Seventeen Reasons for a Single Adornment
Having just described a body, a light, and a hymn beyond all reckoning, the sūtra now pauses to explain itself: seventeen distinct purposes, one after another, behind every adornment the World-Honored One manifests — taming living beings, revealing his own awesome virtue, becoming the sun that illuminates the three periods of time — each traced back to wholesome roots gathered across ages past.
The Reasons Behind Every Adornment
Where the sūtra usually lets its imagery of light, sound, and boundless bodies speak for itself, this passage does something rarer: it stops to give reasons, seventeen of them, in a single unbroken chain, each explaining a different purpose the World-Honored One's manifested adornment serves — before closing with a claim about limits that matches everything said so far: even every bodhisattva, praising him throughout every kalpa, could never exhaust it.
世尊所現如是莊嚴，皆是過去先所積集善根所成，為欲調伏諸眾生故，開示如來大威德故，照明無礙智慧藏故，示現如來無邊勝德極熾然故，顯示如來不可思議大神變故，以神通力於一切趣現佛身故，示現如來神通變化無邊際故，本所志願悉成滿故，顯示如來勇猛智慧能遍往故，於法自在成法王故，出生一切智慧門故，示現如來身清淨故，又現其身最殊妙故，顯示證得三世諸佛平等法故，開示善根清淨藏故，顯示世間無能為諭上妙色故，顯示具足十力之相令其見者無厭足故，為世間日照三世故。自在法王，一切功德，皆從往昔善根所現。一切菩薩，於一切劫，稱揚讚說，不可窮盡。
Every such adornment manifested by the World-Honored One is accomplished entirely from wholesome roots gathered and accumulated in ages past — in order to tame and subdue every living being; in order to open up and reveal the Tathāgata's own great awesome virtue; in order to illuminate the unobstructed treasury of wisdom; in order to manifest the Tathāgata's own boundless and supreme virtue, blazing forth to its very utmost; in order to display the Tathāgata's own inconceivable great spiritual transformation; in order, through spiritual power, to manifest the buddha's own body within every destiny; in order to manifest the Tathāgata's own spiritual transformation as without any limit at all; in order to bring every one of his own original aspirations and vows to complete fulfillment; in order to display the Tathāgata's own valiant wisdom, able to go pervasively everywhere; in order to become the king of the Dharma, sovereign and free with regard to the Dharma; in order to bring forth every gateway of wisdom; in order to manifest the Tathāgata's own body as entirely pure; and in order to manifest that very body as most excellent and wondrous; in order to display the equal Dharma realized and attained by every buddha across the three periods of time; in order to open up and reveal the pure treasury of wholesome roots; in order to display his own supreme and wondrous form, for which the world can offer no comparison at all; in order to display the marks of one fully endowed with the ten powers, causing whoever beholds them to never grow weary or satisfied; and in order to become the sun of the world, illuminating the three periods of time. The sovereign king of the Dharma, and every one of his merits, are all manifested entirely from wholesome roots of ages past. Every bodhisattva, throughout every kalpa, extolling and proclaiming him in praise, could never exhaust it.
Seventeen reasons named this explicitly is unusual even for a sūtra built on long enumerations, and what unifies them is not variety for its own sake but a single underlying claim: nothing in the display just described is arbitrary or purely decorative, and every last strand of it traces back to "wholesome roots gathered and accumulated in ages past." The closing line then quietly undercuts the entire exercise of listing reasons — however many are given, even every bodhisattva across every kalpa could never finish accounting for it.
Part 191 Complete
This closes Part 191. Chapter 23 continues in Part 192.