A Prince Turned Monk, Named Excellent Light-Brightness
Gopā's closing hymn opens on a kalpa deeper still than the one already told: a kalpa named Pure, a world named Light, and sixty koṭis of nayutas of buddhas. After the last of them, a king named Mountain of Wisdom rules Jambudvīpa, and his own crown prince, Excellent Light-Brightness, leaves the household life with five hundred koṭis of followers, teaching the Dharma from a forest with inexhaustible eloquence.
An Even Older Kalpa, and a King Named Mountain of Wisdom
爾時，瞿夷承佛神力，欲重明此義，以偈頌曰：
「我見樂修行， 菩薩諸行者，
歡喜心無量， 皆悉攝取之。
乃昔久遠世， 過百剎塵劫，
有劫名清淨， 世界名光明。
爾時彼劫中， 六十百千億，
那由他諸佛， 出興於世間。
最後等正覺， 號為法幢燈，
彼佛滅度後， 有王名智山。
以大自在力， 王領閻浮提，
悉能廣降伏， 一切諸怨敵。
王子有五百， 端正身姝妙，
其體淨圓滿， 見者無厭足。
深信諸佛法， 恭敬而供養，
守護正法藏， 受持樂修習。」
At that time, Gopā, upholding the buddha's own spiritual power, wishing to make this meaning clear once more, spoke this hymn in verse:
"Beholding those who delight in practicing the bodhisattva's own every practice, my joy is without measure, and I gather them all in.
In ages long past, beyond kalpas as numerous as motes of dust in a hundred lands, there was a kalpa named Pure, and a world named Light.
At that time, within that kalpa, sixty hundred thousand koṭis of nayutas of buddhas arose in the world.
The very last of the most correct awakened ones was named Lamp of the Dharma-Banner; after that buddha's own parinirvāṇa, there was a king, named Mountain of Wisdom.
With great, sovereign power, the king ruled over Jambudvīpa, able to broadly subdue every hostile enemy.
The king had five hundred sons, upright in body and graceful, their forms pure and perfectly complete; those who beheld them never grew weary.
Deeply believing in every buddha's own Dharma, they reverenced and made offerings, guarded the treasury of the true Dharma, and joyfully upheld and cultivated it."
This hymn does not merely restate the prose account already given — it reaches back further, opening an entirely earlier kalpa the prose never mentioned. Every element of the earlier story recurs in miniature — a kalpa of sixty koṭis of nayutas of buddhas, a powerful king, hundreds of upright sons — a structural echo that signals this deeper layer is itself a seed for the story already told.
A Crown Prince Leaves the Household Life
「彼王有太子， 名曰善光明，
三十相嚴身， 饒益諸群生。
五百億人俱， 出家行學道，
勇猛精進力， 護持彼佛法。
王都名智樹， 一億城圍遶，
有林名靜德， 眾寶樹莊嚴。
善光住此林， 廣說佛正法，
辯才無窮盡， 令眾悉清淨。
或為乞食故， 入彼王都城，
庠序有威儀， 見者莫不欣。
遊步如師子， 志意常安諦，
諸根悉調伏， 念慧現在前。」
"That king had a crown prince, named Excellent Light-Brightness, his body adorned with thirty marks, bringing benefit to the sprouting multitudes.
Together with five hundred koṭis of people, he left the household life to study the path, and, with valiant, diligent power, guarded and upheld that buddha's own Dharma.
The royal capital was named Tree of Wisdom, surrounded by a hundred million cities; there was a forest, named Tranquil Virtue, adorned with every kind of jeweled tree.
Excellent Light-Brightness dwelt within this forest, broadly expounding the buddha's own true Dharma, his eloquence inexhaustible, causing the assembly to become entirely pure.
At times, for the sake of begging alms, he entered that royal capital, his bearing composed and dignified; there was none who beheld him who did not delight in it.
He walked with the gait of a lion, his own resolve constantly settled and true; every one of his faculties was subdued and tamed, mindfulness and wisdom manifest directly before him."
The monk Excellent Light-Brightness, entering the city on his own alms round with a lion's own gait and settled resolve, is drawn in the same idealized register this collection uses for every figure about to become the occasion of someone else's own awakening. What Gopā is building toward, stanza by stanza, is the exact moment she herself first crossed paths with him — an encounter the next part reveals to have been anything but straightforwardly wholesome.
Part 184 In Progress
The monk Excellent Light-Brightness has now been introduced. Part 185 turns to Gopā's own past self at that time — an elder's daughter who, seeing him for the first time, made an offering tainted by desire, and what that single act nonetheless protected her from across two hundred and fifty kalpas.
Continue to Part 185 →