She Is None Other Than Myself

"In an age long past, beyond kalpas as many as the fine motes of dust in a koṭi of buddha-lands, and beyond that number still, there was then a world named Universal Jewel, and a kalpa named Joyful Delight; eighty nayutas of buddhas arose within it, and the very first of them was named Sovereign Power's Banner of Merit, complete in all ten epithets. Within that world there was a fourfold continent named Wondrous Light Adornment; and within the Jambudvīpa of that fourfold continent, there was a royal capital named Sumeru's Adorning Banner; within it there was a king named Jewel-Flame Eye, and that king's consort was named Joyful Light. Good son, just as, in this world, Māyā is the mother of the tathāgata Vairocana, so too, in that world, Queen Joyful Light was likewise the mother of that first buddha. "Good son, when Queen Joyful Light was about to give birth to that bodhisattva, she went, together with twenty koṭis of nayutas of court ladies, to the Golden Flower Garden; within that garden there was a tower named Wondrous Jewel Peak, and beside it there stood a tree named All-Giving. Queen Joyful Light took hold of a branch of that tree and gave birth to the bodhisattva, and the kings of the gods each took fragrant water and together bathed him. At that time, there was a wet-nurse named Pure Light, standing attendant at her side. Once the bathing was complete, the kings of the gods handed the child to that wet-nurse. The wet-nurse reverently received him, and, giving rise to great joy, at once attained the bodhisattva's own samādhi of the universal eye; having attained this samādhi, she universally beheld measureless buddhas throughout the ten directions, and further attained the bodhisattva's own liberation of manifesting sovereign birth in every place. Just as the first consciousness entering the womb is swift and unobstructed, so too, because she had attained this liberation, she saw every buddha, sustained by the power of his own original vow, take sovereign birth in just the same way. "Good son, what do you think? Could that wet-nurse be anyone else? She is none other than myself. From that time on, in thought after thought, I have forever beheld the tathāgata Vairocana manifesting the ocean of a bodhisattva's own birth and the sovereign spiritual power that tames beings. Just as I see the tathāgata Vairocana, sustained by the power of his own original vow, in thought after thought manifesting a bodhisattva's own spiritual marvels of birth throughout this great trichiliocosm and even within every mote of dust of every world in the ten directions, so too do I see every buddha, in just the same way; and I reverently serve and make offerings to every one of them, hearing the dharma they expound, and cultivating in accordance with what they teach."