Overall Teaching

Sāgaramegha teaches the ocean-like abode of preparing the ground, which is knowledge. He learned this from a buddha in the ocean, who taught him the sūtra Universal Eye.

Summary

1. Sudhana met Sāgaramegha2 in Sāgaramukha3 and having respected him he asked him how to escape from the ocean of suffering and increase the water of compassion. (1182-3)

2. Sāgaramegha praises Sudhana’s roots of goodness and tireless effort and compassionate nature, which are requisites for giving rise to bodhicitta, which is the infinite and purified mind of knowledge. (1183) He explained his history:

a. He explained that he had been staying at Sāgaramegha for twelve years4 to contemplate on the vastness of the ocean,5 which is the vastest thing in the world.6

b. From the ocean a great lotus arose covering the whole ocean which was honoured by heavenly beings.7 It had countless qualities and forms. An infinitely large and inconceivable buddha also sat and completely filled up that lotus.8

c. That buddha then reached out his right hand and placed it on Sāgaramegha’s head9 and revealed to him the sūtra called Universal Eye which illuminates all beings and which was too long to be set to words with ink.

d. Sāgaramegha studied this teaching for twelve years10 and now teaches to beings in the ten directions on how to open their Universal Eye.

3. Sāgaramegha admitted that despite this he could not teach the practice of bodhisattvas on higher levels. Thus suggested he go to find Supratiṣṭhita in Sagaratira in Śrī Laṅka.

4. Sudhana honoured Sāgaramegha and then left.

1 Representing the Second Abode: Preparing the Ground. Li says that the ocean represents spontaneous discipline. Not retaining birth and death is the ocean door and since he can benefit people in the ocean of samsara, raining down wisdom, he is called Ocean Door. (1569) 2 Meaning Ocean Cloud.

3   Meaning Ocean Door.

4   Li: symbolising the twelve links of dependent origination that give rise to the ocean of samsara.

5   Li: he stays near the ocean because there’s nowhere to attain buddhahood outside of samsara.

6   Li: the ocean (i.e. the world/samsara), which is infinite, is full of treasures: contemplating it gives rise to an infinite ocean of knowledge of dependent origination.

7   Li: symbolizing the action of knowledge without taint. Awakened action is in accord with knowledge, thus it covers the entire ocean.

8   Li: His infinite size represents the invincibility of knowledge. (1570)

9   Li: The function of knowledge is the extension of the hand, and the reflection and combination of knowledge and action is the laying of the hand on Sāgaramegha’s head.

10   Li: seems to suggest that this was twelve hundred years—perhaps the “full twelve years” in Cleary refers to hundreds in Chinese. Regardless, he suggests that this refers to the use of knowledge and expedients to overturn the twelve hundred afflictions (which are enumerated in various sūtras and the abhidharma).