Chapter 38, Detachment from the World, Begins

At that time, the World-Honored One was in the country of Magadha, in the forest hermitage called Dharma, at the site of awakening, within the Hall of Universal Light, seated upon the lion-throne of the lotus treasury. His wondrous awakening was entirely complete; the two paths were forever cut off; he had penetrated the dharma of no mark; he abode in the abode of a buddha, attained the equality of a buddha, and had reached the unobstructed place, the dharma that cannot be turned back. His every action was unobstructed; he stood in the inconceivable; he universally beheld the three times; his body forever filled and pervaded every land; his wisdom forever illuminated and comprehended every dharma. He fully understood every practice, exhausted every doubt, and had a body no one could fathom; the very wisdom that every bodhisattva seeks, he had reached the ultimate, undivided far shore of the Buddha; he was fully endowed with the tathāgata's own equal liberation; he had realized the buddha-ground of equality without any middle or edge, reaching to the very limit of the dharma-realm, equal to the realm of empty space itself. He was accompanied by bodhisattva-mahāsattvas as numerous as the dust-motes of unspeakably many hundreds of thousands of koṭis of nayutas of buddha-lands, every one of whom would attain unsurpassed, perfect, complete awakening within a single lifetime; they had each come together from every kind of land in every other direction, and every one of them was fully endowed with a bodhisattva's skillful means and wisdom.

Namely: they were skillfully able to observe every sentient being, and through the power of skillful means, brought them to be tamed and made them abide in the bodhisattva dharma; they were skillfully able to observe every world, and through the power of skillful means, universally journeyed to each and every one; they were skillfully able to observe the domain of nirvāṇa, reflecting and considering it while forever leaving behind every idle discourse and discrimination, and cultivated wondrous practice without any interruption at all; they were skillfully able to gather in every sentient being, skillfully entering measureless gateways of skillful means, and knew that every sentient being is empty and has nothing at all, and yet never destroyed the fruits of karma; they skillfully knew every sentient being's mental afflictions, every faculty and domain, and every kind of distinct skillful means; they were entirely able to uphold the dharma of every buddha of the three times, understanding it themselves and expounding it again for others; in every measureless worldly and transcendent dharma, they were all well established, knowing its true reality; in every conditioned and unconditioned dharma, they observed it all skillfully, knowing it to be without duality; within a single thought, they were entirely able to obtain the wisdom possessed by every buddha of the three times; in thought after thought, they were entirely able to manifest the attainment of perfect awakening, causing every sentient being to give rise to the resolve and accomplish the path; within the object of a single sentient being's mind, they entirely knew the domain of every sentient being; though they had entered the tathāgata's own ground of all-knowing wisdom, they never abandoned every activity of bodhisattva practice, acting through wisdom and skillful means without any contrived action at all; for the sake of each and every sentient being they abided for measureless kalpas, and though difficult to encounter even across asaṃkhyeya kalpas, they turned the wheel of the true dharma and tamed sentient beings, never wasting the effort; they were entirely complete with the pure practices and vows of every buddha of the three times; having accomplished measureless merit such as this, every tathāgata, even across boundless kalpas, could never finish describing it in full.