Eleven Remedies for Eleven Afflictions
Fascicle seventy-two opens with the thirty-eighth teacher, a night-spirit whose first-named work is nothing cosmic — she watches over ordinary travelers who lose their way home after dark, and matches eleven kinds of affliction to eleven cures before naming the liberation-gate she has attained.
He Arrives at the Thirty-Eighth Teacher
Good-Wealth's practice has advanced on the strength of what he heard in the last fascicle, and he carries it, wordlessly, straight into the next teacher's presence.
爾時，善財童子入菩薩甚深自在妙音解脫門，修行增進。往詣開敷一切樹華夜神所，見其身在眾寶香樹樓閣之內妙寶所成師子座上，百萬夜神所共圍遶。時，善財童子頂禮其足，於前合掌而作是言：「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？云何得一切智？唯願垂慈，為我宣說！」
At that time, Good-Wealth entered the bodhisattva liberation-gate of the Profound and Sovereign Wondrous Voice, and his practice advanced further. He went to the place of the night-spirit She Who Opens Every Tree's Flowers, and saw that her body was within a towered pavilion of every kind of fragrant jewel-tree, upon a lion-seat made of wondrous jewels, surrounded on every side by a million night-spirits. Good-Wealth then bowed at her feet, and standing before her with palms joined said: "Noble one, I have already given rise to the mind of anuttara-samyak-sambodhi, but I do not yet know: how does a bodhisattva learn the bodhisattva practices? How does he attain all-knowing wisdom? I ask only that out of your kindness you expound this for me!"
云何學菩薩行？云何得一切智 — how does a bodhisattva learn the bodhisattva practices, how does he attain all-knowing wisdom. Part 1142 sent Good-Wealth here to ask a differently worded question: 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, and how does one establish all beings so that they abide in it. Neither clause of that referral survives into what he actually says. What does survive is only 一切智, all-knowing wisdom, now paired with the pilgrimage's oldest and plainest question, 云何學菩薩行, rather than with the referral's own sentence. The pattern noted already in Part 1120 repeats: a teacher names the question Good-Wealth should ask next, and when he arrives, he asks something adjacent to it instead.
She Who Watches the Roads by Night
Before anything is said about liberation, she describes a plain, nightly task: keeping ordinary people from losing their way home after the sun sets.
夜神言：「善男子！我於此娑婆世界，日光已沒，蓮華覆合，諸人眾等罷遊觀時，見其一切若山、若水、若城、若野，如是等處種種眾生，咸悉發心欲還所住；我皆密護，令得正道，達其處所，宿夜安樂。
The night-spirit said: "Good son, in this Sahā world, when the sun's light has set and the lotus flowers have folded closed, at the time when all the many people have finished their outings, I watch over the many kinds of beings in every such place — on mountains, by waters, within cities, or across the wilds — as each of them resolves in their heart to return to where they dwell; and I secretly guard every one of them, so that they find the right path, reach the place they seek, and rest in peace through the night.
我於此娑婆世界 — I, in this Sahā world. Unlike several recent teachers, whose named domain opened onto an ocean of world-systems or a lotus of buddha-lands beyond counting, this one begins by naming the single, ordinary world Good-Wealth and his readers already stand in. Her liberation-gate will turn out to be vast, but the function she leads with is small and local: an unseen hand keeping lost travelers on the right road home after dark, in this world, tonight.
Eleven Remedies for Eleven Afflictions
The same protective instinct extends from bodies lost on the road to minds lost in their own faults, and here she lists, affliction by affliction, what she turns each one toward.
「善男子！若有眾生，盛年好色，憍慢放逸，五欲自恣。我為示現老、病、死相，令生恐怖，捨離諸惡。復為稱歎種種善根，使其修習：為慳吝者，讚歎布施；為破戒者，稱揚淨戒；有瞋恚者，教住大慈；懷惱害者，令行忍辱；若懈怠者，令起精進；若散亂者，令修禪定；住惡慧者，令學般若；樂小乘者，令住大乘；樂著三界諸趣中者，令住菩薩願波羅蜜；若有眾生，福智微劣，為諸結業之所逼迫多留礙者，令住菩薩力波羅蜜；若有眾生，其心闇昧，無有智慧，令住菩薩智波羅蜜。
"Good son, if there are beings in the prime of youth, fond of beauty, arrogant and heedless, indulging themselves freely in the five desires, I manifest for them the signs of old age, sickness, and death, so that dread arises in them and they cast aside every evil. I also praise and extol every kind of wholesome root, so as to have them take up its cultivation: for the miserly, I praise giving; for those who break the precepts, I extol pure discipline; for those given to wrath, I teach them to abide in great loving-kindness; for those who harbour malice, I have them practise forbearance; for the indolent, I have them arouse vigour; for the scattered and distracted, I have them cultivate meditative concentration; for those who dwell in unwholesome views, I have them learn wisdom; for those who delight in the Lesser Vehicle, I have them abide in the Great Vehicle; for those who delight in and cling to the destinies within the three realms, I have them abide in the bodhisattva's perfection of vow; for beings of meagre merit and wisdom, hard pressed and much hindered by the bonds of their own past deeds, I have them abide in the bodhisattva's perfection of power; and for beings whose minds are benighted and without wisdom, I have them abide in the bodhisattva's perfection of knowledge.
