Born from My Right Side
Good-Wealth finally asks the question this whole meeting was for, and Māyā's answer takes what sounds like one mother's story and widens it, in a single breath, into a claim about every buddha this entire world-ocean holds.
Born from My Right Side
Good-Wealth answers Māyā's own countless forms with just as many of his own, and finally asks the practical question that brought him here at all.
爾時，善財童子見摩耶夫人現如是等閻浮提微塵數諸方便門。既見是已，如摩耶夫人所現身數，善財亦現作爾許身，於一切處摩耶之前恭敬禮拜，即時證得無量無數諸三昧門，分別觀察，修行證入。從三昧起，右遶摩耶并其眷屬，合掌而立，白言：「大聖！文殊師利菩薩教我發阿耨多羅三藐三菩提心，求善知識，親近供養。我於一一善知識所，皆往承事，無空過者；漸來至此，願為我說：菩薩云何學菩薩行而得成就？」答言：「佛子！我已成就菩薩大願智幻解脫門，是故常為諸菩薩母。佛子！如我於此閻浮提中迦毘羅城淨飯王家，右脇而生悉達太子，現不思議自在神變；如是，乃至盡此世界海，所有一切毘盧遮那如來，皆入我身，示現誕生自在神變。
At that time, Good-Wealth beheld Lady Māyā manifest gateways of skillful means as numerous as the fine motes of dust in Jambudvīpa. Having seen this, Good-Wealth himself manifested just as many bodies as the number Lady Māyā had manifested, and in every place, before Māyā, reverently bowed in worship, and at that very moment realized measureless, countless samādhi-gates, distinguishing and contemplating them, cultivating and entering into realization of them. Rising from samādhi, he circled Māyā and her retinue to the right, stood with his palms joined, and said: "Great sage! The bodhisattva Mañjuśrī taught me to give rise to the mind of anuttara-samyak-sambodhi, and to seek out good spiritual friends, drawing near to them and making offerings. At the place of each and every good spiritual friend, I have gone to serve them, never once passing by in vain; and having gradually made my way here, I beg you to tell me: how does a bodhisattva study the bodhisattva's own practice and bring it to accomplishment?" She answered, saying: "Son of the Buddha! I have already accomplished the bodhisattva's own liberation-gate of great vows and illusion-like wisdom, and it is for this reason that I am forever the mother of every bodhisattva. Son of the Buddha! Just as, here in this Jambudvīpa, within the household of King Śuddhodana in the city of Kapilavastu, I gave birth to Prince Siddhārtha from my right side, manifesting inconceivable and sovereign spiritual transformations — just so, throughout this entire world-ocean, without exception, every single Vairocana tathāgata there is enters into my own body, manifesting the sovereign spiritual transformation of being born."
如是，乃至盡此世界海，所有一切毘盧遮那如來，皆入我身，示現誕生自在神變 — just so, throughout this entire world-ocean, without exception, every single Vairocana tathāgata there is enters into my own body, manifesting the sovereign spiritual transformation of being born. What began as one mother's story — witnessed once, at Kapilavastu, from her own right side — turns out, in the very next breath, to be true of every buddha this entire world-ocean holds. She is not the mother of Prince Siddhārtha alone; she is the birth itself, wherever in this ocean of worlds a buddha occurs.
Part 1239 Complete
This continues chapter thirty-nine, 入法界品, in fascicle seventy-six. Part 1240 follows Māyā's account further back, to the very light that filled every pore of the bodhisattva's body before he ever descended to be born.