Never Content with a Single Root of Goodness
Before Sudhana even sets out, the children add a further warning of their own: Maitreya can show him a true good friend and firm his mind of awakening — but he must never feel satisfied with a single root of goodness, a single light-giving Dharma, a single vow, a single prediction, or any other single attainment, however great.
"You Should Not Give Rise to a Thought of Contentment"
「善男子！彼菩薩摩訶薩，能示導汝真善知識，堅菩提心，長養善根，住正直心；現菩薩根，說無礙法平等諸地，讚歎菩薩所出生道，具諸菩薩願行功德，能廣演說普賢所行。善男子！汝不應於一善根中，生知足想；一光明法，一行，一願，一授記別，得法忍門，六波羅蜜；菩薩諸地，所淨佛剎，近善知識；於是事中，生知足想。何以故？……」
"Good man, that bodhisattva mahāsattva is able to show and guide you to a true good friend, firming your own mind of awakening, nurturing your roots of goodness, and establishing you in an upright mind; manifesting the bodhisattva's own faculties, expounding the unobstructed Dharma of every equal ground, praising the path from which the bodhisattva's own qualities arise, endowed with every bodhisattva vow, practice, and merit, able to proclaim widely Samantabhadra's own conduct. Good man, you should not, with respect to a single root of goodness, give rise to a thought of contentment; nor with respect to a single light-giving Dharma, a single practice, a single vow, a single distinct prediction, attaining a single gate of Dharma-forbearance, the six pāramitās, the bodhisattva grounds, a single purified buddha-land, or having drawn near a single good friend — with respect to any such matter, should you give rise to a thought of contentment. Why is this so? … [the reason follows]"
This warning arrives at a striking moment: Sudhana has not yet even left for the tower, and already the text is pre-empting any temptation to treat the coming encounter with Maitreya, however momentous, as a final destination. Fazang reads this instruction on non-complacency as the pilgrimage's own explicit statement of its own governing logic — every one of the fifty teachers so far has modeled exactly this refusal to rest, each admitting the limit of their own liberation and pointing further onward, and the children now name that pattern outright before Sudhana meets the teacher who will finally explain why it must continue without end.
Part 250 In Progress
The warning against complacency is now stated. Part 251 begins the reason itself — an extended list of boundless qualities a bodhisattva mahāsattva must single-mindedly seek, beginning with boundless roots of goodness.
Continue to Part 251 →