Good-Wealth's Ninth Teacher Is Named
Bhīṣmottaranirghoṣa sends Good-Wealth south to a village named Iṣāna and a brahmin named Fierce-Heat, and this time the parting carries none of the tears from the eighth teacher's farewell — Good-Wealth leaves joyful and leaping with delight.
Joyful and Leaping with Delight
Unlike his tearful departure from Bhīṣmottaranirghoṣa's own teacher before him, Good-Wealth leaves this eighth teacher in an entirely different mood — the same bow, the same countless circumambulations, but this time carried forward by joy rather than grief.
「善男子！於此南方，有一聚落，名：伊沙那；有婆羅門，名曰：勝熱。汝詣彼問：菩薩云何學菩薩行、修菩薩道？」時，善財童子歡喜踊躍，頂禮其足，遶無數匝，慇懃瞻仰，辭退南行。
"Good son, to the south of here, there is a village named Iṣāna; there is a brahmin named Fierce-Heat. Go to him and ask: 'How does a bodhisattva learn the bodhisattva practices, and cultivate the bodhisattva path?'" At that time, the boy Good-Wealth, joyful and leaping with delight, bowed his head at his feet, circumambulated him countless times, gazed up at him earnestly, took his leave, and journeyed south.
歡喜踊躍 — joyful and leaping with delight. Part 954 marked Good-Wealth's departure from his seventh teacher with tears, the first time grief had appeared in this pilgrimage at all. Here, only a handful of Parts later, the same gesture of bowing and departing is carried by the opposite emotion entirely — proof that this pilgrimage's difficulty has not settled into any single fixed tone.
Part 963 Complete
This continues chapter thirty-nine, 入法界品, in fascicle sixty-four. Part 964 turns to Good-Wealth's own extended reflection as he walks south, considering the good spiritual friend's own power at length before he reaches Iṣāna.