Overall Teaching

All monks in the Buddha’s assembly will become buddhas called Avakīrṇakusuma. The Buddha transmits PW to Ānanda. If he were to forget PW it would be the greatest slight to the Buddha. It should be transmitted, practiced, and worshipped. But one should not train in any fixed notion, just as a vision of Akṣobhya is made to arise and cease. PW is unbounded and inexhaustible, so PW in book form is not really PW. PW is consummated through reflecting on the non-extinction of the skandhas and the links of dependent origination. It is beneficial to reflect on how the Buddhas possess PW.

Summary

1.     Prediction of Avakīrṇakusuma

a.     After a deva of the thirty-three came with māndārava flowers, the six thousand monks knelt, and after the flowers appeared in their hands, they strew them over the Buddha and declared their intention to dwell in PW.

b.     The Buddha smiled and multi-coloured lights emitted therefrom, circled him thrice, and then returned into the Buddha’s head. [457]

c.     Ānanda asked why he smiled.

i.     The Buddha declared that all these monks will become buddhas and bear the name Avakīrṇakusuma (“Descending Flowers”) . They will all live 20,000 aeons, and their Dharma will abide for that long, and flowers shall always descend on them. [458]

2.     Praise of Perfect Wisdom

a.     The dwelling of tathāgatas is PW.

b.     Anyone who practices PW now was certainly a human in their previous life or in Tuṣita, where it flourishes to its fullest extent.

c.     Tathāgatas behold bodhisattvas who practice PW and instruct others in it. Those bodhisattvas have planted their wholesome roots with the tathāgatas. [459] Those bodhisattvas, not giving up their wholesome roots, don’t turn to the other vehicles.

3.     Transmission of the Sūtra to Ānanda[1]

a.     The Buddha transmits the sūtra to Ānanda, laid out in letters, so that it may be available for learning, bearing, preaching, studying, and spreading, last long, and not disappear.

b.     If Ānanda forgets all the Dharma the Buddha taught him, it would be a slight offence against him, but if he forgets only one verse of PW it would be very serious. [460] Likewise if he forgets it after he learns it later.

i.     This is because PW is the mother, creator, generator of buddhas of the three times and their nurse in all-knowledge.

c.     Therefore it should be learned, studied, written, developed, spread, etc. Letter by letter, word by word. [461]

i.     It is the dharma-body of buddhas of the three times.

ii.     It should be learned, respected, and worshipped, just as one would the Buddha in person. It is one’s teacher just as much as the Buddha. [462]

d.     Doing so assists in the awakening of future buddhas through the 6 perfections. [463]

e.     The merit is the greatest.

f.      With such wholesome roots as to do this, it is not possible for a bodhisattva to turn away from full awakening.[2]

4.     Akṣobhya’s Buddha-field

a.     Through the power of the Buddha, everyone in the assembly saw Akṣobhya Buddha and his awakened sangha. [464-5] Then he withdrew the vision.

b.     The Buddha compares this withdrawing of the vision to the way in which all dharmas do not come within the range of vision—not settling down in any dharma, a bodhisattva practices in PW. [465]

c.     The Buddha could lift the entire world with his big toe and dropped, but it would not occur to him that the world has been lifted up and dropped. Thus, Buddhas achieve non-attachment to dharmas of all three times through PW. [466]

5.     Extinction, Non-Extinction and Perfect Wisdom

a.     Limits, exhaustion, and bounds are absent in PW. The book PW has bounds, but true PW is unlimited.

b.     The book PW is not identical with PW itself, which is unbounded.

c.     It is unlimited because Buddhas of the three times draw from it their strength, and yet PW does not become extinct. [467-8]

d.     PW is inexhaustible because all dharmas have not been produced.

i.     It is consummated by bodhisattvas through the non-extinction of the skandhas. [468]

ii.     [3]Through the non-extinction of the 12 links. When doing this, they cannot turn to the other vehicles, but must turn to supreme awakening. [469]

iii.     Any bodhisattva who turns away, does so because they don’t do this.

iv.     Those who are successful don’t review any dharma as a real separate entity [470] and does not identify any dharma or buddha-field as his own possession.

6.     Advantages Derived from Perfect Wisdom

a.     When a bodhisattva practices PW all the māras in the world feel just as one does when their parents die. [471]

b.     No one can take possession of or turn away a bodhisattva who practices PW.

c.     A bodhisattva who practices PW will perfect all six perfections and skilful means.

d.     [4]If they bring to mind the PW that Buddhas in all world systems have reached, [472] for only a finger snap, they would bring forth greater merit than one who gives gifts to all beings, and will be brought to mind by the Buddhas. They cannot possibly be born in lower realms. [473]

e.     How much more so the merit if one were to think such thoughts daily, like Gandhahastin in the presence of Akṣobhya. [474]

[1] As regards this section, Haribhadra notes that while “some say that because noble Ānanda is directed to make available PW for learning and so on he is the reciter of it. Others say it is entrusted to Great Vajradhāra to make it available for taking up in the mind, so he is the reciter.” (Vol 4., 203) In fact, the former does not contradict the latter. Ānanda need not have transmitted the sūtra in a “conventional” fashion. The following entrustments the Buddha makes are gradually from lower to greater sizes.

[2] As regards being a cause for awakening, at the end of the Path of Seeing, begins with the forcing away of conceptualisations and culminates with direct causes of awakening. As Maitreya writes,

Śakra shows enlightenment to others. The Lord entrusts the Perfection of Wisdom to Ānanda. That is also a cause of that enlightenment. The cause of gaining it without hindrance is marked by immense merit. [5.17]

[3] Maitreya writes,

Having entered on the “Lion’s Sport” meditative stabilization, this Bodhisattva then surveys the links of dependent origination in direct and reverse order. [5.23]

This kind of skilful means in meditation, after having repudiated the opposing views on the path of seeing, is the next path, the path of meditation. Haribhadra writes that while the full path is not explained in the 8000 verse version, it is in the 25000 verse version. Herein, a bodhisattva should train proceeding through the eight dhyānas to cessation (of perception and feeling), thus there are nine steps. Then they should go down to the first in reverse order. Then gradually, in each dhyāna, they should enter directly into cessation again sequentially, and after emerging from cessation and place their consciousness on sense of objects (and then in the formless ones, to their respective form and formless natures), “manifesting uncollected consciousness.” This is the way in which they master “all the varieties of skill in means,” seeing the uncollected nature of the links in each dhyāna. Maitreya adds that when one, the second time, reaches the ninth level in this way, that process is the “crowning assault absorption that goes on incomparably until cessation.” (Vol. 4, 219-20)

[4] This is stated “Because bodhisattvas should turn their consideration to the path of meditation based on recollecting the Tathāgatas.” These teachings are, overall “to elucidate the many and various benefits that come from familiarity with the path of meditation.” (Vol. 4, 221)