When I Attain Awakening, You Will Both See Me
"Good man, throughout the south I manifest and deliver beings according to whatever each one needs; when this life comes to its end, I will be born in the Tuṣita heaven. For the sake of delivering the gods there, I will reveal supreme, wondrous merit of wisdom, dissolving their craving and thirst for desire, causing them to know that every conditioned formation is entirely impermanent — for once a heavenly destiny's own lifespan reaches its height, decline is certain to follow. Entering the Great Vehicle, the one-more-birth bodhisattvas will all gather there like clouds. For the sake of teaching my own fellow practitioners, I will wish to open the transformation-lotus manifested by the World-Honored Śākyamuni, and will manifest rebirth within it. Good man, when my own lifespan there comes to its end and I descend and attain complete, perfect awakening, both you and Mañjuśrī together will behold me."
Gathering Like Clouds in the Tuṣita Heaven
善男子！我於南方，隨諸眾生所應，示現而化度之；於此命終，生兜率天。為欲化度彼諸天故，顯現勝妙智慧功德，消欲渴愛，令知諸行皆悉無常，天趣壽命，盛必有衰，入摩訶衍一生菩薩，皆悉雲集；為欲教化諸同行故，欲開釋迦牟尼世尊所化蓮華，現彼受生。善男子！我於彼中，壽終下生，成正覺時，汝及文殊師利俱得見我。
"Good man, throughout the south I manifest and deliver beings according to whatever each one needs; when this life comes to its end, I will be born in the Tuṣita heaven. For the sake of delivering the gods there, I will reveal supreme, wondrous merit of wisdom, dissolving their craving and thirst for desire, causing them to know that every conditioned formation is entirely impermanent — for once a heavenly destiny's own lifespan reaches its height, decline is certain to follow. Entering the Great Vehicle, the one-more-birth bodhisattvas will all gather there like clouds. For the sake of teaching my own fellow practitioners, I will wish to open the transformation-lotus manifested by the World-Honored Śākyamuni, and will manifest rebirth within it. Good man, when my own lifespan there comes to its end and I descend and attain complete, perfect awakening, both you and Mañjuśrī together will behold me."
This is the sūtra's own explicit statement of the well-known Maitreya prophecy — his current dwelling in the Tuṣita heaven, and his eventual descent to this world to become the next buddha after Śākyamuni — placed here directly in Maitreya's own first-person voice rather than narrated about him. "Śākyamuni's own transformation-lotus" (釋迦牟尼世尊所化蓮華) is an obscure and striking detail Fazang does not gloss at length, but the plain sense links Maitreya's coming birth to some prior transformation associated with Śākyamuni himself. The prophecy's naming of both Sudhana and Mañjuśrī together as future witnesses closes a circle this whole pilgrimage began: Mañjuśrī, Sudhana's very first teacher, and Maitreya, his fifty-first, are bound together as the two figures who will stand at Maitreya's own eventual buddhahood.
Part 410 Complete
Maitreya's own prophecy is now given in full. Part 411 turns to the pivotal moment this entire episode has been building toward: Maitreya instructs Sudhana to return to Mañjuśrī, revealing that every good friend Sudhana has visited succeeded only through Mañjuśrī's own spiritual power.
Continue to Part 411 →