Like the Full Moon, Like the Turning Sun
Ten similes in unbroken succession describe what a pure, upright mind meeting a good friend actually accomplishes — roots of goodness emerging like herbs from a snow mountain, becoming a vessel for the Dharma like the ocean swallowing every stream, remaining unstained like a lotus on the water, and nurturing a bodhisattva's own body like a mother raising her child.
Ten Similes, from the Snow Mountain to a Mother's Own Care
「因淨直心，見善知識：隨順其教，增長善根，如依雪山，出眾藥草；為佛法器，如海吞流；生諸勝德，如海出寶；淨菩提心，如鍊真金；超出世間，如海須彌；不染世間，如水蓮華；不沒諸惡，如海死屍；長白淨法，如月盛滿；普照法界，如日迴耀；長菩薩身，如母養子。」
"Because of a pure, upright mind, one sees a good friend: according with their teaching, one's roots of goodness increase, like relying upon a snow mountain from which every kind of medicinal herb emerges; one becomes a vessel for the Buddha-dharma, like the ocean swallowing every stream; one gives rise to every kind of supreme virtue, like the ocean yielding forth jewels; one purifies the mind of awakening, like the refining of true gold; one transcends the world, like the ocean's own Mount Sumeru; one remains unstained by the world, like a lotus upon the water; one is never submerged by any evil, like the ocean bearing no corpse; one nurtures the pure, white Dharma, like the moon at its full; one universally illumines the Dharma-realm, like the turning sun; and one nurtures the bodhisattva's own body, like a mother raising her own child."
These ten similes each draw on a natural image already familiar from earlier in this collection — snow mountains, the ocean, the moon, the sun — now gathered into a single closing sequence that answers the "why" left open at the previous part's end. Fazang reads the final image, a mother raising her child, as a deliberate return to the very first of the ten similes named several parts earlier, the good friend as "a kind mother" — the whole extended teaching on the good friend closes by circling back to where it began.
Part 269 Complete
These ten closing similes are now given in full. Part 270 turns to the children's own final summary statement — the unspeakable merits gained by following a good friend's own teaching, and the declaration that everything depends on the good friend as its own root.
Continue to Part 270 →