Eighty-Four Thousand Maidens
Sorrowless Virtue follows Good-Wealth into the hall itself, where he finally finds the Śākya woman he was sent to find, seated on a lotus-throne and surrounded by eighty-four thousand palace maidens, each one already a bodhisattva of considerable accomplishment in her own right.
Eighty-Four Thousand Maidens
Good-Wealth finally reaches the woman he was sent to find — but she is not alone, and the crowd around her turns out to be worth describing in its own right.
爾時，無憂德神說此頌已，為愛樂法故，隨逐善財，恒不捨離。爾時，善財童子入普現法界光明講堂，周遍推求彼釋氏女，見在堂內，坐寶蓮華師子之座，八萬四千采女所共圍遶。是諸采女，靡不皆從王種中生，悉於過去修菩薩行同種善根，布施、愛語普攝眾生；已能明見一切智境，已共修集佛菩提行；恒住正定，常遊大悲，普攝眾生猶如一子；慈心具足，眷屬清淨；已於過去成就菩薩不可思議善巧方便，皆於阿耨多羅三藐三菩提得不退轉，具足菩薩諸波羅蜜；離諸取著，不樂生死；雖行諸有，心常清淨，恒勤觀察一切智道；離障蓋網，超諸著處，從於法身而示化形；生普賢行，長菩薩力，智日慧燈悉已圓滿。
At that time, once the spirit Sorrowless Virtue had spoken this verse, out of her own delight in the dharma, she followed after Good-Wealth, and never once left his side. At that time, Good-Wealth entered the Lecture Hall Universally Manifesting the Dharma-Realm's Light, and searched everywhere for that woman of the Śākya clan; he saw her within the hall, seated upon a lion-seat of jewelled lotus-flowers, surrounded together by eighty-four thousand palace maidens. Every one of those palace maidens, without exception, had been born from royal lineage, and had, in ages past, cultivated the bodhisattva's practices and planted the very same wholesome roots; through giving and kindly speech, they universally gathered beings in; they were already able to see clearly into the domain of all-knowing wisdom, and had already, together, cultivated and gathered the buddha's own practice of bodhi; they forever abided in right concentration, and constantly wandered in great compassion, gathering in every being just as if each were their only child; they were fully endowed with a mind of loving-kindness, and their own retinues were pure; they had already, in ages past, accomplished the bodhisattva's inconceivable skilful means, and every one of them had attained non-retrogression in anuttara-samyak-sambodhi, fully endowed with every bodhisattva pāramitā; they were free of every clinging and attachment, and took no delight in birth-and-death; though they moved within every state of existence, their minds were forever pure, and they forever diligently contemplated the path of all-knowing wisdom; they were free of the net of every hindrance and covering, transcending every place of attachment, and manifested transformation-bodies out from their own dharma-body; they were born into the practices of Samantabhadra, increasing the bodhisattva's own power, and the sun of their wisdom, the lamp of their understanding, was already entirely complete.
普攝眾生猶如一子 — gathering in every being just as if each were their only child. The same image Good-Wealth himself used two Parts ago, describing a bodhisattva's grief at another's suffering, now describes eighty-four thousand maidens at once, before a single one of them has spoken a word. The comparison this pilgrimage keeps returning to for what a bodhisattva feels toward beings is not one bodhisattva's private metaphor; it is simply how the text describes the feeling, wherever it appears.
Part 1199 Complete
This continues chapter thirty-nine, 入法界品, in fascicle seventy-five. Part 1200 follows Good-Wealth as he approaches Gopā directly and asks her a long chain of paradox-questions.