Overall Teaching

Mañjuśrī visits the Buddha, and is followed to the south by Śāriputra and monks, who are taught by him that they must have the ten indefatigable determinations. After training them they attain great realisations. Mañjuśrī proceeds to the city Dhanyakara where he singles out the youth Sudhana, to explain why his name means Good Wealth. Sudhana gives rise to bodhicitta, and requests Mañjuśrī to teach him how to engage in bodhisattva practice to attain buddhahood. Mañjuśrī says that bodhisattvas work within the mundane world, and by following spiritual benefactors he can attain buddhahood. He tells Sudhana to seek out the monk Meghaśrī.

Summary

1.     The youth Mañjuśrī was in his tower and attended by all kinds of deities. With them in attendance he circumambulated the Buddha hundreds of times to the right, made offerings, and then went south on a journey through the human realm.[1] (1160-70)

2.     Śāriputra, by the power of the Buddha, developed the wish to go with Mañjuśrī and asked for and received the Buddha’s permission to go south with sixty new monks. Śāriputra pointed out Mañjuśrī’s measureless signs of good qualities[2] to the sixty monks. (1170)

3.     The sixty monks, wanting to visit Mañjuśrī, asked Śāriputra to bring them to him. After they were brought to him, they told Mañjuśrī that they aspired to be like him with his qualities and transfigurations. (1171)

4.     Mañjuśrī replied that if men and women set out on the Mahāyāna with the ten indefatigable determinations, one will realise thusness and reach buddhahood:

i.               To see, attend, and serve all buddhas

ii.              To build up all roots of goodness without retreating

iii.            To seek all truths

iv.            To practice all the pāramitās of bodhisattvas

v.              To fully accomplish all samādhis of bodhisattvas

vi.            To enter successively into all ages

vii.           To thoroughly purify all oceans of buddha-lands in the ten directions

viii.          To lead all realms of sentient beings to perfect development

ix.            To carry out the practices of bodhisattvas in all lands and ages

x.              To full attain each power of the buddha by maturing beings through the pāramitās in ways as many as atoms

5.     The monks then attained the samādhi “sphere of the unobstructed eye of vision of all buddhas” being able to see all buddhas and assemblies in all worlds in all directions and many teachings and accomplishments of buddhas. They also knew beings, their minds, their past and future lives.[3] They also attained even more samādhis and illuminations thereby. (1171-2)

6.     Mañjuśrī then gradually trained them in the practice of Samantabhadra Bodhisattva, whereby they, through oceans of vows, purified the mind and body, attained mystic knowledge, and appeared in multitudes of manifestations to all buddhas without leaving the presence of Mañjuśrī. (1172)

7.     Mañjuśrī then proceeded to the city Dhanyakara in the south, where the expounded the sūtra “Illumination of the Principles of the Cosmos,” by which countless nāgas (or dragons) attained birth as humans or devas. (1172-3)

8.     Five hundred pious men, women, boys, and girls of Dhanyakara came, having heard that he was there. After honouring Mañjuśrī, they sat to one side. (1173)

9.     Mañjuśrī, with his intelligence, wishing to expound the Dharma, saw the outstanding boy Sudhana, and explained to the crowd that his name, which means “Good Wealth,” was given because when he was conceived there were sprouts beneath the house, under which treasuries were found,[4] and vessels full of precious substances appeared in the house’s storerooms.[5] (1173-1174)

10. Sudhana then achieved an unattached bodhicitta, having also served buddhas in the past and planted roots of goodness.[6] (1174)

11. Mañjuśrī greeted and taught Sudhana the Dharma about the elements and qualities of all buddhas. Knowing that the people had been taught in accord with their needs, he then left.

But Sudhana addressed him as he was going:

i.               Sudhana states that he sees that his mind is shrouded in ignorance, greed, and anger, ever under Māra’s sway, bound to the lower destinies. May his compassion thus grant happiness and relieve beings and instruct him. (1174-5)

ii.              Protect, carry to safety, guide, and act as a lamp on the path to Sudhana, opening the door to liberation quickly with the sharp eye of truth. (1175)

iii.            Show him the buddhas of the past, present, and future, and the vehicle of awakening resting on the axle of compassion. (1176)

iv.            Put him on this royal vehicle adorned with its finest adornments of the attainments, meditation, and wisdom. That vehicle which sheds light through the cosmos and subdues all challengers, fulfilling all beings’ aspirations, like the sun, giving life to all beings. (1176-7)

v.              Give him the thunderbolt (vajra) of knowledge learned over many kalpas. (1177)

vi.            Tell me what the ocean of knowledge is like, being graced with vision, the crown of kings of knowledge, wrapped in the turban of truth, looking into the city of the spiritual sovereign. (1178)[7]

12. Mañjuśrī praised Sudhana for following spiritual benefactors, and said that they are the beginning, course, and accomplishment of awakening, thus he should tirelessly attend them.[8]

13. Sudhana enquired how a bodhisattva can study, accomplish, initiate, carry out, fulfil, purify, comprehend, effect, follow, keep, and expand the practice of bodhisattvas, and how a bodhisattva can fulfil the sphere of Samantabhadra’s practice. (1178)

14. Mañjuśrī praised Sudhana, declaring that he will become a saviour of the world, the principle of bodhisattva practice. He explained that: (1178-9)

i.  Bodhisattvas who are steadfast work within the mundane and there attain the unobstructed.

ii.   Sudhana will see buddhas in the ten directions and hold their teachings by memory. 

iii. After practicing for countless kalpas, he will attain buddhahood.

iv. Millions of beings are happy to hear his vow, seeking to attain awakening.

