In Verse, the Buddha Arrives and Two Tallies Close
The hymn continues: the buddha arrives at the very edge of the execution, teaches, and grants predictions of awakening to boundless beings, while the prince raises the mind of awakening, leaves the household life, and attains this Dharma-gate. Two brief stanzas then close out the running tallies of ten thousand buddhas met and kalpas beyond counting.
Five Stanzas: The Buddha Teaches, the Prince Attains the Dharma
「時法輪音聲， 虛空燈如來，
知眾生根熟， 往詣大眾所。
顯現自在力， 演說圓滿經，
無量諸眾生， 悉授菩提記。
爾時王太子， 即發菩提心，
願我悉度脫， 一切諸群萌。
供養彼如來， 即隨佛出家，
勇猛精進力， 專求無上道。
具足此法門， 大悲念眾生，
知法真實相， 劫海修菩提。」
"At that time, the tathāgata, the Empty-Space Lamp of the Sound of the Dharma-Wheel, knowing that sentient beings' own roots had ripened, went to where the great assembly was.
He manifested his own sovereign power, and expounded the sūtra of perfect fulfillment; boundless sentient beings, every one of them, received the prediction of awakening.
At that time, the king's own prince at once raised the mind of awakening: 'May I deliver and liberate every single sprouting being, without exception.'
He made offerings to that tathāgata, and at once left the household life to follow the buddha, and with valiant, diligent power, single-mindedly sought the unsurpassed path.
He became fully endowed with this very Dharma-gate, his great compassion mindful of sentient beings; knowing the true mark of the Dharma, he cultivated awakening throughout an ocean of kalpas."
Fazang names this fourth movement of the hymn: 次五頌初佛說法利益得法 — "next, five stanzas on the first buddha's teaching of the Dharma, its benefit, and the attainment of the Dharma." Every step the prose account gave — the buddha's arrival, the prediction bestowed on boundless beings, the prince's own awakening-mind, his going forth, and his attainment of this very Dharma-gate — is carried here in exactly the same order, at exactly the same pace, confirming once more how closely this hymn tracks the prose it restates rather than summarizing or compressing it further.
Two Stanzas: Two Tallies Close
「一切諸導師， 次第興出世，
我皆悉恭敬， 供養護持法。
剎海微塵等， 一切諸劫中，
如來出興世， 恭敬悉供養。」
"Every single guide, arising in the world one after another in due order — I reverently honored every one of them, made offerings to them, and upheld and guarded the Dharma.
Throughout kalpas as numerous as motes of dust in an ocean of buddha-lands, wherever a tathāgata arose in the world, I reverently made offerings to every one of them."
Fazang marks these final two stanzas of this stretch as their own separate, single-stanza movements: 次一頌結一萬佛、次一頌結塵數劫等 — "next, one stanza concluding the ten thousand buddhas; next, one stanza concluding the kalpas beyond counting and the rest." Each of the prose account's two grand tallies — the ten thousand buddhas of the kalpa of Virtuous Light, and the boundless further kalpas of buddhas met and honored beyond any single count — receives exactly one stanza here, a compression so tight that a single line of verse now stands for an entire kalpa of six billion buddhas already given, at length, its own earlier telling.
Part 119 In Progress
The hymn has now caught up with the prose account's own closing tallies. Part 120 turns to self-identification — the prince named directly as the deva's own past self — and then to eight stanzas describing what this Dharma-gate itself makes possible.
Continue to Part 120 →