Breaking Every Chain of Wrong View
The catalogue continues: it is like a person adorned with an ornament of jambu-river gold, whose radiance eclipses every other ornament, making them all appear, by comparison, like a heap of soot; a bodhisattva-mahāsattva is likewise, and with the ornament that is the mind of bodhi, he eclipses whatever merit belongs to every sentient being, the śrāvaka and pratyekabuddha included. It is like Ayaḥkṣetra iron — even a small portion of it is able to destroy every other iron hook, lock, and chain entirely; the mind of bodhi is likewise, severing every chain of wrong view, affliction, and craving.
Jambu-River Gold and the Iron That Shatters Every Chain
「善男子！譬如有人著閻浮檀金莊嚴之具，映蔽一切，悉如聚墨。菩薩摩訶薩亦復如是，以菩提心莊嚴之具，蔽諸眾生，聲聞、緣覺，所有功德。
「善男子！譬如阿夜揵多鐵，此鐵少分，悉能毀壞一切餘鐵，諸鉤鎖縛。菩提之心亦復如是，斷諸邪見煩惱愛縛。
"Good man, it is like a person adorned with an ornament of jambu-river gold, whose radiance eclipses every other ornament, making them all appear, by comparison, like a heap of soot. A bodhisattva-mahāsattva is likewise: with the ornament that is the mind of bodhi, he eclipses whatever merit belongs to every sentient being, the śrāvaka and pratyekabuddha included.
"Good man, it is like Ayaḥkṣetra iron — even a small portion of this iron is able to destroy every other iron hook, lock, and chain entirely. The mind of bodhi is likewise: it severs every chain of wrong view, affliction, and craving."
The jambu-river-gold-versus-soot comparison recurs here for the third time across both catalogues (having already appeared in the "mind of bodhi" list's own jambu-gold simile, and in the earlier jewel-simile of Pure Radiant Light) — Fazang treats this specific figure of speech, an overwhelming brightness reducing every competing brightness to the visual likeness of soot, as this whole teaching's preferred way of expressing not merely superiority but a difference of kind so total that the lesser thing loses its own distinguishing quality altogether by comparison. "Ayaḥkṣetra" (阿夜揵多, likely a transliteration related to a term for iron or a specific ore) names a legendary metal whose destructive potency, like several other named substances in this catalogue, may be more literary invention than any actual identifiable mineral.
Part 369 Complete
Two more similes are now given in full. Part 370 turns to a swift wind that moves through the world without obstruction, and to a skilled swimmer who enters the great ocean without fear of the makara sea-monster.
Continue to Part 370 →