Onward to Fertile Field
Worthy Supreme closes her account, naming the limit of her own knowledge, and refers Sudhana south to a city named Fertile Field, where an elder named Firm Liberation awaits.
"How Could I Possibly Know It, or Speak of It in Full?"
「善男子！我唯知此無依處道場法門，如諸菩薩摩訶薩一切無著功德行。而我云何盡能知說？善男子！南方有城，名為沃田。彼有長者，名堅固解脫。汝可往問云何菩薩學菩薩行、修菩薩道。」
"Good man, I know only this Dharma-gate, the Bodhimaṇḍa of No Abiding Place. As for how the great bodhisattvas practice every kind of unattached merit and virtue — how could I possibly know it, or speak of it in full? Good man, to the south there is a city named Fertile Field. There is an elder there named Firm Liberation. Go and ask him how a bodhisattva learns the bodhisattva's own practice and cultivates the bodhisattva's own path."
What Worthy Supreme names as beyond her own knowledge — "every kind of unattached merit and virtue" — connects directly back to her own liberation's own name, the Bodhimaṇḍa of "No Abiding Place": her own realization is itself a form of non-attachment, yet she is careful to distinguish her own single Dharma-gate from the great bodhisattvas' own comprehensive practice of non-attachment in every form. The referral southward to Firm Liberation, whose very name repeats this same theme, suggests the pilgrimage's own sequence is, for these several teachers, circling a single cluster of related qualities from different angles.
Part 236 Complete — Teacher 45 Concludes
Worthy Supreme's own account is now complete. Part 237 turns to Sudhana's journey south to Fertile Field and his arrival before the elder Firm Liberation.
Continue to Part 237 →