Ten Bodies on One Throne

一一文句皆無忘失 — he forgot not a single word or phrase of it. Part 1116 gave this same claim to the night-spirit herself, about the teachings of every buddha she had ever met: 乃至不忘一文一句, not forgetting so much as a single letter or a single phrase. The pilgrim has now been credited with the identical retention his teacher named as her own achievement across two motes of dust of eons. What she attained over an unthinkable span, he is shown holding after a single encounter — not because he has matched her practice, but because this is what this sūtra always says happens when a teaching actually lands.

Ten bodies, and the sequence has a shape. The first four describe how she relates to beings — bearing their forms, facing them, untainted by their world, matching their number. The middle two are about scale — surpassing the world, ripening beings. The last four are about reach and rank — going swiftly everywhere, embracing everywhere, the tathāgata's own nature, the ultimate taming of beings. She is displaying all ten at once, before Good-Wealth has said a word, which is the sūtra's way of showing rather than telling him what a night-spirit who guards every city actually is.

守護一切城 — Guardian of Every City. Her name is functional in a way few of the other night-spirits' names have been. Where the last teacher was named for a sound, Ocean of Tranquil Sound, this one is named for a job description, and the ten bodies she displays are, among other things, a demonstration of how one being could plausibly guard every city there is: by not being confined to any single shape that a single city would need.

云何饒益眾生？云何以無上攝而攝眾生？云何順諸佛教？云何近法王位 — how does he bring benefit to beings? How does he gather beings in by the unsurpassed means of gathering? How does he accord with the teaching of every buddha? How does he draw near to the throne of a dharma-king? Four questions, and not one of them is the standing 學菩薩行、修菩薩道, learn the practices, cultivate the path. Good-Wealth has already told her he has done that; what he wants now is downstream of it — how the practice actually touches other people, and how it ends up placing him near a king's own seat. The questions have moved from the private cultivation of a path to its public consequence.

以無上攝而攝眾生 — gather beings in by the unsurpassed means of gathering. The phrase 攝 occurs twice in six characters, once as the method and once as the act, which is the same construction this fascicle has used before for a liberation defined by its own effect: 此解脫者即是普門, this liberation is the universal gate itself. Here a means of gathering simply is a way of gathering, stated twice for emphasis rather than for information.