Before Long, Equal to Every Buddha
At that time, Sudhana the youth was able himself to consummate the ocean of every great vow that Samantabhadra carries out, and before long would stand equal to every buddha: a single body filling every world equally; equal in land, equal in body, equal in practice, equal in correct awakening, equal in sovereign power, equal in turning the Dharma-wheel, equal in every eloquence, equal in wondrous voice, equal in skillful means, equal in fearless power, equal in a buddha's own abiding, equal in great compassion, and equal in the sovereign power of the inconceivable Dharma-gate.
Thirteen Equalities With Every Buddha
爾時，善財童子能自究竟普賢所行諸大願海，不久當與一切佛等，一身充滿一切世界剎等、身等、行等、正覺等、自在力等、轉法輪等、諸辯才等、妙音聲等、方便等、無畏力等、佛所住等、大慈悲等、不思議法門自在力等。
At that time, Sudhana the youth was able himself to consummate the ocean of every great vow that Samantabhadra carries out, and before long would stand equal to every buddha: a single body filling every world equally; equal in land, equal in body, equal in practice, equal in correct awakening, equal in sovereign power, equal in turning the Dharma-wheel, equal in every eloquence, equal in wondrous voice, equal in skillful means, equal in fearless power, equal in a buddha's own abiding, equal in great compassion, and equal in the sovereign power of the inconceivable Dharma-gate.
This brief but momentous passage is the sūtra's own explicit resolution of the question that has driven Sudhana's entire pilgrimage from its very first teacher onward — how does a bodhisattva learn the bodhisattva's own practice and cultivate the bodhisattva's own path? — answered here not with further instruction but with a direct statement of accomplished consequence: Sudhana himself, having consummated Samantabhadra's own vow-ocean, now stands on the threshold of buddhahood. Fazang reads the thirteen listed equalities as a systematic completion covering every dimension of what a buddha is and does — form (body, land), attainment (awakening, sovereign power), activity (turning the Dharma-wheel, teaching, skillful means), and quality (fearlessness, compassion, the inconceivable) — leaving nothing named elsewhere in this sūtra's own vocabulary of buddhahood unaccounted for.
Part 432 Complete
The sūtra's own culminating declaration is now given in full. Part 433 turns to Samantabhadra's own final teaching in verse — a great hymn opening with praise of the rare appearance of a buddha in the world, likened to the udumbara flower, before unfolding into an extraordinary catalogue of different beings beholding different buddhas and pure lands according to their own karma.
Continue to Part 433 →