The Bodhisattva Equal to a Buddha
Four short images — a garden of playful ease, a flower adorning wisdom's own palace, a medicine curing affliction, a remedy gathered from the snow mountains — lead into a direct claim rare in its plainness: the bodhisattva is equal to the buddha, for how could the buddha's own mind hold anything else? Perfect awakening simply is the awakening of the world.
How Could the Buddha's Mind Hold Anything Else?
Most of this verse builds its claims through metaphor — lotus, tree, lion, ocean — but this stanza states its point directly: the bodhisattva is equal to the buddha in awakening beings, and the reasoning given is not comparison but identity, a question rather than an argument: how could the buddha's own mind possibly hold anything other than this?
菩薩遊戲園，真實樂眾生；
菩薩解脫華，莊嚴智宮殿；
菩薩如妙藥，滅除煩惱病；
菩薩如雪山，出生智慧藥。
菩薩等於佛，覺悟諸群生，
佛心豈有他，正覺覺世間。
如佛之所來，菩薩如是來；
亦如一切智，以智入普門。
菩薩善開導，一切諸群生；
菩薩自然覺，一切智境界。
"The bodhisattva is a garden of playful ease, truly delighting sentient beings; the bodhisattva is a flower of liberation, adorning the palace of wisdom; the bodhisattva is like a wondrous medicine, extinguishing the sickness of affliction; the bodhisattva is like the snow mountains, giving birth to the medicine of wisdom.
The bodhisattva is equal to the buddha, awakening the multitude of beings — how could the buddha's own mind hold anything else? Perfect awakening is precisely the awakening of the world.
Just as the buddha comes, so too does the bodhisattva come in this same way; and just as all-knowing wisdom is, through wisdom he enters the universal gate.
The bodhisattva skillfully guides every multitude of beings; the bodhisattva awakens of himself, into the very domain of all-knowing wisdom.
菩薩無量力，世間莫能壞；
菩薩無畏智，知眾生及法。
一切諸世間，色相各差別，
音聲及名字，悉能分別知。
雖離於名色，而現種種相；
一切諸眾生，莫能測其道。
如是等功德，菩薩悉成就，
了性皆無性，有無無所著。
The bodhisattva's own measureless power, the world is unable to destroy; the bodhisattva's own fearless wisdom knows both sentient beings and every dharma.
Every form and mark throughout the world, each one distinct and different, every sound and every name — he is entirely able to discern and know them all.
Though he is free of name and form, he still manifests every kind of mark; and no sentient being at all is able to fathom his own path.
Merits such as these, the bodhisattva accomplishes entirely; fully understanding that every nature is itself without any nature, he is attached to neither existence nor nonexistence.
菩薩等於佛，覺悟諸群生，佛心豈有他，正覺覺世間 — the bodhisattva is equal to the buddha, awakening the multitude of beings — how could the buddha's own mind hold anything else? Perfect awakening is precisely the awakening of the world. This is one of the plainest doctrinal claims in the entire verse: not a simile inviting comparison, but a rhetorical question closing off any distance at all between what a fully realized bodhisattva does and what a buddha's own mind is.
Part 809 Complete
This continues chapter thirty-eight, 離世間品, in fascicle fifty-nine. Part 810 continues the verse, turning from metaphor to a direct statement of what remains once every dharma is known to be empty and known through wisdom alone — beginning with a bodhisattva who manifests one body as measureless different bodies, and speaks every language in a single voice.