Śākyamuni Newly Awakened, None Can Fathom It
The hymn continues, turning to Śākyamuni's own path: some see Śākyamuni Buddha newly attaining complete, correct awakening, benefiting every multitude of beings — none at all can fathom it. Some see him as a bodhisattva, making offerings to every buddha; some see him abiding at the youth-ground, manifesting sovereign power. Some see him carrying out giving, upholding precepts, practicing forbearance, and exerting diligence, entering deeply into every meditative absorption, abiding at the ground of wisdom and skillful means. Some see him consummating his abiding at the ground of all-species wisdom, bringing forth every samādhi, dhāraṇī, and penetrating insight. Some see him, across boundless kalpas, cultivating the bodhisattva's own practice, attaining non-regression, and the prediction of ambrosia poured upon his own crown.
Every Stage of the Path, Each Seen by a Different Beholder
「或見釋迦文， 初成等正覺，
饒益諸群生， 一切莫能測。
或見為菩薩， 供養一切佛，
或住童子地， 顯現自在力，
或見行施戒， 忍辱勤精進，
深入諸禪定， 住慧方便地。
或見究竟住， 一切種智地，
三昧陀羅尼， 出生諸通明。
或見無量劫， 修習菩薩行，
逮得不退轉， 甘露灌頂記。」
"Some see Śākyamuni Buddha newly attaining complete, correct awakening,
Benefiting every multitude of beings — none at all can fathom it.
Some see him as a bodhisattva, making offerings to every buddha,
Some see him abiding at the youth-ground, manifesting sovereign power,
Some see him carrying out giving, upholding precepts, practicing forbearance, and exerting diligence,
Entering deeply into every meditative absorption, abiding at the ground of wisdom and skillful means.
Some see him consummating his abiding at the ground of all-species wisdom,
Bringing forth every samādhi, dhāraṇī, and penetrating insight.
Some see him, across boundless kalpas, cultivating the bodhisattva's own practice,
Attaining non-regression, and the prediction of ambrosia poured upon his own crown."
This stretch turns from the boundless, unnamed multiplicity of the preceding stanzas to a single, historically specific figure — Śākyamuni himself — retold not as a single linear biography but as a set of simultaneously beheld stages, exactly as the entire hymn has treated every other buddha and land. Fazang reads "the youth-ground" (童子地, one of the traditional bodhisattva grounds associated with a youthful, still-developing stage of practice) alongside the later stages of giving, precepts, forbearance, and diligence as together retracing the same sequence of pāramitās this whole sūtra's earlier catalogues have repeatedly named — Śākyamuni's own path serving here as the concrete, once-lived instance of the abstract stages taught throughout.
Part 440 Complete
This retelling of Śākyamuni's own path is now given in full. Part 441 continues with his manifestation across every station of the three realms, and with the classical eight aspects of a buddha's own life — descent from Tuṣita, renunciation, the bodhimaṇḍa, and the erecting of stūpas after his final nirvāṇa.
Continue to Part 441 →