Eleven afflictions, eleven remedies — counted directly against the source, the list runs from 為慳吝者 through to 其心闇昧，無有智慧 in eleven clean clauses, not ten. Nine of them track the standard ten perfections in their usual order — giving, discipline, forbearance, vigour, meditative concentration, wisdom, vow, power, knowledge — but skip the seventh, skilful means, entirely. In its place, and out of sequence, two clauses are inserted that are not perfections at all: great loving-kindness for the wrathful, and the Great Vehicle itself for those who delight in the Lesser. The standing list has been reshaped around the two afflictions — anger and a small vehicle's ambition — that this particular teacher apparently meets most often.
A Liberation Named for Its Own Joy
Having described what she does, she names the gate that does it, and Good-Wealth asks the question that opens nearly every teacher's deeper answer.
「善男子！我已成就菩薩出生廣大喜光明解脫門。」善財言：「大聖！此解脫門境界云何？」
"Good son, I have accomplished the bodhisattva liberation-gate of Bringing Forth Vast Joy and Light." Good-Wealth said: "Great sage, what domain does this liberation-gate range in?"
出生廣大喜光明解脫門 — the liberation-gate of Bringing Forth Vast Joy and Light. Part 1120's night-spirit named her own gate 念念出生廣大喜莊嚴解脫門, bringing forth vast joy and adornment in thought after thought. The two names share three characters running — 出生廣大喜, bringing forth vast joy — and differ only in their final word, adornment there, light here, and in whether thought-after-thought is written into the name at all. Two gates this close in wording, held by two different night-spirits eighteen fascicles-worth of parts apart, read less like coincidence than like a small vocabulary this teacher-class keeps drawing from.
Ten Reasons Every Pleasure Traces Back to the Buddha
Her answer opens with a claim stated flatly, in ten parallel clauses, before any story is told to back it up: nothing pleasant that any being feels stands apart from the Tathāgata's own doing.
夜神言：「善男子！入此解脫，能知如來普攝眾生巧方便智。云何普攝？善男子！一切眾生所受諸樂，皆是如來威德力故，順如來教故，行如來語故，學如來行故，得如來所護力故，修如來所印道故，種如來所行善故，依如來所說法故，如來智慧日光之所照故，如來性淨業力之所攝故。
The night-spirit said: "Good son, entering this liberation, one is able to know the tathāgata's wisdom of skilful means in universally gathering in beings. How does he universally gather them in? Good son, every pleasure that any being experiences is entirely so because of the tathāgata's own majestic power; because they accord with the tathāgata's teaching; because they carry out the tathāgata's own words; because they learn the tathāgata's own conduct; because they gain the strength of the tathāgata's protection; because they cultivate the path the tathāgata has sealed as true; because they plant the wholesome roots the tathāgata himself practises; because they rely on the dharma the tathāgata has spoken; because the sunlight of the tathāgata's own wisdom shines upon them; and because they are gathered in by the power of the tathāgata's own pure nature.
一切眾生所受諸樂 — every pleasure that any being experiences. Counted against the source, the clause names ten causes in a row, each closed by 故, because, without a single exception clause: majestic power, teaching, words, conduct, protection, the sealed path, wholesome roots, spoken dharma, the sunlight of wisdom, and the power of pure nature. Nothing here has yet been narrowed to virtuous pleasure or right enjoyment — the claim as stated covers every pleasure of every being, and traces every one of them back to the Buddha before the fascicle has told a single word of the story that is meant to justify it.
Part 1145 Complete
This opens chapter thirty-nine, 入法界品, in fascicle seventy-two. Part 1146 continues her answer as she turns from this claim to how she knows it is true — recalling in full Vairocana Tathāgata's own ocean of past bodhisattva practice, beginning from the ages when he first looked upon beings bound by ignorance and craving and gave rise to great compassion for them.