Avalokiteśvara and the Bodhisattvas of That Land
觀音勢至・菩薩德行
Two bodhisattvas, foremost of all — Avalokiteśvara and Mahāsthāmaprāpta, who once practiced in this very world. Then a portrait, built entirely from simile, of what a bodhisattva of that land actually is.
- This part covers
- Avalokiteśvara and Mahāsthāmaprāpta, named as the land's two foremost bodhisattvas; the physical and spiritual attainments of anyone reborn there; the bodhisattvas' meal-time pilgrimage across the ten directions to make offerings; the teaching hall where Amitāyus expounds the Dharma; a long closing chain of similes for what a bodhisattva of that land actually is.
31. Two Bodhisattvas, Foremost of All
佛告阿難：彼國菩薩，皆當究竟一生補處。除其本願，為眾生故。以弘誓功德，而自莊嚴。普欲度脫一切眾生。阿難。彼佛國中。諸聲聞眾身光一尋。菩薩光明照百由旬。有二菩薩最尊第一。威神光明。普照三千大千世界。阿難白佛：彼二菩薩其號云何？佛言：一名觀世音。二名大勢至。是二菩薩，於此國土修菩薩行，命終轉化生彼佛國。
The Buddha told Ānanda: "The bodhisattvas of that land shall all, without exception, ultimately reach the stage of one more birth before buddhahood — except those who, by their own original vow, for the sake of beings, adorn themselves with the merit of the great vow, wishing broadly to deliver every being. Ānanda, in that buddha's land, the śrāvakas' bodies shine with a light one fathom around, and the bodhisattvas' light illumines a hundred yojanas; but there are two bodhisattvas foremost and supreme of all, whose majestic light shines fully across a great trichiliocosm." Ānanda said to the Buddha: "What are the names of these two bodhisattvas?" The Buddha said: "One is named Avalokiteśvara, and the other Mahāsthāmaprāpta. These two bodhisattvas practiced the bodhisattva conduct in this world of ours, and, when their lives here ended, were reborn by transformation in that buddha's land."
Easy to miss on a first reading: this sūtra states plainly that Avalokiteśvara and Mahāsthāmaprāpta practiced the bodhisattva path in this very sahā world — the world its own audience is sitting in — before their lives here ended and they were reborn, by transformation, in Sukhāvatī. Popular devotion to Avalokiteśvara in East Asia tends to treat the bodhisattva as an eternally established figure without this kind of origin story; Huiyuan reads the detail as continuous with the sūtra's larger argument that Sukhāvatī's most exalted inhabitants are not a separate order of being from the practitioners reading this text, but beings who walked the same path available to anyone in this section's three grades of rebirth, one section earlier.
32. A Meal-Time Pilgrimage Across the Ten Directions
阿難。其有眾生生彼國者，皆悉具足三十二相。智慧成滿深入諸法。究暢要妙神通無礙。諸根明利。其鈍根者成就二忍。其利根者得阿僧祇無生法忍。又彼菩薩。乃至成佛不更惡趣。神通自在常識宿命。除生他方五濁惡世。示現同彼如我國也。佛語阿難。彼國菩薩承佛威神。一食之頃往詣十方無量世界。恭敬供養諸佛世尊。隨心所念。華香伎樂衣蓋幢幡。無數無量供養之具。自然化生應念即至。珍妙殊特非世所有。轉以奉散諸佛及菩薩聲聞大眾。在虛空中化成華蓋。光色晃耀香氣普熏。其華周圓四百里者。如是轉倍。乃覆三千大千世界。隨其前後以次化沒。其諸菩薩僉然欣悅。於虛空中共奏天樂。以微妙音歌歎佛德。聽受經法歡喜無量。供養佛已未食之前。忽然輕舉還其本國。
Ānanda, all beings born in that land are fully endowed with the thirty-two marks; their wisdom is complete and penetrates deeply into every dharma, thoroughly mastering its essential subtlety, their spiritual powers unobstructed, their faculties bright and keen. Those of duller faculty accomplish the first two of the three kinds of acceptance described earlier; those of sharper faculty attain the acceptance of the birthless nature of things across asaṃkhyeya aeons. And those bodhisattvas, all the way until their own buddhahood, never again fall into an evil destiny; their spiritual powers are free and unobstructed, and they constantly know their own past lives — except when, taking birth in another world's evil age of the five turbidities, they choose to appear there in a form matching that world, just as I have done in this one. The Buddha said to Ānanda: "The bodhisattvas of that land, relying on the Buddha's majestic power, go, within the time it takes to eat a single meal, to the immeasurable worlds of the ten directions, to pay homage and make offerings to the buddhas and world-honored ones there. According to whatever their mind conceives — flowers, incense, music, robes, canopies, and banners — offerings beyond number and measure appear spontaneously, arriving the instant they are thought of, rare and wondrous beyond anything the ordinary world possesses, and they scatter these in offering to the buddhas and to the assembled bodhisattvas and śrāvakas. In the empty sky these transform into a canopy of flowers, its light and color shining brilliantly, its fragrance spreading everywhere; a single such flower may measure four hundred li around, and, doubling again and again, comes to cover an entire great trichiliocosm. In due order, one after another, these canopies then dissolve away. All the bodhisattvas there rejoice together, and in the empty sky play heavenly music in unison, singing with subtle voices in praise of the Buddha's virtue; and, having listened to and received the teaching of the Dharma, filled with joy beyond measure, before the offerings they have made are even finished, they rise up lightly of themselves and return to their own land.
