Difficult Even to Practice Together With
Maitreya continues before the crowd: a boy endowed with fulfilled vows, great capability, great adornment, great compassion, and great wisdom is exceedingly rare — difficult even to hear of or see, let alone draw near to, dwell alongside, or practice together with. Why is this so? Because he has raised the mind to rescue every sentient being from every suffering, every evil destiny, and the darkness of ignorance itself.
Rescuing Beings from the Wheel of Every Destiny
「……如是童子，學大乘者，甚為希有，成滿大願，能辨大事，具大莊嚴，常以大慈，救護眾生，起大精進波羅蜜，示導大眾，乘大法船，度生死海，令住大道，得大法寶，長養大智。如是之人，難得聞見，親近共住，同行亦難。何以故？此童子者，發心救護一切眾生，除滅眾苦，惡道諸難，邪見險路，愚癡之闇，超出生死，壞一切趣輪，度魔境界，於一切世間，無所染著；……」
"… Such a boy, who studies the Great Vehicle, is exceedingly rare; he has fulfilled great vows, is able to accomplish great undertakings, is endowed with great adornment, constantly rescues and protects sentient beings through great loving-kindness, has raised the pāramitā of great diligence, guides the great assembly, rides the great Dharma-boat, crosses the ocean of birth and death, causes beings to abide in the great path, attains the great Dharma-jewel, and nurtures great wisdom. A person such as this is difficult to hear of or see, difficult to draw near to and dwell alongside, and difficult even to practice together with. Why is this so? This boy has raised the mind to rescue and protect every sentient being, eliminating every suffering, every hardship of evil destinies, the perilous road of wrong views, and the darkness of ignorance; transcending birth and death, destroying the wheel of every destiny, crossing beyond māra's own domain, unattached to anything in the entire world … [the praise continues]"
Nine consecutive phrases open with 大 (great) — vow, undertaking, adornment, compassion, diligence, assembly, Dharma-boat, path, wisdom — a deliberate saturation matching the earlier "boundless" and "ocean" refrains this teaching has used elsewhere. Fazang reads "difficult even to practice together with" as Maitreya's own frank admission that Sudhana's own rarity is not merely a matter of admiration from a distance: even a companion walking beside such a person would struggle to keep pace, a claim that will be borne out in the extraordinarily long catalogue of rescues Maitreya is about to recite.
Part 303 In Progress
The reasons for Sudhana's own rarity are only beginning. Part 304 continues with a rich, extended catalogue of exactly what he has been rescuing sentient beings from — the mire of desire, the bonds of greed, and the net of craving.
Continue to Part 304 →