A Horse-King Rescuing the Shipwrecked
Sudhana further saw Maitreya praising every buddha, reverently making offerings to them; in another life, as a physician-king, healing every disease, and showing the true path to those who had lost their way upon the right road; in another, as a great ship's own captain, guiding others to a treasure-isle; in another, as a horse-king, bearing sentient beings upon his own back, delivering them from the peril of demons; in another, as a treatise-master, composing scriptures and treatises; in another, as a wheel-turning king, transforming the world through the ten wholesome ways; in another, showing filial obedience to his own parents, drawing near to a good friend, never transgressing his teaching; in another, taking on the forms of a śrāvaka, a pratyekabuddha, a bodhisattva, and even a tathāgata, teaching and transforming sentient beings; and in another, as a Dharma-master, praising the buddha's own Dharma, meditating and reciting, raising every field of merit, erecting stūpas and shrines and wondrous images, making offerings to them with incense, flowers, and garlands in reverence; in another, teaching sentient beings the three refuges, the five precepts, the eight fasts, and the ten wholesome ways, leaving home to study the path, hearing the Dharma and upholding it, with right mindfulness abiding in the mind of bodhi. Sudhana also saw Maitreya, across boundless kalpas, carrying out the six pāramitās, teaching and transforming sentient beings; and he saw the boundless good friends Maitreya had across boundless kalpas.
Physician, Captain, Horse-King, Treatise-Master, Filial Son
又見彌勒讚歎諸佛，恭敬供養；或為醫王，療治眾病；失正路者，示以正道；或為大船師，導至寶洲；或為馬王，荷負眾生，令離鬼難；或為論師，造諸經論；或為轉輪王，十善化世；或見孝順父母，近善知識，不違其教；或見聲聞、緣覺、菩薩、如來形色，教化眾生；或為法師，讚歎佛法，禪思誦念，興諸福業，造立塔廟諸妙形像，以香華鬘恭敬供養；或教眾生三歸、五戒、八齋、十善，出家學道，聞法受持，正念思惟，住菩提心。又見彌勒於無量劫，行六波羅蜜，化眾生事；又見彌勒無量劫中諸善知識。
He further saw Maitreya praising every buddha, reverently making offerings to them; in another life, as a physician-king, healing every disease, and showing the true path to those who had lost their way upon the right road; in another, as a great ship's own captain, guiding others to a treasure-isle; in another, as a horse-king, bearing sentient beings upon his own back, delivering them from the peril of demons; in another, as a treatise-master, composing scriptures and treatises; in another, as a wheel-turning king, transforming the world through the ten wholesome ways; in another, showing filial obedience to his own parents, drawing near to a good friend, never transgressing his teaching; in another, taking on the forms of a śrāvaka, a pratyekabuddha, a bodhisattva, and even a tathāgata, teaching and transforming sentient beings; and in another, as a Dharma-master, praising the buddha's own Dharma, meditating and reciting, raising every field of merit, erecting stūpas and shrines and wondrous images, making offerings to them with incense, flowers, and garlands in reverence; in another, teaching sentient beings the three refuges, the five precepts, the eight fasts, and the ten wholesome ways, leaving home to study the path, hearing the Dharma and upholding it, with right mindfulness abiding in the mind of bodhi. He also saw Maitreya, across boundless kalpas, carrying out the six pāramitās, teaching and transforming sentient beings; and he saw the boundless good friends Maitreya had across boundless kalpas.
The horse-king rescuing beings "from the peril of demons" alludes to a well-known jātaka narrative — found across multiple Buddhist canonical sources — in which a divine flying horse named Valāhaka (or Bālāha) rescues shipwrecked merchants from an island of rākṣasī demonesses who would otherwise devour them, carrying them to safety on his own back while urging them not to look back. Fazang reads Maitreya's own occupation of this well-known role, alongside the equally recognizable ship-captain-to-treasure-isle motif, as the sūtra deliberately grafting Maitreya into a shared stock of jātaka imagery already associated with the bodhisattva path in general — his own biography absorbing narrative types the audience would already know, rather than inventing wholly novel material for every past life shown.
Part 398 Complete
Maitreya's countless past lives are now given in full. Part 399 turns to the moment Maitreya asks Sudhana directly whether he has seen the bodhisattvas' own inconceivable, sovereign power within the tower — and to Sudhana's answer, and the first of an extended series of similes comparing this vision to a dream.
Continue to Part 399 →