15. Mañjuśrī declared that it is hard to find a bodhisattva who sets their mind of awakening, but even more those who follow through with that determination. (1179)

16. He tells Sudhana to go to the south to Ramavaranta, to Mount Sugriva, where the monk Meghaśrī lives, who will teach him about bodhisattva conduct.[9]

17. Happily, Sudhana honours Mañjuśrī, and heads south, weeping as he leaves, unable to bear not seeing the spiritual friend. (1179-80)

[1] According to Li Tongxuan (the seventh patriarch of the Chinese Huayan lineage, lived 635–730) the setting of the human world illustrates that the garden of the human world is that of the dharmadhātu, that the nature of humans is that of the dharmadhātu, and that the world of living beings is that of bodhi. (1566)

[2] Mañjuśrī, symbolizing “the spirit of wisdom.” (1566)

[3] The seed of the determination (bodhicitta) is the root out of which all higher awakenings spring.

[4] Clearly an analogy for Buddha-Nature.

[5] The fruits of Buddha-Nature perhaps. At this address by Mañjuśrī, Li Tongxuan comments that Mañjuśrī “wanted to induce the pilgrim Sudhana to trust in the fundamental unshakable knowledge that is inherently pure and has no origin or extinction, no cultivation or witness, to induce him to become a bodhisattva of the stage of faith. So, he explained awakened teachings for him, to inspire bodhicitta in him.” (1566)

[6] Li Tongxuan says, “Since the bodhicitta is not learned or cultivated, bodhicitta is always clearly self-evident as long as we carry out awakening practices to quell habit energy. It is as when the clouds disperse in the sky; the sky is itself clear, so there is no further search for clear sky.” He goes on to explain that if there is grasping or rejecting, there is an obstacle and bodhicitta will not be fully manifest, since bodhicitta is itself awakening action. (1566) 

[7] Li Tongxuan says, “Once Sudhana had awakened bodhicitta, he asked Mañjuśrī how to learn to act as a bodhisattva and practiced the bodhisattva path—he asked no more about bodhicitta.”

[8] In this way, Mañjuśrī sets up the teaching to take on the course of following spiritual benefactors. According to Li Tongxuan, “Because the methods of progress expounded in the previous assemblies of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra had not yet been realised by an ordinary human being, in the Gaṇḍavyūha Mañjuśrī wants to make Sudhana a signpost for later generations of seekers.” (1566)

Thus, the Gaṇḍavyūha will act as a comprehendible and simplified version of the entire Avataṃsaka Sūtra adapted to humans—the various teachings of each of the spiritual benefactors will stand in for the various stages and attainments expounded in the entire sūtra, at least starting with the fifteenth section of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra on the Ten Abodes, with the previous fourteen sections essentially summarized by the previous sections of the Gaṇḍavyūha in their encapsulation of the principle of the interpenetration of one and many, which is the baseless and empty dharmadhātu.

Thus Li Tongxuan says, “The names of the teachers and their abodes—people holy and ordinary, spirits, royalty, mendicants, lay people, non-Buddhists, humans, celestials, males and females—represent certain principles.” 

[9] Li Tongxuan says, “The South, the direction of Sudhana’s pilgrimage, is used to stand for truth, clarity, and openness. When you arrive at an open, clear, true knowledge without subjectivity, then everywhere is the South. 

Therefore Mañjuśrī sent Sudhana south to call on spiritual friends and benefactors, each of whom sends him onwards that he may progress and not dawdle over past learning. This is why the friends always praise the virutes of those Sudhana has yet to meet.

In the realm of principle, Mañjuśrī stands for knowledge of the fundamental. Samantabhadra stands for knowledge of differentiation, and Maitreya stands for the uncreated realization within Mañjuśrī and Samantabhadra. These three pirnciples are all in the fifty spiritual friends—representing the five ranks of awakening—that Sudhana meets on his pilgrimage, so that there are fifty-three teachers.

Since the fifty teachings of the spiritual friends each has cause and effect—as in other books of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, where there are ten bodhisattvas and ten buddhas to represent cause and effect—this makes on hundred. Add to this the basic ten ways of transcendence (ten pāramitās) and this makes one hundred and ten, the number of cities Sudhana is said to have passed through.