The Story Rejoins Itself
The hymn rejoins the account already told in prose: Gopā, beholding "Supreme, Sovereign Mastery," gives without sparing her own body or life, then travels with the prince to see the buddha Supreme Sun-Light. After that kalpa's own final buddha, Vast Liberation, Light, arises, she attains the pure eye of wisdom and the very Dharma-gate her whole testimony has centered on.
Five Stanzas: A Buddha Met, a Dharma-Gate Attained
「我見勝自在， 發起供養心，
不惜身壽命， 隨其所施與。
時與太子俱， 覲佛勝日光，
歡喜心無量， 發起菩提心。
彼劫最後佛， 名廣解脫光，
出興於世間， 我值悉供養。
從彼最後佛， 得淨智慧眼，
了知諸法相， 除滅虛妄倒。
得觀察菩薩， 三昧海法門，
一念悉覩見， 不可思議剎。」
"Beholding him, Supreme, Sovereign Mastery, I raised the mind to make offerings, not sparing my own body or life, following wherever he gave.
At that time, together with the prince, I went to see the buddha Supreme Sun-Light, my joy without measure, and I raised the mind of awakening.
The very last buddha of that kalpa, named Vast Liberation, Light, arose in the world, and I met him and made offerings to him in full.
From that very last buddha, I attained the pure eye of wisdom, understanding the marks of every dharma, extinguishing every false inversion.
I attained the Dharma-gate of contemplating the bodhisattva's own ocean of samādhi, and, within a single thought-moment, beheld in full inconceivable lands."
These five stanzas compress an entire kalpa's worth of the already-told prose account into a handful of lines, confirming, in verse, exactly what the prose already established: the pure eye of wisdom and the samādhi-ocean Dharma-gate were both attained at the presence of the very last buddha of that vast kalpa, not at any point earlier. The hymn's own function here is not to add new information but to demonstrate that this whole immense backstory — five hundred kalpas deep — converges on the identical single moment the prose account already named as decisive.
Part 186 In Progress
The Dharma-gate's own attainment is now confirmed a second time, in verse. Part 187 turns to the hymn's final stanzas — visions within every pore of a bodhisattva's own body, and a closing admission that, even after all of this, a bodhisattva's own inner life remains beyond her full understanding.
Continue to Part 187 →