A Roar That Scatters Every Lesser Beast
The catalogue continues: it is like the heavenly king Vaśavartin, who wears a natural crown of jambu-river gold that no god of the desire-realm is able to break; a bodhisattva-mahāsattva is likewise, wearing the great-vow heavenly crown of the mind of bodhi, one that no śrāvaka or pratyekabuddha is able to break. It is like the roar of a great lion — when lesser lions hear it, all become emboldened and valiant, while every other bird and beast flees far away and hides; when bodhisattvas hear the buddha's own lion's roar, praising the sound of the mind of bodhi, it nurtures and grows their Dharma-body, while sentient beings caught in false views retreat and scatter, hiding themselves away.
Vaśavartin's Unbreakable Crown and the Lion's Roar
「譬如他化自在天王，冠閻浮檀金自然天冠，欲界諸天，所不能壞。菩薩摩訶薩亦復如是，冠菩提心大願天冠，聲聞、緣覺所不能壞。
「譬如大師子吼，小師子聞，皆悉勇健，一切禽獸，遠避竄伏。佛師子吼，諸菩薩等若聞，讚歎菩提心聲，長養法身，妄見眾生，潛伏退散。
"It is like the heavenly king Vaśavartin, who wears a natural heavenly crown of jambu-river gold, one that no god of the desire-realm at all is able to break. A bodhisattva-mahāsattva is likewise: wearing the great-vow heavenly crown of the mind of bodhi, one that no śrāvaka or pratyekabuddha at all is able to break.
"It is like the roar of a great lion — when lesser lions hear it, they all become emboldened and valiant, while every other bird and beast flees far away and hides itself. When bodhisattvas hear the buddha's own lion's roar, praising and extolling the sound of the mind of bodhi, it nurtures and grows their own Dharma-body, while sentient beings caught in false views retreat and scatter, hiding themselves away."
"Vaśavartin" (他化自在天王, "the heaven of free enjoyment of others' transformations," Skt. Paranirmita-vaśavartin) is the highest of the six heavens of the desire-realm, whose ruling deva enjoys pleasures created by other gods rather than his own effort — Fazang reads this choice of deva as pointed: even the very summit of desire-realm sovereignty, unmatched by any lesser god of that realm, is still explicitly said to be surpassed by the crown of bodhicitta, which even a śrāvaka or pratyekabuddha cannot break. The lion's-roar simile shifts the register from crown-imagery to sound-imagery, and notably describes the buddha's own lion's roar as itself "praising and extolling the sound of the mind of bodhi" — the buddha's own most authoritative pronouncement is depicted as consisting precisely of proclaiming bodhicitta's own value, mirroring the very structure of this teaching Maitreya is now giving.
Part 363 Complete
Two more similes are now given in full. Part 364 turns to a lion's-sinew string that, once played, causes every other string to snap, and a lion's milk that, mixed into an ordinary vessel, causes every other milk within it to dissolve entirely.
Continue to Part 364 →