Whoever Hears This With Joy, Swiftly Attains the Path
The hymn reaches its close: it is like what is seen in a dream, or like a painting in empty space — neither form nor formless, neither a mark nor without any mark, neither existent nor non-existent, its own nature exactly like space. It is like a sea-mani jewel, able to bring forth every kind of treasure, and every light that sentient beings see — yet that light itself has nothing that inherently exists. The guide is likewise: though existing, he is not inherently existent, gathering no treasury of merit within any single place. The great sage manifests within space, exactly as his own true, ultimate nature is; nirvāṇa, freedom from desire, and cessation — all of these are of a single nature. The motes of dust within the minds of sentient beings, the drops of water in the sea, could all be counted; the vastness of space itself could be measured — yet the buddha's own merit, it is said, can never be exhausted. Whoever hears this teaching with joy, with a mind of faith free of any doubt, swiftly accomplishes the unsurpassed path, becoming equal to every tathāgata.
Samantabhadra's Final Hymn Concludes
「譬如夢所見， 亦如空中畫，
非色非無色， 非相非無相，
非有亦非無， 其性如虛空。
如海摩尼寶， 能出種種寶，
眾生諸光明， 而光無所有。
導師亦如是， 雖有而非有，
不於一處中， 積集功德寶，
大仙現虛空， 如自性實際，
涅槃離欲滅， 皆悉是一性。
眾生心微塵， 海水渧可數，
虛空亦可量， 佛德說無盡。
聞此法歡喜， 信心無疑者，
速成無上道， 與諸如來等。」
"It is like what is seen in a dream, or like a painting in empty space —
Neither form nor formless, neither a mark nor without any mark,
Neither existent nor non-existent, its own nature exactly like space.
It is like a sea-mani jewel, able to bring forth every kind of treasure,
And every light that sentient beings see — yet that light itself has nothing that inherently exists.
The guide is likewise: though existing, he is not inherently existent,
Gathering no treasury of merit within any single place;
The great sage manifests within space, exactly as his own true, ultimate nature is;
Nirvāṇa, freedom from desire, and cessation — all of these are of a single nature.
The motes of dust within the minds of sentient beings, the drops of water in the sea, could all be counted,
The vastness of space itself could be measured — yet the buddha's own merit, it is said, can never be exhausted.
Whoever hears this teaching with joy, with a mind of faith free of any doubt,
Swiftly accomplishes the unsurpassed path, becoming equal to every tathāgata."
This is the very last teaching of the entire Gaṇḍavyūha, and Fazang reads its closing move — declaring that "nirvāṇa, freedom from desire, and cessation... are all of a single nature" — as the sūtra's own final refusal to distinguish, at the deepest level, between the goal (nirvāṇa) and every step said to lead toward it: the boundless catalogues of similes, the countless buddha-lands, the hundred and ten good friends Sudhana visited, and the single, unified nature underlying it all turn out to be one and the same reality seen from different vantage points. The hymn's final promise — that whoever hears it "with joy, with a mind of faith free of any doubt" swiftly becomes equal to every tathāgata — extends directly to the sūtra's own reader or hearer the very same trajectory Sudhana's own pilgrimage has just completed, closing the text by opening the same path to whoever encounters it.
Part 453 Complete — Samantabhadra's Own Teaching Concludes
Samantabhadra's final hymn, and with it his own teaching to Sudhana, is now complete in full. Part 454 turns to the closing of fascicle sixty itself — the very last fascicle of this entire sixty-fascicle translation — and to the translator's own historical postscript recording exactly how, when, and by whom this Chinese translation of the Buddhāvataṃsaka-sūtra was made.
Continue to Part 454 →