Eighty Thousand Cities, One Buddha's Passage
As the buddha enters the city, boundless sentient beings rejoice, nurturing roots of goodness and raising the mind of awakening. Contemplating the three times with pure wisdom, they turn toward the bodhisattva's own path, attain the tathāgata's own Dharma-wheel, and, through the ocean of their own great vow, attain omniscience — the buddha benefiting all of this simply by accepting, one after another, the invitations of every king.
Boundless Beings, Turning Toward the Bodhisattva's Own Path
「時，佛入城，無量眾生皆大歡喜，長養善根，發菩提心，以廣大悲饒益眾生，正求佛法，知真實義，平等觀察三世諸法，明淨智慧，普照三世，知三世佛次第出世，攝取眾生，向菩薩道，行菩薩行，安住菩薩平等正法，逮得如來法輪，智光深入法海，能於己身見一切剎，善知諸根，弘誓願海得一切智。爾時，如來次第受彼諸王請時，如是饒益無量眾生。」
"At that time, the buddha entered the city, and boundless sentient beings all rejoiced greatly, nurturing roots of goodness, raising the mind of awakening; through vast, great compassion, benefiting sentient beings, rightly seeking the buddha's own Dharma, knowing its true meaning, and contemplating equally the dharmas of the three times; their wisdom bright and pure, universally illumining the three times, they knew the buddhas of the three times arising in due order, one after another; gathering in sentient beings, they turned toward the bodhisattva's own path, practiced the bodhisattva's own practice, and abided securely in the bodhisattva's own equal, true Dharma; attaining the tathāgata's own Dharma-wheel, the light of their wisdom deeply entered the ocean of the Dharma; able, within their own bodies, to behold every land, they well knew every faculty, and, through the ocean of their own great vow, attained omniscience. At that time, as the tathāgata, in due order, accepted the invitations of every one of those kings, he benefited boundless sentient beings in just this way."
This passage closes out the buddha's own visible, itinerant ministry across the story's own eighty thousand cities, before the account turns, in what follows, to the single identification that reveals whose story this has been all along. The scale of benefit named here — boundless sentient beings attaining omniscience through nothing more than the buddha's own passage from city to city — matches the scale this collection has granted its very deepest teachers, appropriate for an account that is about to reveal this buddha, and everyone around him, as figures still present in the world today.
Part 176 In Progress
The buddha's own ministry across every city is now told. Part 177 turns to the identification itself — the deva reveals that the crown prince of this entire account was none other than Śākyamuni Buddha, in a past life.
Continue to Part 177 →