A Hundred Thousand Kalpas Like a Single Moment
It is like a person taken hold of by a non-human spirit, who thereby beholds every kind of form and shape, and, should he be questioned or challenged, is able to respond to every one of them; Sudhana was likewise, and through the great bodhisattva's own awesome spiritual power, he was able to discern and rightly reflect upon every dharma in just this way. It is like a person who enters a nāga's own palace, where seven days, half a month, a full year, or even a hundred years pass as though they were but a single moment; Sudhana was likewise, and entering the palace of the bodhisattva Maitreya's own spiritual power, a hundred thousand kalpas passed for him as though they were but a single moment.
Answering Every Question, and Time Itself Dissolving
譬如有人，為非人所持，見種種形類，若有問難，悉能應答；善財童子亦復如是，以大菩薩威神力故，悉能分別，正念思惟一切諸法。譬如有人入於龍宮，七日半月，一歲百歲，謂為須臾；善財童子亦復如是，入彌勒菩薩神力宮殿，於百千劫，謂如須臾。
It is like a person taken hold of by a non-human spirit, who thereby beholds every kind of form and shape, and, should he be questioned or challenged, is able to respond to every one of them. Sudhana the youth was likewise: through the great bodhisattva's own awesome spiritual power, he was able to discern and rightly reflect upon every dharma in just this way.
It is like a person who enters a nāga's own palace, where seven days, half a month, a full year, or even a hundred years pass as though they were but a single moment. Sudhana the youth was likewise: entering the palace of the bodhisattva Maitreya's own spiritual power, a hundred thousand kalpas passed for him as though they were but a single moment.
The possessed-person simile addresses comprehension rather than duration — how Sudhana could discern and rightly reflect on so vast and unfamiliar a vision without any prior preparation — while the nāga-palace simile that follows immediately addresses duration itself, a folk motif of time passing differently within certain marvelous dwellings that recurs across many literary traditions. Fazang reads the pairing as resolving two distinct objections a skeptical listener might raise about this entire tower episode: first, how an ordinary youth could understand what he saw, and second, how so much narrated content (hundreds of parts of this translation alone) could have occurred within what the surrounding narrative frame treats as a single, continuous visit.
Part 401 Complete
Two more similes in this sequence are now given in full. Part 402 turns to a Brahma-palace called Adornment-Treasury, which shows within it every form of the trichiliocosm, and to a meditating monk whose every posture makes present before him whatever object of concentration he holds.
Continue to Part 402 →