The Root Letters of Liberation
Sudhana arrives before the boy Skilled in Every Art and asks his question. The boy names his own liberation and begins to explain: he constantly recites and upholds the root letters that enter this very liberation — each syllable, once chanted, opening its own distinct gate of perfect wisdom.
Skilled in Every Art Names His Liberation
「爾時，善財即至其所，頭頂禮敬，於一面立，白言：「聖者！我已先發阿耨多羅三藐三菩提心，而未知菩薩云何學菩薩行、修菩薩道？我聞聖者善能誘誨，願為我說。」時，彼童子告善財言：「善男子！我得菩薩解脫，名善知眾藝。我恒唱持入此解脫根本之字，……」
At that time, Sudhana went at once to his place, bowed his head in reverence, and stood to one side, saying: "Noble one, I have already raised the mind set on unsurpassed, perfect awakening, but I do not yet know how a bodhisattva learns the bodhisattva's own practice and cultivates the bodhisattva's own path. I have heard that you, noble one, are skilled in guiding and instructing — I ask that you teach me." At that time, that boy said to Sudhana: "Good man, I have attained the bodhisattva's own liberation named Skilled in Every Art. I constantly recite and uphold the root letters that enter into this very liberation …"
What follows this opening is the arapacana syllabary — forty-two Sanskrit seed-syllables, each traditionally used to teach children their letters, here revealed as each opening its own gate of prajñāpāramitā. Fazang reads the choice of a child's own alphabet-teacher as deliberate: the most basic possible act of literacy instruction is shown to already contain, for one who recites with full realization, the entirety of perfect wisdom's own scope.
Part 225 In Progress
The liberation is named; the forty-two root letters themselves, each with its own named gate, begin in Part 226.
Continue to Part 226 →