Overall Teaching

Sarvanagararakṣāsaṃbhavatejaḥśrī has a liberation of entry into sound which teaches the Dharma to all beings everywhere according to their minds.

Summary

1.     Sudhana,     contemplating        that previous      liberation,   proceeded   to Sarvanagararakṣāsaṃbhavatejaḥśrī.[1]

2.     She was sitting on a lotus seat full of diamonds illuminating dwelling places in all cities, accompanied by countless night goddesses. Her body was appearing in all realms, was equal to all beings, and transcends all worlds, with the essence of those arriving at Thusness.

3.     Sudhana enraptured upon seeing her, asked her how bodhisattvas are to engage in bodhisattva practice and approach the seat of a spiritual sovereign (i.e. a Buddha).

4.     The night goddess explained:

a.     It is very good to ask about bodhisattva behaviour and to receive and hold the teachings of all buddhas.

b.    She has attained the liberation ‘entry into the profound miracle of pleasing sound’ and engages in teaching the Dharma with great compassion for the welfare of all.[2]

c.     She purifies the medium of the light of the teaching and proceeds through the dharmadhātu, understanding it in terms of ten aspects, that it is:

i.           Immeasurable

ii.         Infinitely various

iii.        Endless

iv.        Boundless

v.         Uninterrupted

vi.        One

vii.       Inherently pure

viii.     Equal in all worlds

ix.        Adorned with one adornment

x.         Imperishable

d.    She teaches the Dharma to beings using ten thousand spheres of mental command. She lists them, and they include spheres of mental command such as remembering all buddhas, uttering their names, and absorption in omniscience.

e.     She teaches with wisdom consisting of learning, wisdom, and practice. This consists of teaching about lives, worlds, buddhas, the one-vehicle, liberation, and so forth.

f.      She cultivates this liberation by expanding it in every moment of consciousness and pervades all realms in every thought with each means of actualizing liberation.

5.     Sudhana asked how long ago she attained this liberation. She explained:

a.     Many aeons ago,[3] in a world called Multitude of Cities of Spiritual Lights, which was shaped like a huge lotus and had many other adornments, in the age Pure Light, as many buddhas arose as are atoms in Mount Meru. At the enlightenment site in the middle of that world, the Buddha Illuminating King Voicing the Ocean of All Truths arose and the king called Radiantly Pure Countenance received a sūtra from that buddha called Ocean of All Truths and followed it.[4]

b.    After that buddha entered parinirvāṇa,[5] the king became a bhikṣu,[6] and knowing that the end of the Dharma age was imminent, he rose into the air and using his powers, extinguished the burnings of afflictions with light, and directed countless beings towards buddhahood. He thereby extended the Dharma age by sixty thousand years.[7]

c.     At that time the nun who was the king’s daughter called Light of Projections of the Dharma Wheel[8] was inspired by the king’s action and with her disciples they attained a samādhi, an illumination, and a liberation, after which the miracles of that past buddha all became visible to her.

d.    That king was Samantabhadra. The nun was Sarvanagararakṣāsaṃbhavatejaḥśrī herself, and the nuns who were her disciples all became irreversible bodhisattvas established in a high samādhi and the perfection of wisdom which enters all truths.

e.     After that, she learned of many buddhas, whose names she recites.[9] She served them all, and kept all of their liberations in mind, and matured infinitely many sentient beings, and primarily served the buddhas by putting their teachings into practice and settling beings in the city of omniscience.

f.      She claims that she knows just this liberation, but cannot know the practice or tell of the virtues of bodhisattvas who have unobstructed knowledge of the essential nature of speech, who are people of truth who have entered all stages of the Dharma.

g.     Thus, here in the presence of Vairocana is the night goddess Sarvavṛkṣapraphullanasukhasaṃvāsā, who is sitting next to her, and whom Sudhana should ask about bodhisattva practice.

6.     Then Sarvavṛkṣapraphullanasukhasaṃvāsā summarized what she said in verse.

7.     Having entered into her liberation and awakened by her mystic knowledge, Sudhana praised the night goddess in verse:

a.     Vast is her wisdom.

b.    Her presence illumines the assembly.

c.     She assesses all inconceivable things as they are.

d.    She will purify and liberate all beings and extinguish all defilements.

e.     She goes by Vairocana’s vows, and has a hard-to-attain sky-like mind.

f.      She sees the deaths and births of beings in all times, and shows them the way to awakening.

g.     Born of the family of the network of Vairocana’s vows, she appears according to beings’ minds.

8.     Having praised the goddess, Sudhana went on to Sarvavṛkṣapraphullanasukhasaṃvāsā.

[1] She represents the sixth stage: Presence.

 “This goddess represents protection of the minds of sentient beings and increasing the power of knowledge and insight in the mind.”

[2] “She said she had attained liberation of extremely profound, free, subtle sound, illustrating the single ‘sound’ that is everywhere in the universe, without substance, without discrimination, able to express all truths, teach sentient beings, and manifest all knowledge freely.”

[3] “The countless aeons refer to the ability to turh the countless expressions of sentient beings of all worlds into a total ocean of expressions of insight.”

[4] “The first buddha stands for fundamental knowledge, and the buddha’s name represents freedom in expounding truth and breaking delusion.”

[5] “The demise of the buddha represents the attainment of knowledge free from bondage and the disappearance of trapped attention and reflection.”

[6] “The king leaving home stands for knowledge of emptiness.”

[7] “By the time the buddha’s teaching was about to die out, there were a thousand sects that often engaged in disputation and quarrel and were on the verge of destroying Buddhism. This illustrates insight into emptiness that is not yet equipped with the great compassion to enter the ordinary world.”

[8] “Since wisdom activates transcendent compassion, the king’s daughter also became a nun.”

[9] “The goddess also mentioned one hundred buddhas and she had served them all: this represents cultivating the fruits of interdependent progress of all ten stages within the sixth stage. The reason she did not reach the manifestation of the fruits of the eleventh stage is that insight into emptiness is not yet the practice of Universal Good (Samantabhadra) that enters into bondage. It is for this reason that in the book on the ten concentrations the thirty bodhisattvas with insight into emptiness all entered the stage of coronation yet did not see the body of Universal Good (Samantabhadra).” (1609-11)