This passage closely echoes the morning offering-round described in the Amitābha Sūtra: there, beings of Sukhāvatī fill their robes with flowers each morning, make offerings to buddhas of other worlds, and return home in time for the midday meal; here, the same unobstructed mobility is described at greater length and explicitly tied to the time it takes to eat a single meal. Huiyuan reads the recurrence of this same image across both sūtras — one translated by Kumārajīva, the other by Saṃghavarman, a century and a half and a different translator apart — as showing how stable this particular picture of Pure Land life had already become by the time both texts reached China: unobstructed travel to make offerings, not idle rest, as what "peace and bliss" actually consists of for its more advanced inhabitants.
Also worth noting: the sūtra states plainly that even bodhisattvas of duller faculty in this land attain only the first two of the "three kinds of acceptance" introduced in Part 4 through the bodhi tree — not automatically the third and deepest, the acceptance of the birthless nature of things. Rebirth in Sukhāvatī is not described here as erasing all difference in spiritual capacity between practitioners; it removes the risk of falling back, but not, apparently, every gradation of attainment.
33. The Teaching Hall, and a Land Without Envy
佛語阿難：無量壽佛，為諸聲聞菩薩大眾頒宣法時。都悉集會七寶講堂。廣宣道教演暢妙法。莫不歡喜心解得道。即時四方自然風起。普吹寶樹出五音聲。雨無量妙華隨風周遍。自然供養如是不絕。一切諸天皆齎天上百千華香萬種伎樂。供養其佛及諸菩薩聲聞大眾。普散華香奏諸音樂。前後來往更相開避。當斯之時。熙然快樂不可勝言。佛語阿難。生彼佛國諸菩薩等。所可講說常宣正法。隨順智慧無違無失。於其國土所有萬物。無我所心無染著心。去來進止情無所係。隨意自在無所適莫。無彼無我無競無訟。於諸眾生得大慈悲饒益之心。柔軟調伏無忿恨心。離蓋清淨無厭怠心。等心勝心。深心定心。愛法樂法喜法之心。滅諸煩惱。離惡趣心。究竟一切菩薩所行。具足成就無量功德。得深禪定諸通明慧。遊志七覺修心佛法。肉眼清徹靡不分了。天眼通達無量無限。法眼觀察究竟諸道。慧眼見真能度彼岸。佛眼具足覺了法性。以無礙智為人演說。等觀三界空無所有。志求佛法具諸辯才。除滅眾生煩惱之患。從如來生解法如如。善知習滅音聲方便。不欣世語樂在正論。修諸善本志崇佛道。知一切法皆悉寂滅。生身煩惱二餘俱盡聞甚深法心不疑懼。常能修行其大悲者。深遠微妙靡不覆載。究竟一乘至于彼岸。決斷疑網慧由心出。於佛教法該羅無外。
The Buddha said to Ānanda: "When Amitāyus Buddha proclaims the Dharma for his assembled śrāvakas and bodhisattvas, they all gather together in the hall of the seven treasures, where he broadly proclaims the teaching of the way and expounds the subtle Dharma at length, and there is no one who does not rejoice, whose mind is not released, who does not attain the way. At that moment a spontaneous wind rises from the four directions, blowing through the jeweled trees so that they send out their five musical tones, and a rain of immeasurable, wondrous flowers falls, spreading everywhere on the wind — an offering, arising of itself, that never ceases. Every deva brings a hundred thousand kinds of heavenly flowers and incense, and ten thousand kinds of music, to make offering to that buddha and to his assembled bodhisattvas and śrāvakas, scattering flowers and incense everywhere and playing every kind of music, coming and going before and behind, each yielding place to another — and at such a time, the harmonious joy of it cannot be told in full." The Buddha said to Ānanda: "The bodhisattvas born in that buddha's land, in whatever they expound, constantly proclaim the true Dharma, according with wisdom, without error or fault. Toward all the myriad things belonging to that land, they hold no thought of 'mine,' no mind of attachment; in their going and coming, their advancing and stopping, their feelings are bound to nothing; they are free and at ease as they wish, with no fixed preference either way. They hold no notion of 'other' or 'self,' no contention, no dispute. Toward all beings they hold a mind of great compassion that benefits and enriches; a mind gentle, tamed, and free of resentment or anger; a mind free of every hindrance, pure and never weary or indolent; a mind of equanimity, a mind of excellence, a mind profound, a mind settled; a mind that loves the Dharma, delights in the Dharma, and rejoices in the Dharma. They have extinguished every affliction, and their mind is free of any inclination toward an evil destiny. They have brought every bodhisattva practice to its very completion, and are fully endowed with immeasurable merit. They have attained profound meditative concentration and every penetrating, luminous wisdom; their resolve ranges freely among the seven factors of awakening, cultivating the mind in the Buddha-dharma. Their fleshly eye is clear and pure, distinguishing everything without exception; their divine eye penetrates without any limit; their Dharma eye observes and fully understands every