Every Land Utterly Distinct, Every Buddha Emanating
At that time, within every mark of excellence, every limb and joint, and every single pore of the bodhisattva Samantabhadra, Sudhana saw an ocean of unspeakable, unspeakable worlds, filled entirely with buddhas; and every one of those tathāgatas was attended by a retinue of unspeakable, unspeakable great bodhisattvas. He saw that every single one of those tathāgatas' own ocean of lands rested upon its own distinct support, and bore its own distinct form and color; the vajra-encircling mountains, the great clouds spreading over everything, the buddha's own arising in the world, and the very Dharma-wheel he turned there — all such things as these differed entirely, in every single case. He further saw the bodhisattva Samantabhadra, throughout the lands of the ten directions, sending forth tathāgata transformation-bodies equal in number to the motes of dust of every world, teaching and transforming sentient beings, causing them to raise the mind set on unsurpassed, perfect awakening.
An Ocean of Worlds, No Two Ever the Same
爾時，善財於普賢菩薩相好肢節，諸毛孔中，見不可說不可說世界海，諸佛充滿；一一如來，以不可說不可說大菩薩眾，以為眷屬。
見彼一一如來剎海，所依不同，形色各異；金剛圍山，大雲彌覆，佛興世間，所轉法輪；如是等事，皆悉不同。又見普賢菩薩於十方剎，出一切世界微塵等如來化身，教化眾生，令發阿耨多羅三藐三菩提心。
At that time, within every mark of excellence, every limb and joint, and every single pore of the bodhisattva Samantabhadra, Sudhana saw an ocean of unspeakable, unspeakable worlds, filled entirely with buddhas; and every one of those tathāgatas was attended by a retinue of unspeakable, unspeakable great bodhisattvas.
He saw that every single one of those tathāgatas' own ocean of lands rested upon its own distinct support, and bore its own distinct form and color; the vajra-encircling mountains, the great clouds spreading over everything, the buddha's own arising in the world, and the very Dharma-wheel he turned there — all such things as these differed entirely, in every single case. He further saw the bodhisattva Samantabhadra, throughout the lands of the ten directions, sending forth tathāgata transformation-bodies equal in number to the motes of dust of every world, teaching and transforming sentient beings, causing them to raise the mind set on unsurpassed, perfect awakening.
This passage returns, at a still greater scale, to the theme first established many parts earlier when Sudhana observed that "no two buddhas are alike" within Maitreya's own tower — here the same insistence on total individuation (distinct support, distinct form and color, distinct Dharma-wheel) is applied not to a bounded set of buddhas but to an entire ocean of unspeakable worlds glimpsed within a single pore. Fazang reads Samantabhadra's own emanation of transformation-bodies "throughout the lands of the ten directions" as the passage's closing return to activity after description: having shown Sudhana the sheer scale and variety of what exists, the vision closes this stretch by showing that Samantabhadra himself is not merely present within this variety but actively teaching throughout every part of it at once.
Part 430 Complete
This vision of countless distinct buddha-worlds is now given in full. Part 431 turns to Sudhana's own reflection on the sheer scale of what he has witnessed — comparing the merit of every good friend he visited across his entire pilgrimage to the merit of this one vision of Samantabhadra alone.
Continue to Part 431 →