Boundless Kalpas Without Aging or Stain
The catalogue continues: it is like Śakra, lord of the gods, who wields vajra to subdue every asura; a bodhisattva-mahāsattva is likewise, wielding the mind of bodhi to destroy every māra, together with every adherent of every other, wrong path. It is like a person who takes a certain alchemical medicine, growing neither thin nor old, extending life without end; a bodhisattva-mahāsattva is likewise, and taking the alchemical medicine that is the mind of bodhi, he cultivates the bodhisattva's own practice amid birth and death across boundless kalpas, unstained by any of it.
Śakra's Vajra and the Medicine That Defies Age
「善男子！譬如釋天執持金剛，降伏一切諸阿脩羅。菩薩摩訶薩亦復如是，執菩提心摧滅諸魔，及餘外道。
「善男子！譬如有人服阿羅娑藥，不瘦不老，延壽無窮。菩薩摩訶薩亦復如是，服菩提心阿羅娑藥，於無量劫在生死中，修菩薩行，無所染著。
"Good man, it is like Śakra, lord of the gods, who wields vajra to subdue every asura. A bodhisattva-mahāsattva is likewise: wielding the mind of bodhi, he destroys every māra, together with every adherent of every other, wrong path.
"Good man, it is like a person who takes a certain alchemical medicine, growing neither thin nor old, extending life without end. A bodhisattva-mahāsattva is likewise: taking the alchemical medicine that is the mind of bodhi, he cultivates the bodhisattva's own practice amid birth and death across boundless kalpas, unstained by any of it."
The alchemical-medicine simile here (阿羅娑藥) reuses the same term already applied earlier in this catalogue for the medicine that transmutes copper into gold, but shifts its emphasis from transformation-without-diminishment to longevity-without-aging — Fazang reads both uses as drawing on the same underlying legendary substance's multiple attributed properties, applied to different facets of bodhicitta as the teaching requires. "Unstained by any of it" (無所染著), closing this pair of similes, restates a theme recurring since the very first catalogue's lotus simile: prolonged exposure to saṃsāra, here figured as boundless kalpas of active bodhisattva practice, produces no defilement whatsoever in a mind sustained by bodhicitta.
Part 373 Complete
Two more similes are now given in full. Part 374 turns to the same alchemical medicine used first in purifying water, and to the life-faculty itself as the foremost among a person's own faculties.
Continue to Part 374 →