path; their wisdom eye sees the truth and is able to cross to the farthest shore; their buddha eye is fully endowed, awakened to the true nature of all things. With unobstructed wisdom they expound the teaching for others, viewing the three realms with equanimity as empty and without any real existence. Resolved to seek the Buddha-dharma, they are endowed with every kind of eloquence, and eliminate the affliction and suffering of every being. Born from the Tathāgata, they understand that all dharmas are just as they are; skilled in knowing the arising and cessation of sound through skillful means, they take no delight in worldly talk, and find their joy only in true discourse. Cultivating every root of goodness, their resolve reveres the buddha-path; knowing that every dharma is, in the end, utterly still, they have exhausted both the residue of birth itself and the residue of affliction, and on hearing the most profound teaching, their mind holds no doubt or fear. Constantly able to practice great compassion, its depth and subtlety cover and sustain everything without exception; they have brought the single vehicle to its very completion, reaching the farthest shore, and resolve every net of doubt, their wisdom arising directly from the mind itself. In the Buddha's own teaching, they encompass everything, leaving nothing outside it."
The five eyes named here — the fleshly eye, the divine eye, the Dharma eye, the wisdom eye, and the buddha eye — are a standard doctrinal set describing five progressively deeper modes of perception, from ordinary physical sight up to a buddha's complete understanding of the true nature of things; readers who have gone through this site's Diamond Sūtra translation will recognize this same fivefold list from that sūtra's own treatment of it. Huiyuan reads its appearance here as confirming that the bodhisattvas of this land are not simply blissful but are actively engaged in the same graded path of insight taught throughout the wider Mahāyāna canon — Sukhāvatī accelerates and secures that path, on this reading, rather than replacing it with something categorically different.
The list of what these bodhisattvas do not feel — no thought of "mine," no notion of "other" or "self," no contention, no envy, no partiality of love or hatred — is worth reading as a direct, itemized answer to an unspoken question a careful reader might ask: in a land with two supreme bodhisattvas and countless others of lesser attainment, wouldn't hierarchy breed rivalry? The text's answer is to specify, at some length, the exact psychological state that makes rivalry impossible in the first place.
34. Thirty Similes for What a Bodhisattva Is
智慧如大海。三昧如山王。慧光明淨超踰日月。清白之法具足圓滿。猶如雪山。照諸功德等一淨故。猶如大地。淨穢好惡無異心故。猶如淨水。洗除塵勞諸垢染故。猶如火王。燒滅一切煩惱薪故。猶如大風。行諸世界無障礙故。猶如虛空。於一切有無所著故。猶如蓮華。於諸世間無染污故。猶如大乘。運載群萌出生死故。猶如重雲。震大法雷覺未覺故。猶如大雨。雨甘露法潤眾生故。如金剛山。眾魔外道不能動故。如梵天王。於諸善法最上首故。如尼拘類樹。普覆一切故。如優曇鉢華。希有難遇故。如金翅鳥。威伏外道故。如眾遊禽。無所藏積故。猶如牛王。無能勝故。猶如象王。善調伏故。如師子王。無所畏故。曠若虛空。大慈等故。摧滅嫉心不望勝故。專樂求法心無厭足。常欲廣說志無疲倦。擊法鼓。建法幢。曜慧日。除癡闇。修六和敬。常行法施。志勇精進心不退弱。為世燈明最勝福田。常為師導等無憎愛。唯樂正道無餘欣慼。拔諸欲刺以安群生。功德殊勝莫不尊敬。滅三垢障遊諸神通。因力緣力。意力願力。方便之力。常力善力。定力慧力。多聞之力。施戒忍辱。精進禪定。智慧之力。正念止觀諸通明力。如法調伏諸眾生力。如是等力一切具足。身色相好功德辯才。具足莊嚴無與等者。恭敬供養無量諸佛。常為諸佛所共稱歎。究竟菩薩諸波羅蜜。修空無相無願三昧不生不滅諸三昧門。遠離聲聞緣覺之地。阿難。彼諸菩薩。成就如是無量功德。我但為汝畧言之耳。若廣說者。百千萬劫不能窮盡。
Their wisdom is like the great ocean; their meditative concentration is like the king of mountains; the light of their wisdom, pure and bright, surpasses the sun and moon; the pure and undefiled Dharma is fully and completely theirs. They are like the snowy mountains, illumining every merit with an equal purity. They are like the great earth, holding no differing mind toward the pure or the impure, the fair or the foul. They are like clear water, washing away the toil and every stain of the world. They are like the king of fire, burning away the very fuel of every affliction. They are like the great wind, moving through every world without obstruction. They are like empty space, attached to nothing among all that exists. They are like the lotus flower, undefiled by anything in the world. They are like the Great Vehicle itself, carrying every being out of birth and death. They are like a heavy cloud, thundering the great Dharma-thunder to awaken the unawakened. They are like a great rain, raining down the sweet dew of the Dharma to nourish every being. They are like a mountain of vajra, which no host of demons or false teachers can shake. They are