No Fury of the Māras Can Prevail
The catalogue returns to martial imagery: it is like a valiant warrior's Nārāyaṇa arrow, forged of sharp vajra, which pierces straight through the densest, most tightly-fastened armor without any obstruction at all; a bodhisattva-mahāsattva is likewise, whose sharp arrow of wisdom that is the mind of bodhi pierces straight through the dense armor of every wrong view and affliction without obstruction. It is like a mighty Mahānāga warrior, whose fury, once roused, no one within Jambudvīpa is able to withstand; a bodhisattva-mahāsattva is likewise, and having raised great compassion and cultivated the mind of bodhi, he cannot be overcome by any retinue of any māra throughout the whole world, nor by the karma of any affliction.
The Vajra Arrow and the Mahānāga's Unmatched Fury
「譬如健士，以那羅延金剛利箭，射堅密鎧，直過無礙。菩薩摩訶薩亦復如是，以菩提心智慧利箭，射諸邪見煩惱密鎧，徹過無礙。
「譬如摩訶那伽大力勇士，奮威怒時，閻浮提人無能壞者。菩薩摩訶薩亦復如是，發大慈悲，修菩提心，一切世間諸魔眷屬，及煩惱業，所不能壞。
"It is like a valiant warrior who, with a sharp Nārāyaṇa arrow of vajra, shoots straight through the densest, most tightly-fastened armor, passing through without any obstruction at all. A bodhisattva-mahāsattva is likewise: with the sharp arrow of wisdom that is the mind of bodhi, he shoots through the dense armor of every wrong view and affliction, piercing straight through without obstruction.
"It is like a mighty Mahānāga warrior, whose fury, once roused to its full force, no person within Jambudvīpa is able to withstand or overcome. A bodhisattva-mahāsattva is likewise: having raised great compassion and cultivated the mind of bodhi, he cannot be overcome by any retinue of any māra throughout the whole world, nor by the karma of any affliction."
"Mahānāga" (摩訶那伽, literally "great nāga" but also used as an honorific epithet for an especially powerful warrior or, elsewhere in Buddhist literature, for an arhat or buddha themselves) appears here in its warrior sense rather than as the serpent-being sense used elsewhere in this same catalogue — Fazang notes this dual usage of "nāga" throughout the text (both a class of dangerous serpent-being repeatedly needing to be tamed, and an honorific term for supreme strength) as a genuine ambiguity in the underlying vocabulary rather than an inconsistency in the teaching, since both senses trace to the same root association of the nāga with immense, barely-containable power.
Part 366 Complete
Two more similes are now given in full. Part 367 turns to a person skilled in a great technique whose partial mastery already surpasses others' full skill, and to an archer who first steadies his own stance before ever loosing an arrow.
Continue to Part 367 →