Absorption and the Invisibility Ointment
Two brief similes, this time drawn from practices the śrāvakas themselves would recognize: a monk absorbed in meditation whose object only a fellow meditator can perceive, and a man made invisible by ointment who watches an entire assembly that cannot watch him back.
Sharing a Sight Requires Sharing an Absorption
Where earlier similes located the difference in wisdom, merit, or purpose, this one locates it in something closer to technique itself: the object of a totality-absorption is visible only to someone who has entered that same specific absorption, no matter how physically close anyone else may sit.
譬如比丘在大眾中入遍處定，所謂：地遍處定、水遍處定、火遍處定、風遍處定、青遍處定、黃遍處定、赤遍處定、白遍處定、天遍處定、種種眾生身遍處定、一切語言音聲遍處定、一切所緣遍處定；入此定者見其所緣，其餘大眾悉不能見，唯除有住此三昧者。如來所現不可思議諸佛境界亦復如是，菩薩具見，聲聞莫覩。
It is like a monk who, in the midst of a great assembly, enters a totality-absorption — namely: the totality-absorption of earth, the totality-absorption of water, the totality-absorption of fire, the totality-absorption of wind, the totality-absorption of blue, the totality-absorption of yellow, the totality-absorption of red, the totality-absorption of white, the totality-absorption of space, the totality-absorption of the bodies of every kind of sentient being, the totality-absorption of the sound of every language, or the totality-absorption of every object of contemplation. The one who enters this absorption sees its own object, while the rest of the assembly is entirely unable to see it, except for those who likewise abide in that same samādhi. The inconceivable domain of every buddha that the tathāgata manifests is exactly the same: the bodhisattvas see it in full, while the śrāvakas cannot glimpse it at all.
譬如有人以翳形藥自塗其眼，在於眾會去、來、坐、立無能見者，而能悉覩眾會中事。應知如來亦復如是，超過於世，普見世間，非諸聲聞所能得見，唯除趣向一切智境諸大菩薩。
It is like a certain man who applies an invisibility ointment to his own eyes: as he comes and goes, sits and stands within an assembly, no one is able to see him at all, while he himself is able to see everything happening within that assembly. It should be understood that the tathāgata is exactly the same: transcending the world, he universally sees the whole of every world, yet he cannot be seen at all by any of the śrāvakas, except for the great bodhisattvas who are moving toward the domain of all-knowing wisdom.
地遍處定、水遍處定……一切所緣遍處定 — the totality-absorptions named here run to twelve, well beyond the ten kasiṇa meditations of earlier tradition (earth, water, fire, wind, the four colors, space, and consciousness). True to this sūtra's habit throughout, even a well-known, fixed list gets expanded — here reaching all the way to the totality-absorption of every language and every possible object of contemplation.
Part 855 Complete
This continues chapter thirty-nine, 入法界品, in fascicle sixty. Part 856 turns to two final similes closing this long sequence — the two devas who accompany every person from birth, one seen and one unseen, and a monk absorbed in cessation itself, present yet utterly withdrawn from every sense.