Not One Part in a Hundred Thousand
At that time, Sudhana reflected: the merit he had gained by drawing near to good friends equal in number to the motes of dust of a single buddha-world, across his entire pilgrimage, did not amount to one part in a hundred of the merit gained from this vision of the bodhisattva Samantabhadra — not one part in a hundred thousand myriad, nor expressible by any calculation or analogy at all. Why is this so? Because Sudhana, in every single thought-moment, now enters unspeakable, unspeakable oceans of buddha-worlds, attaining treasuries of merit equal to unspeakable, unspeakable motes of dust; knowing the ocean of every buddha arising in the world in due sequence; the ocean of every bodhisattva assembly, encircled by its own retinue; understanding the very faculties of sentient beings, manifesting sovereign power to deliver and transform them. In one world he might carry out the bodhisattva's own practice for a single kalpa; in another, he carries it out for unspeakable, unspeakable numbers of world-dust-mote kalpas. He neither vanishes from this world nor is born within that one, and yet he is able to teach and transform the sentient beings of boundless, limitless worlds, causing them to raise the mind set on unsurpassed, perfect awakening.
Neither Vanishing From This World Nor Born in That One
爾時，善財童子經由親近一佛世界微塵等諸善知識所得功德，於見普賢菩薩所得功德，百分不及一，百千萬分乃至算數譬諭所不能及；何以故？善財童子於念念中，入不可說不可說佛世界海，得不可說不可說微塵等諸功德藏；知諸佛海，次第興世；菩薩眾海，眷屬圍遶；了眾生根，現自在力而化度之。或一世界於一劫中，修菩薩行；乃至不可說不可說世界微塵等劫，修菩薩行。不此世界沒，不彼世界生，而能教化無量無邊世界眾生，令發阿耨多羅三藐三菩提心。
At that time, Sudhana reflected: the merit he had gained by drawing near to good friends equal in number to the motes of dust of a single buddha-world, across his entire pilgrimage, did not amount to one part in a hundred of the merit gained from this vision of the bodhisattva Samantabhadra — not one part in a hundred thousand myriad, nor expressible by any calculation or analogy at all. Why is this so? Because Sudhana, in every single thought-moment, now enters unspeakable, unspeakable oceans of buddha-worlds, attaining treasuries of merit equal to unspeakable, unspeakable motes of dust; knowing the ocean of every buddha arising in the world in due sequence; the ocean of every bodhisattva assembly, encircled by its own retinue; understanding the very faculties of sentient beings, manifesting sovereign power to deliver and transform them. In one world he might carry out the bodhisattva's own practice for a single kalpa; in another, he carries it out for unspeakable, unspeakable numbers of world-dust-mote kalpas. He neither vanishes from this world nor is born within that one, and yet he is able to teach and transform the sentient beings of boundless, limitless worlds, causing them to raise the mind set on unsurpassed, perfect awakening.
This is the sūtra's own explicit final ranking of Sudhana's entire pilgrimage: every one of the fifty-two good friends visited before this point, however individually precious, together amount to less than a fraction of what this single culminating vision has now granted — not because those teachers were somehow lesser, but because Samantabhadra's own practice represents the consummation toward which every one of them was already, in Maitreya's own words several parts earlier, quietly directing Sudhana all along. Fazang reads "he neither vanishes from this world nor is born within that one" as this passage's own precise technical description of what it now means for Sudhana to act with a bodhisattva's own sovereign power: presence in one place is no longer purchased at the cost of absence from another, the very paradox of simultaneous, unobstructed multiplicity that Samantabhadra's own body has demonstrated at every scale throughout this entire episode.
Part 431 Complete
Sudhana's own reflection on the incomparable merit of this vision is now given in full. Part 432 turns to the sūtra's own culminating declaration: Sudhana has now consummated Samantabhadra's own ocean of great vows and practices, and will before long stand equal to every buddha himself.
Continue to Part 432 →