him by his 常, his constancy, rather than by any attainment.
佛種無盡 — the Inexhaustible Buddha-Seed. 種 is seed and also lineage or kind; the name says that the buddha-line never runs out, which is the positive form of what he has just refused to think. Among the nine buddhas he names in sequence, two are given in plain Chinese rather than transliteration — 無上勝, Unsurpassed Victory, and 無上蓮華, Unsurpassed Lotus. The first shares its name exactly with the twenty-fourth teacher of the previous fascicle, the elder Unsurpassed Victory in the city of Delight.
Part 1064 Complete
This continues chapter thirty-nine, 入法界品, in fascicle sixty-eight. Part 1065 carries the vision further — every stage of each of those buddhas' careers, from the first arising of the aspiration to the turning of the dharma-wheel, all of it held, recalled, and examined; and then the same for the buddhas of the future and the present, throughout the ten directions.