Like a Dream of Mountains, Rivers, and the Sea
At that time, the bodhisattva Maitreya said to Sudhana: "Welcome, young man! Have you seen the great bodhisattvas' own inconceivable, sovereign power?" "Indeed," he replied, "I have seen it." It is like a person who, in a dream, beholds mountains and forests, rivers and pools, the great ocean, Sumeru and the heavenly palaces, and every kind of form found throughout the four continents — having seen all this, he awakens filled with boundless joy. Sudhana was likewise: through the great bodhisattva's own awesome spiritual power, he was far removed from every falsehood, seeing that every dharma of the three realms is exactly like a dream; he entered the bodhisattva's own gate of unobstructed wisdom, entering the bodhisattva's own gate of adornment, consummating the bodhisattva's own inconceivable, wondrous skillful means, manifesting the bodhisattva's own sovereign spiritual power.
"Have You Seen It?" — "Indeed, I Have Seen It"
爾時，彌勒菩薩告善財言：「善來童子！汝見樓觀諸大菩薩不可思議自在力不？」「唯然，已見。」譬如有人，夢中覩見山林、河池、大海、須彌諸天宮殿，四天下中一切像類，見如是已，歡喜無量。爾時，善財亦復如是，以大菩薩威神力故，遠離虛妄，見三界法皆悉如夢；菩薩智慧無礙法門，入諸菩薩莊嚴法門，究竟菩薩不可思議諸妙方便，顯現菩薩神力自在。
At that time, the bodhisattva Maitreya said to Sudhana: "Welcome, young man! Have you seen the great bodhisattvas' own inconceivable, sovereign power within the tower?" "Indeed," he replied, "I have seen it."
It is like a person who, in a dream, beholds mountains and forests, rivers and pools, the great ocean, Sumeru and the heavenly palaces, and every kind of form found throughout the four continents — having seen all this, he awakens filled with boundless joy. Sudhana was likewise: through the great bodhisattva's own awesome spiritual power, he was far removed from every falsehood, seeing that every dharma of the three realms is exactly like a dream; he entered the bodhisattva's own gate of unobstructed wisdom, entered the bodhisattva's own gate of adornment, consummated the bodhisattva's own inconceivable, wondrous skillful means, and manifested the bodhisattva's own sovereign spiritual power.
Maitreya's simple question and Sudhana's even simpler answer — after so many parts of overwhelming, inexhaustible vision — mark a deliberate narrative pause: Fazang reads this brief exchange as confirming that the vision was genuinely witnessed and understood, not merely narrated to the reader without any character actually registering it. What follows is the first of an extended sequence of similes Maitreya will use to characterize the nature of what Sudhana has just experienced — beginning with the dream-simile, which Fazang notes carries a precise double point: the dream's own vividness while it lasts (mountains, rivers, palaces, all fully real to the dreamer) and its harmless, joyful dissolution upon waking, together model how Sudhana's own vision can be both completely real in its own mode and yet not a contradiction of ordinary waking reality.
Part 399 Complete
The dream simile is now given in full. Part 400 turns to the next simile in this sequence: the visions that arise before a dying person's own eyes in the intermediate state, whether of hell's torment or of the heavens' own delight, depending on the karma of a life well or poorly lived.
Continue to Part 400 →