Cultivating the Vajra-Wheel of Wisdom
Maitreya's hymn continues: through such pure practice, once this life ends, Sudhana will attain every supreme and wondrous fruit, ascending into the hall of the buddha's own Dharma. Seeing sentient beings suffer birth, old age, sickness, and death, he raised the mind of great compassion, seeking only the buddha's own bodhi; seeing the five destinies turning like a wheel, pressed by every suffering, he cultivates the vajra-wheel of wisdom to shatter and scatter the wheel of the destinies of suffering. Seeing the field of sentient beings overgrown with weeds — the thorns of greed, hatred, and wrong views — he seeks only the sharp plow of wisdom, to cultivate and purify it.
The Vajra-Wheel of Wisdom Shatters the Wheel of Suffering
「如是清淨行， 於此命終已，
得諸勝妙果， 昇入佛法堂。
善財見眾生， 生老病死苦，
為發大悲心， 專求佛菩提。
見五道輪轉， 眾苦所逼迫，
修智金剛輪， 壞散苦趣輪。
眾生田荒穢， 貪恚邪見刺，
為淨修治故， 專求利智犁。
眾生處癡闇， 盲冥失正路，
善財為導師， 慧光示正道。
忍辱為密鎧， 執持慧利劍，
乘於三脫門， 摧滅煩惱賊。」
"Through such pure practice, once this life comes to its end,
He will attain every supreme and wondrous fruit, ascending into the hall of the buddha's own Dharma.
Sudhana saw sentient beings suffer the pain of birth, old age, sickness, and death,
And for their sake raised the mind of great compassion, seeking only the buddha's own bodhi.
Seeing the five destinies turning as on a wheel, pressed by every suffering,
He cultivates the vajra-wheel of wisdom, to shatter and scatter the wheel of the destinies of suffering.
The field of sentient beings lies overgrown with weeds, the thorns of greed, hatred, and wrong views,
And to cultivate and purify it, he seeks only the sharp plow of wisdom.
Sentient beings dwell in the darkness of ignorance, blind and benighted, having lost the true path,
And Sudhana becomes their guide, revealing the true path with the light of wisdom.
Forbearance is his close-fitted armor, and he grasps the sharp sword of wisdom,
Riding upon the three gates of liberation, to subdue and destroy the bandits of the afflictions."
The plow-and-field image here — sentient beings as an overgrown field, wisdom as the plow that clears it — anticipates almost exactly one of the similes for bodhicitta itself that Maitreya will use just a short while later in this same episode, where the mind of bodhi is compared directly to a plow. Fazang treats this recurrence across the hymn and the coming teaching as evidence that the entire second hymn functions as a kind of overture, seeding in praise of Sudhana the very images that will shortly return as formal doctrine.
Part 328 In Progress
Maitreya's hymn continues. Part 329 turns to Sudhana as a valiant guide dispelling the fears of the three realms, a captain building the great ship of Dharma, and a pure sun and moon within the Dharma-realm.
Continue to Part 329 →