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THE INITIATION AND OMNISCIENCE OF AJITA
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Others are devoted to disgust with existence filled with pain, filled with delusion, but in you disgust with existence filled with knowledge has become the only object on which your thoughts are fixed. Homage to you, constantly bestowing benefits even in indifference, devoted to disgust with existence, protector, supreme spirit.”
After this hymn of praise to the Teacher of the World and after they had paid homage, the masters of the gods (Indras) and the gods went to the continent Nandīśvara. There Sakra, etc., made an eight-day festival like the birth-festival, to the eternal images of the Arhats on the mountains, Añjana and other mountains. Saying, “When shall we see the Lord again ? ” the lords of the gods and the gods went to their respective abodes.
Stuti (280-287) King Sagara bowed to the Supreme Lord, his hands folded in submission, and in a choking voice began a hymn of praise :
“O Blessed One, Ajita Svāmin, be victorious, Teacher of the World, sun for the blooming of a multitude of lotuses in the three worlds. O Lord, you are adorned with four kinds of unlimited knowledge-sense-, scripture-, clairvoyant-, and mind-reading knowledge, like the earth with four large oceans.170 You are able to uproot karma easily, and these followers of yours will show the path to the people. O Blessed One, you are another soul of all creatures, I think. How can you strive for their peerless bliss, otherwise ? Abandoning the passions like dirt, immersed in the water of compassion, you alone have a purified soul, free from stain, like a lotus-leaf. Even while you were king, for you devoted to the law there was no friend and no foe. This impartiality of yours now is suitable. What is to be said ? I surmise, O
170 281. I.e., the one ocean considered as four oceans in the four directions.
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