A True Child of the Buddha, Words Never False

The hymn briefly shifts perspective within these four stanzas — from Samantabhadra's own first-person address to a third-person description of "the bodhisattvas... reverently listening" to his teaching — a shift Fazang reads as the text momentarily stepping back to frame its own reception, confirming to the reader that the assembly surrounding Samantabhadra receives this teaching exactly as it should be received, before the hymn itself resumes its direct address. "Never once false" (必不虛妄), applied here to Samantabhadra's own words, echoes the traditional formula used of a buddha's own speech throughout Buddhist literature — its application to a bodhisattva, even one as exalted as Samantabhadra, is a further instance of this final episode's consistent placement of Samantabhadra at the very threshold separating bodhisattva from buddha.