Overall Teaching

Sudhana enters many dhyānas after going into Acalā’s house. Her appearance and scent is almost as good as the buddhas’. She tells the story of her past life encountering a buddha as a princess and allows Sudhana to see countless buddhas using the powers she attained through aeons of practice.

Summary

1.     Setting on the road, thinking of Mahāprabha’s teaching and contemplating the inconceivable practices and considerations, Sudhana wept thinking of meeting the spiritual benefactors considering how beneficial it is on the path and cause one to develop good qualities.

2.     Thereupon devas in the sky said that the buddhas are pleased with those who practice what spiritual benefactors teach, who thereby would achieve their goals. They told him to go forth to the kingdom Sthira[1] to find Acalā.[2]

3.     Looking for Acalā in Sthira, he was told she was a girl who taught in her parent’s household.[3] Arriving in Acalā’s house he was overcome with a light and entered hundreds of subtle trances (dhyānas) whose feeling was as subtle as the consciousness of a half-day old embryo.4

a.     He also smelled a subtle sent more beautiful than anything, and he found that Acalā was more beautiful and smelled more wonderful than any being in the world, except for the buddhas. No one could look upon her and have evil thoughts or act upon afflictions.

b.    Out of reverence, Sudhana said to Acalā in verse that those pure in conduct, with patience and vigour is like a mountain of light and asked her to teach him bodhisattva practice.

4.     She replied by saying it is good for Sudhana to ask this, and explained that she cultivates the practice of firm resolve and the samādhi of tireless search for truth, and has the light of knowledge to clarify the true state of all phenomena. Sudhana asked about the sphere of these attainments so that he can strive to equal it and not quarrel about it. She explained:

a.     In a past life, as the daughter of a king, she saw a past buddha in the sky with unobstructed light whose fragrance calmed her mind. Seeing how inconceivable his body and light were, she wondered how these attainments are achieved, and how the mind, retinues, and abilities to teach are developed.

b.    Having read her mind, the buddha explained that she should produce an invincible mind to defeat afflictions and enter into truth while descending into the whirlpool

of beings, to be tireless in contemplating and realising the buddhas’ teachings and developing the mind of sharing in order to distribute the jewel of the Dharma to all.

c.     Having heard this from that buddha, Acalā, wishing to perfect the qualities and knowledge of a buddha, without developing any thought of greed, anger, or ignorance, or any thought of self or confusion, even in the in-between state between lives, continuously had been imbibing and cultivating the teachings of the buddhas and had only emitted words in order to help enlighten others—she has not passed one being who she has not put on the buddha-vehicle.

d.    Since that time and never been apart from buddhas or the causes of attaining buddhahood for the benefit of all beings and has always appeared to beings according to their faculties.

e.     She then asked Sudhana whether he wanted to witness her inconceivable miracles, which Sudhana agreed to. Thereupon, she looked into and passed through ten thousand doors of liberation by various names and with various qualities. After this Sudhana saw countless lands made of lapis lazuli quaking, countless buddhas in all directions engaging in the activities of a buddha’s display, the light of those buddhas, their congregations, and all the cycles of their Dharma communicated to sentient beings.

f.      Sudhana said he heard, saw, and understood what happened. In response Acalā explained that while she can satisfy beings’ need for awakening knowledge in this way, she cannot elucidate bodhisattva practice of those who can go everywhere in the world in an instant to evaporate delusions like the sun rising above the Dharmadhātu (and many other analogies). Thus, Sudhana must go south to Tosala in the land of Āmitatosala where the mendicant Sarvagāmin can teach him bodhisattva practice.

5.     Hearing his, Sudhana respected her and left.

[1] “The location is called a kingdom to represent mastery of teaching.”

[2] She embodies the ninth practice: good teaching. Her name means “immovable because of her spiritual power to remain unaffected.” (1592) “Before the eighth practice one is still affected by the habit of sadness; here in the ninth there are no ingrained habits.” (1593)

[3] “Protected by the mother of knowledge and the father of skill in means, the mind is not influenced by objects; to represent this and the compassion of humility, Acalā is said to be a young woman in the care of her mother and father. 4 “The trances were subtle … because when knowledge enters compassion [represented by him entering the house], it is harmonized and becomes comfortable.” (1592)