A Gate Only a One-More-Birth Bodhisattva Attains
Having arisen from samādhi, Maitreya said to Sudhana: "You have beheld this bodhisattva's own sovereign, self-existing spiritual power, his great vows and merit, the adornment he depends on as its fruit, the extraordinary and profound practices he has cultivated; the Dharma-gates by which one emerges from the path of birth and death, boundless in their own adornment; the great vows of every buddha; the bodhisattva's own inconceivable samādhis — have you seen all such things as these, or not?" Sudhana answered: "Indeed, I have seen them, through my good friend's own awesome spiritual power." Sudhana then said: "Great sage, what is this Dharma-gate called?" Maitreya answered: "It is called the gate of the treasury of right mindfulness that reflects upon the wisdom of the three times. Good man, only a bodhisattva bound to a single more birth attains an inconceivable, unspeakable Dharma-gate such as this."
"What Is This Dharma-Gate Called?"
從定起已，而告之曰：「汝覩見此菩薩神力自在，大願功德，依果菩薩莊嚴，修習奇特諸深妙行；出生死道一切法門，無量莊嚴，諸佛大願，不可思議菩薩三昧；如是等事，汝悉見不？」
善財答言：「唯然，已見。蒙善知識威神力故。」
爾時，善財白言：「大聖！此何法門？」
答言：「入三世智正念思惟莊嚴藏法門。善男子！一生菩薩得如是等不可說不可說法門。」
Having arisen from samādhi, Maitreya said to Sudhana: "You have beheld this bodhisattva's own sovereign, self-existing spiritual power, his great vows and merit, the adornment he depends on as its fruit, the extraordinary and profound practices he has cultivated; the Dharma-gates by which one emerges from the path of birth and death, boundless in their own adornment; the great vows of every buddha; the bodhisattva's own inconceivable samādhis — have you seen all such things as these, or not?"
Sudhana answered: "Indeed, I have seen them, through my good friend's own awesome spiritual power."
At that time, Sudhana said: "Great sage, what is this Dharma-gate called?"
Maitreya answered: "It is called the gate of the treasury of right mindfulness that reflects upon the wisdom of the three times. Good man, only a bodhisattva bound to a single more birth attains an inconceivable, unspeakable Dharma-gate such as this."
The name Maitreya gives this gate — "the treasury of right mindfulness that reflects upon the wisdom of the three times" — retroactively unifies the vision's own apparent variety (biography, cosmology, sound, mirror-images, past lives) under a single description: all of it was Sudhana's own right mindfulness reflecting upon wisdom spanning past, present, and future at once, rather than several distinct kinds of revelation. Fazang reads the restriction that "only a bodhisattva bound to a single more birth" (一生菩薩, ekajāti-pratibaddha, the very status Maitreya himself holds and which Sudhana's own list of Maitreya's qualities named several parts earlier) can attain this gate as significant: the vision was not a generic teaching device available to any practitioner, but a capacity specific to the very highest, penultimate stage of the bodhisattva path — which raises, without yet answering, the question of how an ordinary youth like Sudhana could witness it at all, a question the coming exchange addresses directly.
Part 403 Complete
Maitreya has named the gate Sudhana entered. Part 404 turns to Sudhana's next question — where did all these extraordinary, adorned things come from? — and to Maitreya's answer, comparing their arising to a nāga's own rain and an illusionist's own conjured scenes.
Continue to Part 404 →