Eighty-Four Thousand Lights From a Single Mouth
The hymn continues: from the buddha's own mouth there pour forth wondrous lights, eighty-four thousand in number, universally illuminating every world, dispelling every affliction there. Endowed with the merit of wisdom, according with sentient beings in three ways, he transcends the world like space itself, yet constantly manifests within the world. Although he manifests, according with the world, the suffering of birth, old age, sickness, and death, or manifests instead an abiding, long-enduring lifespan, his own nature remains like space, unchanged. The tathāgata discerns and knows every class of sentient being, every one of their faculties and their nature and desires, causing them to abide in all-wisdom.
Manifesting Birth, Old Age, Sickness, and Death, Yet Unchanged as Space
「佛口放妙光， 八萬四千數，
普照諸世界， 除滅眾煩惱。
具足智功德， 三種順眾生，
離世如虛空， 常現於世間。
雖復隨世現， 生老病死苦，
或復現住壽， 其性如虛空。
如來分別知， 一切眾生類，
諸根及性欲， 令住薩婆若。」
"From the buddha's own mouth there pour forth wondrous lights, eighty-four thousand in number,
Universally illuminating every world, dispelling every affliction there.
Endowed with the merit of wisdom, according with sentient beings in three ways,
He transcends the world like space itself, yet constantly manifests within the world.
Although he manifests, according with the world, the suffering of birth, old age, sickness, and death,
Or manifests instead an abiding, long-enduring lifespan, his own nature remains like space, unchanged.
The tathāgata discerns and knows every class of sentient being,
Every one of their faculties and their nature and desires, causing them to abide in all-wisdom."
The eighty-four thousand lights from the buddha's own mouth directly parallel the eighty-four thousand defilements and their eighty-four thousand antidote-teachings named several stanzas earlier — Fazang reads this precise numerical correspondence as no coincidence, but the hymn's own way of stating that each specific affliction has, quite literally, its own specific ray of light assigned to dispel it. "His own nature remains like space, unchanged," repeated here for a third time across this stretch of the hymn, functions as this whole sequence's refrain: whatever the buddha manifests outwardly — birth, sickness, death, or a lifespan of any length — never touches or alters what he actually is, exactly as clouds and weather never alter the sky they pass through.
Part 448 Complete
This teaching on the buddha's own unchanging nature is now given in full. Part 449 turns to how the buddhas manifest their own dignified deportment according to whatever needs transformation — appearing among śrāvakas as one who has left home, and among brāhmaṇas as an ascetic practicing severe austerities.
Continue to Part 449 →