A Physician-King of Compassionate Heart
Five stanzas of concrete compassion: rescuing beings with no place of refuge, showing the right path to those blindly wandering a perilous road, freeing them from the terror of birth, old age, sickness, and death, healing their afflictive maladies as a physician-king, and ferrying them by boat across the ocean of birth and death.
Five Stanzas of Concrete Compassion
「見眾生受苦， 無有歸依處，
大悲普濟者， 安住此法堂。
見盲冥眾生， 捨正入險路，
為示正道者， 安住此法堂。
見諸有為中， 生老病死逼，
令免恐怖者， 安住此法堂。
見眾生結患， 積集智慧藥，
悲心醫王者， 安住此法堂。
見無量眾生， 漂溺生死海，
大悲船度者， 安住此法堂。
"Seeing sentient beings undergo suffering, with no place of refuge,
One whose great compassion universally rescues them abides in this Dharma-hall.
Seeing blind and benighted sentient beings abandon the right way and enter a perilous road,
One who shows them the true path abides in this Dharma-hall.
Seeing, amid every conditioned thing, beings pressed by birth, old age, sickness, and death,
One who grants them freedom from terror abides in this Dharma-hall.
Seeing sentient beings' own afflictive maladies, accumulating the medicine of wisdom,
A physician-king of compassionate heart abides in this Dharma-hall.
Seeing boundless sentient beings adrift and drowning in the ocean of birth and death,
One whose great compassion ferries them across by boat abides in this Dharma-hall."
Every stanza in this set opens with "seeing" (見) — compassion here is repeatedly grounded in an act of actual perception, never abstract benevolence toward beings in general but a response to what is directly witnessed: suffering, blindness, terror, sickness, drowning. Fazang reads the physician-king and boat similes as directly recalling the ten similes for the good friend given earlier in this very teacher's own referral speech, now applied specifically to Maitreya himself, closing the circle between what a good friend was said to be and what this hymn now confirms Maitreya actually is.
Part 291 In Progress
Fifteen stanzas are now given. Part 292 continues with Maitreya diving into the ocean of birth and death to subdue the dragon of affliction, and gathering sentient beings like a garuḍa surveying the sea.
Continue to Part 292 →