like the king of the Brahmā heaven, foremost among every wholesome dharma. They are like the banyan tree, covering everything beneath it. They are like the udumbara flower, rare and difficult to encounter. They are like the garuḍa, whose majesty subdues every false teacher. They are like birds that simply roam, hoarding and storing up nothing at all. They are like the king of oxen, whom none can surpass. They are like the king of elephants, well tamed and gentle. They are like the lion, the king of beasts, fearing nothing at all. Vast as empty space, their great compassion is equal to all. They have destroyed the mind of envy, and hope for no advantage over another; they take their sole delight in seeking the Dharma, their mind never satisfied with how much they have already sought; they constantly wish to expound it broadly, their resolve never wearying. They beat the Dharma drum, raise the Dharma banner, and let shine the sun of wisdom, dispelling the darkness of delusion; they cultivate the six forms of harmony and respect, and constantly practice the giving of the Dharma; courageous in their resolve, diligent, their mind never retreats or weakens. They are a lamp for the world, and the most excellent field of blessing; they are constantly a teacher and guide to others, with no partiality of love or hatred, delighting only in the true path, with no other joy or sorrow. They pull out the thorn of desire from every being, to bring them peace, and their surpassing merit is honored by everyone. Having dissolved the three obstructions of defilement, they range freely through every spiritual power: the power of cause, the power of condition, the power of intention, the power of vow, the power of skillful means, the power of constancy, the power of goodness, the power of concentration, the power of wisdom, the power of vast learning; the power of giving, of moral discipline, of patience, of diligence, of meditation, and of wisdom; the power of right mindfulness, calm-abiding, and clear insight, and every power of penetrating understanding; the power to tame and subdue every being in accordance with the Dharma. Powers such as these they possess in full. Their bodily form, their marks, their merit, and their eloquence are all fully adorned, unequaled by any other; they revere and make offerings to immeasurable buddhas, and are constantly praised by every buddha together. They have brought every bodhisattva perfection to its completion, and cultivate the gates of samādhi on emptiness, signlessness, and wishlessness, and on what neither arises nor ceases, having gone far beyond the stage of the śrāvaka and the pratyekabuddha. Ānanda, the bodhisattvas there accomplish immeasurable merit such as this — I have spoken of it for you only in the briefest outline. Were I to speak of it in full, a hundred thousand koṭis of aeons would not exhaust it.
Roughly thirty similes appear in unbroken succession here, each one glossed by the text itself with the specific quality it is meant to illustrate — the great earth for impartiality, fire for burning away affliction, the lotus for being undefiled despite its surroundings, the lion for fearlessness. Huiyuan's general point about a passage built this way is that no single image is meant to carry the whole weight of what a bodhisattva is; each simile isolates one facet, and it is only the accumulation of all of them together — ocean, mountain, earth, water, fire, wind, empty space, lotus, cloud, rain, vajra, tree, flower, bird, ox, elephant, lion — that begins to approximate something language alone cannot state directly. This is a rhetorical strategy this sūtra shares with a great deal of Mahāyāna literature, not something unique to this passage, but the sheer density of similes stacked here, one after another without a single narrative pause, is unusual even by that standard.
The Buddha's own closing line — "I have spoken of it for you only in the briefest outline; were I to speak of it in full, a hundred thousand koṭis of aeons would not exhaust it" — closes this whole extended unit on the land, its inhabitants, and their bodhisattvas, which has run since Part 4 of this translation. What follows next is a sharp turn in both audience and tone: the Buddha now addresses Maitreya directly, and the sūtra moves from describing Sukhāvatī to describing, at considerable and unflinching length, the world its listeners actually live in.