Medicinal Herbs and Buried Treasure
Two more similes turn from mere presence to expertise and purpose: hunters can live their whole lives on a mountain covered in medicine and never see a single herb, and a man can stand at the very spot where treasure is buried and walk away with nothing at all.
Wealth Used for Others, Not Kept for Oneself
The buried-treasure simile does not stop at simply finding the jewels; it specifies what the wise man does with them — supporting his own parents, relieving his own relatives, providing for the old, the sick, and the poor — a use of wealth that mirrors exactly what the sūtra earlier said the śrāvakas alone among this assembly do not seek.
譬如雪山具眾藥草，良醫詣彼悉能分別；其諸捕獵、放牧之人恒住彼山，不見其藥。此亦如是，以諸菩薩入智境界，具自在力，能見如來廣大神變；諸大弟子唯求自利，不欲利他，唯求自安，不欲安他，雖在林中，不知不見。
It is like the Himalaya, which is furnished with every kind of medicinal herb: a skilled physician who travels there is able to distinguish every single one of them, yet the hunters and herders who constantly dwell on that very mountain never see the herbs at all. It is exactly the same here: because the bodhisattvas have entered the domain of wisdom and are furnished with sovereign power, they are able to see the tathāgata's own vast spiritual transformation; but the great disciples seek only their own benefit and have no wish to benefit others, seek only their own peace and have no wish to bring peace to others, and so, though they are in the grove, they neither know nor see it.
譬如地中有諸寶藏，種種珍異悉皆充滿，有一丈夫聰慧明達，善能分別一切伏藏，其人復有大福德力，能隨所欲自在而取，奉養父母，賑恤親屬，老、病、窮乏靡不均贍；其無智慧、無福德人，雖亦至於寶藏之處，不知不見，不得其益。此亦如是，諸大菩薩有淨智眼，能入如來不可思議甚深境界，能見佛神力，能入諸法門，能遊三昧海，能供養諸佛，能以正法開悟眾生，能以四攝攝受眾生；諸大聲聞不能得見如來神力，亦不能見諸菩薩眾。
It is like the earth, within which there are treasuries of jewels, entirely filled with every kind of rare and marvelous thing; there is a certain man, intelligent and clear-sighted, who is skilled at discerning every one of these hidden treasuries, and this man also has the power of great merit, so that he is able to take from them freely, exactly as he wishes, to support his own parents, to relieve his own relatives, and to provide for the old, the sick, and the poor without exception. A man without wisdom and without merit, though he too may arrive at the very place where the treasury lies, neither knows it nor sees it, and gains no benefit from it at all. It is exactly the same here: the great bodhisattvas have the pure eye of wisdom, and so are able to enter the tathāgata's own inconceivable, profound domain, able to see the buddha's own spiritual power, able to enter every dharma-gateway, able to journey through the ocean of every samādhi, able to make offerings to every buddha, able to awaken sentient beings through the true dharma, and able to gather in sentient beings through the four means of attraction; but the great śrāvakas are unable to see the tathāgata's own spiritual power at all, nor are they able to see the bodhisattva assembly.
奉養父母，賑恤親屬，老、病、窮乏靡不均贍 — supporting his own parents, relieving his own relatives, and providing for the old, the sick, and the poor without exception. The treasure this man finds means nothing until it moves outward to others; the bodhisattvas' own closing description — offering to buddhas, awakening beings, gathering them in through the four means of attraction — follows the identical shape, wealth and wisdom alike having value only once given away.
Part 853 Complete
This continues chapter thirty-nine, 入法界品, in fascicle sixty. Part 854 turns to the final simile in this sequence, a blind man standing on an island of jewels, unable to see or gather a single one despite standing directly among them.