Every World at Once, Within a Single Mirror
At that time, within a jeweled mirror, Sudhana saw every tathāgata together with their own retinue; pure worlds, impure worlds, and mixed worlds; worlds that had a buddha, and worlds that had none; upper worlds, middle worlds, and lower worlds; certain worlds exactly like Indra's own net, and certain worlds inverted or lying face-up. He further beheld level, upright worlds, discerning and knowing the distinctions among all five destinies in each. He also saw boundless, asaṃkhyeya great bodhisattvas walking in meditative absorption, contemplating every dharma, raising the mind of great compassion, universally covering sentient beings, composing treatises of every kind, debating the meaning and purport of things; some writing out sūtras; some asking questions, some answering them; and he saw them giving rise to the three kinds of dedication, together with every great vow — beholding all such things as these in full.
Worlds Inverted, Worlds Upright, All Five Destinies Discerned
◎爾時，善財於寶鏡中，見諸如來及其眷屬；諸大菩薩、聲聞、緣覺；淨世界、不淨世界、雜世界；或世界有佛、或世界無佛、或上、中、下世界；或有世界如因陀羅網；或有飜覆仰伏世界。又復覩見平正世界，悉分別知五道別異。又見無量阿僧祇諸大菩薩，經行禪定，觀察諸法，發大悲心，普覆眾生，造種種論，辯眾義趣、或書經卷；或問、或答，或見出生三種迴向，及諸大願，悉皆覩見如是等事。
At that time, within a jeweled mirror, Sudhana saw every tathāgata together with their own retinue, together with every great bodhisattva, śrāvaka, and pratyekabuddha; pure worlds, impure worlds, and mixed worlds; worlds that had a buddha, and worlds that had none; upper worlds, middle worlds, and lower worlds; certain worlds exactly like Indra's own net, and certain worlds inverted or lying face-up. He further beheld level, upright worlds, discerning and knowing in each the distinctions among all five destinies. He also saw boundless, asaṃkhyeya great bodhisattvas walking in meditative absorption, contemplating every dharma, raising the mind of great compassion, universally covering sentient beings, composing treatises of every kind, debating the meaning and purport of things; some writing out sūtras, some asking questions, some answering them; and he saw them giving rise to the three kinds of dedication, together with every great vow — beholding all such things as these in full.
"Worlds like Indra's own net" (因陀羅網) makes explicit, for the first time by name, the very image (Indrajāla, a net of jewels each reflecting every other jewel) already implicit in the tower's own structure of nested, mutually non-obstructing towers — Fazang treats this naming as the sūtra's own signal that the mirror-vision and the tower's architecture are meant to be understood together as expressions of the same underlying principle. "Inverted or lying face-up" worlds, alongside "level, upright" ones, extends the vision's earlier insistence on total particularity to spatial orientation itself: even a world's own basic orientation in space is not fixed or singular but varies without limit across the totality the mirror reveals.
Part 395 Complete
The jeweled mirror's vision of every world is now given in full. Part 396 turns to radiant pillars, fragrant pearls, and wondrous lotus flowers as large as chariot wheels, each containing within it beings of every kind bowing in worship before the buddhas.
Continue to Part 396 →