Two Devas and the Meditation of Cessation
The final simile in this long sequence is also the sharpest: a monk absorbed in cessation withdraws every one of his six sense faculties entirely, while the śrāvakas, sitting in this very grove with all six senses fully intact, still cannot perceive any of it — proof that their blindness was never a matter of the senses at all.
Not a Failure of the Senses
After nine similes and two long lists of reasons, the sūtra names the deepest point directly: the śrāvakas' six senses are fully functioning, and still they see nothing. Whatever separates them from this domain, it was never sensory at all.
如人生已，則有二天，恒相隨逐，一曰：同生，二曰：同名；天常見人，人不見天。應知如來亦復如是，在諸菩薩大集會中現大神通，諸大聲聞悉不能見。
It is like a person who, once born, always has two devas following constantly alongside him — one called Born-Together, the other called Named-Together; these devas constantly see the person, but the person never sees the devas. It should be understood that the tathāgata is exactly the same: in the midst of the great assembly of bodhisattvas he manifests great spiritual superknowledge, yet none of the great śrāvakas are able to see it at all.
譬如比丘得心自在，入滅盡定，六根作業皆悉不行，一切語言不知不覺；定力持故，不般涅槃。一切聲聞亦復如是，雖復住在逝多林中，具足六根，而不知不見不解不入如來自在、菩薩眾會諸所作事。何以故？如來境界甚深廣大，難見難知，難測難量，超諸世間，不可思議，無能壞者，非是一切二乘境界；是故，如來自在神力、菩薩眾會及逝多林普遍一切清淨世界，如是等事，諸大聲聞悉不知見，非其器故。
It is like a monk who has attained mastery over his own mind and enters the absorption of cessation: the activity of all six sense faculties ceases entirely, and he neither knows nor perceives any language whatsoever, yet, sustained by the power of that very absorption, he does not pass into final nirvāṇa. Every śrāvaka is exactly the same: though they too dwell within the Jeta Grove, and though their own six sense faculties are fully intact, they neither know, nor see, nor understand, nor enter into the tathāgata's own sovereign freedom, or any of the deeds performed by the bodhisattva assembly. Why is this so? Because the tathāgata's own domain is profound and vast, difficult to see, difficult to know, difficult to fathom, difficult to measure, transcending every world, inconceivable, and indestructible — it is not the domain of either of the two vehicles at all. And therefore the tathāgata's own sovereign spiritual power, the bodhisattva assembly, and the Jeta Grove's own pervading of every pure world — all such things as these are entirely unknown and unseen by any of the great śrāvakas, because they are simply not vessels fit for it.
非其器故 — because they are simply not vessels fit for it. After nine similes built around eyes, mountains, rivers, and treasure, the sūtra closes this entire sequence with a single, plain word: 器, a vessel. The question was never whether the śrāvakas' senses worked; it is whether their entire capacity, shaped by their own path, could ever hold what this domain contains.
Part 856 Complete
This continues chapter thirty-nine, 入法界品, in fascicle sixty. Part 857 turns from explanation to voice, as Vairocana Vow-Light Bodhisattva — the very first to arrive from the east — rises to speak the first of ten sets of verses on the Buddha's own inconceivable power.