Waiting for the Moment to Say It
Her last prose case is the worst kind of lostness — mistaking the unawakened for awakened. Then she says it all again in verse, and the first stanza contains a quiet admission: she has been holding this back until now.
Taking the Unawakened for Awakened
The thicket of views again — but now with the specific error named, and it is an error about awakening itself, in both directions at once.
「善男子！一切眾生入見稠林，住於邪道，於諸境界起邪分別，常行不善身、語、意業，妄作種種諸邪苦行，於非正覺生正覺想，於正覺所非正覺想，為惡知識之所攝受，以起惡見，將墮惡道；我以種種諸方便門而為救護，令住正見，生人天中。
"Good son, all beings enter the thicket of views and abide on wrong paths; toward every object they give rise to false discrimination; they constantly perform unwholesome deeds of body, speech and mind, and rashly undertake every kind of false austerity. Where there is no true awakening they give rise to the notion of true awakening, and where true awakening is they hold the notion that it is not; taken up by evil spiritual friends, they give rise to evil views and are about to fall into the evil destinies. By every kind of gate of skillful means I rescue and protect them, causing them to abide in right view and to be born among humans and gods.
復作是念：『如我救此將墜惡道諸眾生等，願我普救一切眾生，悉令解脫一切諸苦，住波羅蜜出世聖道，於一切智得不退轉，具普賢願，近一切智，而不捨離諸菩薩行，常勤教化一切眾生。』」
And I further think this: 'Just as I rescue these beings who are about to fall into the evil destinies, so may I rescue every being universally, causing them all to be liberated from every suffering, to abide in the pāramitās and the world-transcending noble path, to become irreversible in all-knowing wisdom, to be complete in Samantabhadra's vows, to draw near to all-knowing wisdom, and yet never to abandon the bodhisattva practices, constantly and diligently teaching and transforming every being.'"
於非正覺生正覺想，於正覺所非正覺想 — where there is no true awakening they give rise to the notion of true awakening, and where true awakening is they hold the notion that it is not. The clause is the same inversion the whole episode has been built on — high for low, level road for perilous — pushed to the one place where the mistake costs everything. And it is followed immediately by 妄作種種諸邪苦行, rashly undertaking every kind of false austerity: this is the error of a person who is trying very hard in the wrong direction, not of a person who is not trying.
而不捨離諸菩薩行 — and yet never to abandon the bodhisattva practices. Her vow asks for every liberation on the list and then adds a refusal to stop working. 而, and yet, is doing the same work here as in the earth-spirit's confession two teachers ago: attainment is not permitted to become an exit.
The Gāthā Begins
She restates the whole liberation in verse — the sūtra's sign that what has been said matters enough to say twice. Three of the first five stanzas end on the same invitation.
爾時，婆珊婆演底主夜神，欲重宣此解脫義，承佛神力，觀察十方，為善財童子而說頌言：
At that time, Vāsantī, the night-spirit, wishing to restate the meaning of this liberation, sustained by the Buddha's spiritual power, surveyed the ten directions and spoke a verse for Good-Wealth, saying:
「我此解脫門，生淨法光明，
能破愚癡暗，待時而演說。
我昔無邊劫，勤行廣大慈，
普覆諸世間，佛子應修學。
寂靜大悲海，出生三世佛，
能滅眾生苦，汝應入此門。
能生世間樂，亦生出世樂，
令我心歡喜，汝應入此門。
既捨有為患，亦遠聲聞果，
淨修諸佛力，汝應入此門。
This liberation-gate of mine gives birth to the pure light of the dharma; it can break the darkness of folly, and I have waited for the right moment to expound it.
In boundless eons past I diligently practiced vast loving-kindness, covering every world universally; a son of the Buddha should train in it.
The tranquil ocean of great compassion gives birth to the buddhas of the three times, and can extinguish the suffering of beings; you should enter this gate.
It can produce the happiness of the world, and produce the happiness beyond the world as well, and it makes my own mind rejoice; you should enter this gate.
Having given up the troubles of the conditioned, and having also left the śrāvaka's fruit far behind, it purely cultivates the powers of the buddhas; you should enter this gate.
待時而演說 — and I have waited for the right moment to expound it. Four characters, and they recast the whole preceding teaching. She has not been withholding out of secrecy; 待時 is waiting for the occasion, and the occasion was Good-Wealth's arrival at her gate at sunset. The line quietly explains why a teacher of this rank was living in Kapila, unvisited.
汝應入此門 — you should enter this gate. It closes the third, fourth and fifth stanzas, and will close three more later in the verse. The second stanza's variant, 佛子應修學, a son of the Buddha should train in it, is the only one addressed in the third person — and it is the stanza about loving-kindness practiced over boundless eons, the part no one enters quickly.
What Her Eyes and Ears Do
The verse turns to her faculties one at a time, and these two get the longest treatment — because what she sees and hears is both the buddhas and the beings, in the same breath.
我目甚清淨，普見十方剎，
亦見其中佛，菩提樹下坐，
相好莊嚴身，無量眾圍遶，
一一毛孔內，種種光明出；
見諸群生類，死此而生彼，
輪迴五趣中，常受無量苦。
我耳甚清淨，聽之無不及，
一切語言海，悉聞能憶持；
諸佛轉法輪，其聲妙無比，
所有諸文字，悉皆能憶持。
My eyes are utterly pure and see universally the buddha-lands of the ten directions, and see the buddhas within them, seated beneath the tree of awakening, their bodies adorned with the marks and signs, encircled by measureless multitudes, with every kind of light issuing from within each single pore; and I see the classes of living beings, dying here and being born there, wheeling round among the five destinies, constantly undergoing measureless suffering.
My ears are utterly pure, and there is nothing my hearing does not reach; the whole ocean of speech I hear and am able to hold in memory; when the buddhas turn the dharma-wheel their voice is wondrous beyond compare, and all the words there are I am able to hold in memory.
亦見其中佛，菩提樹下坐 … 見諸群生類，死此而生彼 — and see the buddhas within them, seated beneath the tree of awakening … and I see the classes of living beings, dying here and being born there. One pure eye, two objects, and no transition between them. The buddhas under the tree and the beings wheeling through the five destinies are given in a single unbroken stanza, which is the point: her sight does not have a devotional mode and a compassionate mode.
一切語言海，悉聞能憶持 — the whole ocean of speech I hear and am able to hold in memory. 憶持, holding in memory, appears twice in the ear stanza — once for the ocean of all speech, once for the words of the buddhas' dharma-wheel. As with the earth-spirit of Part 1073, the faculty being claimed is retention rather than power.
Part 1078 Complete
This continues chapter thirty-nine, 入法界品, in fascicle sixty-eight. Part 1079 finishes the gāthā through her nose, tongue, body, mind, powers, merit and wisdom, and closes on a stanza in which every mote of dust in the ten directions holds Vairocana seated beneath the tree.