Overall Teaching

Āśā can bring beings to irreversibility by having them look at her. She explains that bodhisattva practice is infinite.

Summary 

1.     Sudhana, recalling Saradhvaja’s teachings and thinking well of spiritual benefactors, came to Samantavyūha[1] park in Samudravetadin.[2] The park was surrounded by many rows of jewel trees with nice scents flowing in all directions and countless other adornments and features. (1208-10)

2.     In that park the laywoman[3] Āśā, adorned with jewels,[4] was visited by countless beings from the ten directions and she freed their minds from defilements and obscurations, allowing them to go anywhere. (1210)

3.     Sudhana respected her and requested she teach him the practice of bodhisattvas.

4.     She explained that:

a.     She attained the liberation “Characterised by Sorrowless Well-being.” Those who see her, who are not irreversible towards buddhahood, become irreversible. They perform the same practices as she does.

b.     Under various buddhas in the past she practiced religious practice, from age to age, and remembers countless buddhas and their teachings and practice. Bodhisattvas are infinite because of their great vow, compassion, and practice entering into all lands with samādhi and their dhāraṇīs, as well as their mystic knowledge, purity, and pervading all buddhafields with their body. (1211)

c.     Bodhisattvas do not aspire to awakening just to lead one being to buddhahood, but infinite. Similarly, they do not aspire to only honour one buddha and purify only one buddhaland, but infinite. Similarly, to fulfil vows and engage in infinite, not finite practices, and so forth. Thus, they develop the abilities to save countless beings. Their practices enter all beings and all lands. Therefore, her practice will only end when all sentient beings are liberated, when the world is completely purified, when the desire realm is purified.[5] (1211-3)

5.     Sudhana asked what this samādhi was called:

a.     She replied that it is called “Characterised by Sorrowless Well-being.”

b.     She said she knows this, but she cannot show the infinite vows of bodhisattvas who, like the sun, eliminate all sufferings of all beings and eliminate all their ignorance. Thus, Sudhana should go south to Nalayur in Samudravetalya, and ask Bhīṣmottaranirghoṣato teach him.

6.     Sudhāna left, respecting her, with good thoughts about spiritual benefactors, and reflecting upon how difficult it is to attain omniscience.

[1] Li: Meaning Ubiquitous Adornment, representing countless practices taking place in life and death constituting a ubiquitous array of adornments. (1577)

[2] Li: Meaning Keeper of the Ocean Door, which means tide, representing reality adapting to evolve sentient beings in a timely manner.

[3] Li: being a laywoman represents being greatly compassionate yet unaffected, being a woman represents being gentle and of good will.

[4] Li: the environment and Āśā’s beauty represent an environment and a person produced by respect for the enlightened and service to life, the countless practices of knowledge and compassion.

[5] Li: As she would enter into life and death to educate sentient beings—while realising that life, death, sentient beings, and the teaching activity are all nirvanic processes and that entiher come into nor go out of existence, and are ultimately peaceful—she said she had attained this state of sorrowless well-being.