Fallen Into a Deep and Dangerous Pit
The catalogue of worlds closes, the frame narrows to what Vairocana actually saw when he looked at beings, and a long sentence of remedies later, Good-Wealth reaches for the same question he has now put to teacher after teacher.
Every Kind of World at Once
Before the story narrows to a single vow, it widens as far as it can go: every possible shape and orientation a world can have, all held in the same undivided thought.
所謂：普入一切廣大世界海一切世界種中，種種際畔諸世界，種種莊嚴諸世界，種種體性諸世界，種種形狀諸世界，種種分布諸世界，或有世界穢而兼淨，或有世界淨而兼穢，或有世界一向雜穢，或有世界一向清淨，或小或大，或麁或細，或正或側，或覆或仰；如是一切諸世界中，念念修行諸菩薩行，入菩薩位，現菩薩力，亦現三世一切佛身，隨眾生心普使知見。
Namely: universally entering, within the vast ocean of every world and every seed of worlds, every kind of boundary among worlds, every kind of adornment among worlds, every kind of essential nature among worlds, every kind of shape among worlds, every kind of arrangement among worlds — some worlds impure yet mixed with purity, some worlds pure yet mixed with impurity, some worlds entirely and uniformly impure, some worlds entirely and uniformly pure; some small and some great; some coarse and some fine; some upright and some tilted; some overturned and some facing upward. Within every one of all such worlds, in thought after thought he cultivates the bodhisattva practices, enters the bodhisattva stations, manifests bodhisattva power, and also manifests the bodies of every buddha of the three times, causing all beings to see and know according to their own minds.
或正或側，或覆或仰 — some upright and some tilted, some overturned and some facing upward. This exact fourfold pairing of orientations does not appear to recur elsewhere in the parts translated so far, though the world-ocean chapter near the very start of this sūtra — Part 16, in particular — already catalogued worlds by shape: round, square, shaped like a whirlpool, a flame, a tree, a flower. This later list catalogues something different: not shape but orientation, as though the same world-ocean chapter's opening survey were being taken up again here, seventy-two fascicles later, from a new angle.
What Vairocana Saw
The catalogue of worlds narrows all at once to a single diagnosis: what this buddha, still a bodhisattva, actually saw when he looked at the beings inside them.
「善男子！毘盧遮那如來，於過去世，如是修行菩薩行時，見諸眾生——不修功德，無有智慧，著我、我所，無明翳障，不正思惟，入諸邪見，不識因果，順煩惱業，墮於生死險難深坑，具受種種無量諸苦。——起大悲心，具修一切波羅蜜行，為諸眾生稱揚讚歎堅固善根，令其安住遠離生死、貧窮之苦，勤修福智助道之法；為說種種諸因果門，為說業報不相違反，為說於法證入之處，為說一切眾生欲解，及說一切受生國土，令其不斷一切佛種，令其守護一切佛教，令其捨離一切諸惡；又為稱讚趣一切智助道之法，令諸眾生心生歡喜，令行法施普攝一切，令其發起一切智行，令其修學諸大菩薩波羅蜜道，令其增長成一切智諸善根海，令其滿足一切聖財，令其得入佛自在門，令其攝取無量方便，令其觀見如來威德，令其安住菩薩智慧。」
"Good son, Vairocana Tathāgata, in an age long past, while cultivating the bodhisattva practices in this way, saw that beings — not cultivating merit, without wisdom, clinging to a self and to what belongs to a self, obscured by the film of ignorance, thinking incorrectly, having entered every kind of wrong view, not recognizing cause and effect, following after afflictive karma — had fallen into the perilous and deep pit of birth-and-death, undergoing every kind of measureless suffering. Seeing this, he gave rise to a mind of great compassion, fully cultivated the practice of every pāramitā, and for the sake of beings praised and extolled the firm wholesome root, causing them to abide securely, far from the suffering of birth-and-death and of poverty, diligently cultivating the dharmas of merit and wisdom that assist the path. He spoke of every kind of gateway of cause and effect; he spoke of how karmic retribution is never inconsistent; he spoke of the very place where one realises and enters the dharma; he spoke according to what every being wished to understand; and he spoke of every land in which beings take birth — causing them never to sever the seed of any buddha, causing them to safeguard every buddha's teaching, and causing them to abandon every evil. He also praised the dharmas that assist the path toward all-knowing wisdom, causing beings' minds to give rise to joy, causing them to practise the giving of dharma so as to gather in everyone universally, causing them to arouse the practice of all-knowing wisdom, causing them to study and cultivate the path of every great bodhisattva's pāramitās, causing them to increase and accomplish the ocean of every wholesome root of all-knowing wisdom, causing them to be satisfied with every kind of noble wealth, causing them to enter the gate of the buddha's own sovereign freedom, causing them to gather in measureless skilful means, causing them to behold the tathāgata's own majestic virtue, and causing them to abide securely in the bodhisattva's own wisdom."
令其⋯⋯令其⋯⋯令其 — causing them to, causing them to, causing them to. Counted directly against the source, this single sentence uses 令其 twelve times and 令諸 once more, thirteen causative verbs in all, alongside four further instances of 為說, he spoke of — seventeen verbs of causing or speaking before the sentence finally closes. Diagnosis took one long clause — 不修功德 through 具受種種無量諸苦, a chain of eight faults ending in a single image, the deep pit. The remedy took seventeen. The proportion is the point: seeing what is wrong is quick; everything that must be caused to happen afterward is not.
A Question Asked Four Times Now
Having heard the whole of this history, Good-Wealth reaches for a question that is, by this point in the pilgrimage, almost a reflex.
善財童子言：「聖者發阿耨多羅三藐三菩提心，其已久如？」
Good-Wealth said: "Noble one, how long is it since you gave rise to the mind of anuttara-samyak-sambodhi?"
聖者發阿耨多羅三藐三菩提心，其已久如 — noble one, how long is it since you gave rise to the mind of anuttara-samyak-sambodhi. Checked directly against every Chinese Source block translated so far, this exact question, in some form, has now been asked four times: Part 1079 and Part 1094 both used the fuller form 汝發阿耨多羅三藐三菩提心，為幾時耶？得此解脫，其已久如, two questions in one, the resolve and the liberation both timed. Part 1127's own note already caught what happened next — Good-Wealth compressed the pair into a single question, keeping only 發阿耨多羅三藐三菩提心 and attaching to it the phrase that had belonged to the second question, 其已久如. Part 1147 repeats that compressed form almost verbatim. Four teachers in, the short version has become the only version he uses.
Part 1147 Complete
This continues chapter thirty-nine, 入法界品, in fascicle seventy-two. Part 1148 gives the night-spirit's answer — that this question touches a domain difficult to believe, difficult to know, and difficult to enter, closed to the whole world and to the two vehicles alike, before she turns to verse to say the same thing a second way.