Awake Alone in the Long Night
She names what all those eons of buddhas actually left her as — someone awake by herself among sleepers — and then closes with the humility formula, in which the one thing she knows turns out to be the whole of speech.
Awake Alone Among Sleepers
Ninety-eight buddhas and eons beyond counting have left her one plain description of herself, stated in the fewest words this fascicle has used for anything.
「善男子！我從是來，於生死夜無明昏寐諸眾生中而獨覺悟；令諸眾生，守護心城，捨三界城，住一切智無上法城。「善男子！我唯知此甚深自在妙音解脫，令諸世間，離戲論語，不作二語，常真實語，恒清淨語。
"Good son, from that time onward, amid beings drowsy and asleep in the ignorance of the long night of birth-and-death, I alone have been awake; and I cause beings to guard the city of the mind, to abandon the city of the three realms, and to abide in the unsurpassed dharma-city of all-knowing wisdom. Good son, I know only this liberation of the Profound and Sovereign Wondrous Voice, by which I cause the world to leave behind idle and proliferating talk, never to speak with a forked tongue, always to speak truthfully, and forever to speak purely.
於生死夜無明昏寐諸眾生中而獨覺悟 — amid beings drowsy and asleep in the ignorance of the long night of birth-and-death, I alone have been awake. She is a night-spirit, and the sūtra has just spent eleven parts describing what she did across ninety-eight buddhas and eons of practice. What all of that amounts to, in her own summary, is not a list of attainments but a single image: everyone else asleep, and her awake. The office she has always held — a spirit of the night — turns out to be the literal shape of what her whole practice produced.
守護心城，捨三界城，住一切智無上法城 — guard the city of the mind, abandon the city of the three realms, abide in the unsurpassed dharma-city of all-knowing wisdom. Three cities in one breath, and the last buddha of her catalogue in Part 1141 was named 法界城智慧燈, Lamp of the Wisdom of the City of the Dharma-Realm. The architecture she closes her own account with was already sitting in the final name of the list she had just finished reciting.
Every Tongue, Every Word
The humility formula continues, and what she claims to know turns out to be nothing less than language itself — every being's speech, entered and understood.
如諸菩薩摩訶薩，能知一切語言自性，於念念中自在開悟一切眾生，入一切眾生言音海，於一切言辭悉皆辨了，明見一切諸法門海，於普攝一切法陀羅尼已得自在，隨諸眾生心之所疑而為說法，究竟調伏一切眾生，能普攝受一切眾生，巧修菩薩諸無上業，深入菩薩諸微細智，能善觀察諸菩薩藏，能自在說諸菩薩法。何以故？已得成就一切法輪陀羅尼故。
But the bodhisattva-mahāsattvas are able to know the intrinsic nature of every language; in thought after thought they awaken all beings with sovereign freedom; they enter the ocean of the speech-sounds of all beings, and discern every word and every phrase entirely; they clearly see the ocean of every dharma-gate; they have attained sovereign mastery of the dhāraṇī that universally gathers in every dharma; they teach the dharma according to whatever doubt is in each being's mind; they tame all beings to the very end; they are able to gather in and receive all beings universally; they skilfully cultivate every unsurpassed bodhisattva deed; they enter deeply into every subtle wisdom of the bodhisattvas; they are able to observe well every bodhisattva treasury; and they are able to expound every bodhisattva dharma with sovereign freedom. Why is that? Because they have accomplished the dhāraṇī of every dharma-wheel.
能知一切語言自性 … 入一切眾生言音海，於一切言辭悉皆辨了 — able to know the intrinsic nature of every language; they enter the ocean of the speech-sounds of all beings, and discern every word and every phrase entirely. Her gate is named 妙音, Wondrous Voice, and the humility formula that closes her account is, fittingly, the one in this whole fascicle most concerned with language as such — not merely with teaching beings, but with the actual sounds and words they use to speak. The bodhisattvas she cannot fully describe are defined here almost entirely by what they can do with speech.
A Flower Already Open
The formula closes, and the thirty-eighth teacher is named — a night-spirit whose own name describes something already in bloom before Good-Wealth has even arrived.
而我云何能知能說彼功德行？「善男子！此佛會中，有主夜神，名：開敷一切樹華。汝詣彼問：菩薩云何學一切智？云何安立一切眾生住一切智？」
How, then, could I know or speak of their meritorious practice? "Good son, in this very assembly of the Buddha there is a night-spirit named She Who Opens Every Tree's Flowers. You should go to her and ask: how does a bodhisattva learn all-knowing wisdom? How does he establish all beings so that they abide in all-knowing wisdom?"
開敷一切樹華 — She Who Opens Every Tree's Flowers. The question Good-Wealth is sent to ask has changed shape once more: 云何學一切智？云何安立一切眾生住一切智, how does one learn all-knowing wisdom, how does one establish beings so they abide in it. Neither phrasing is the chapter's standing 學菩薩行、修菩薩道. The pilgrimage keeps generating small variations on its own central question, never quite settling back into the formula it started with, even after thirty-seven encounters.
此佛會中 — in this very assembly of the Buddha. The sixth night-spirit teacher in a row is found without a journey at all — not down the road, not in the same gathering, but in this very assembly. Every distance this chapter could have put between one teacher and the next has by now been closed.
Part 1142 Complete
This continues chapter thirty-nine, 入法界品, in fascicle seventy-one. Part 1143 has the night-spirit sing her own closing verse in an unusual seven-character metre, retelling in eleven stanzas the whole eon of buddhas Good-Wealth has just heard in prose.