Saddharma Pundarika

SR No.: 007677
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: H Kern
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1884
Total Pages: 2546
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 46 MB

Page 408

364
SADDHARMA-PUNDARÎKA.
XX.
forth a voice', and plant the roots of goodness of such creatures as have not (yet) planted roots of goodness.
Then the Lord addressed the Bodhisattva Mahasattva Visishtakâritra, followed by a troop, a great troop, the master of a troop, who was the very first of those afore-mentioned Bodhisattvas Mahâsattvas followed by a troop, a great troop, masters of a troop: Very well, Visishtakâritra, very well ; so you should do; it is for the sake of this Dharmaparyâya that the Tathagata has brought you to ripeness.
Thereupon the Lord Sâkyamuni, the Tathâgata, &c., and the wholly extinct Lord Prabhataratna, the Tathagata, &c., both seated on the throne in the centre of the Stapa?, commenced smiling to one another, and from their opened mouths stretched out their tongues, so that with their tongues they reached the Brahma-world, and from those two tongues issued many hundred thousand myriads of kotis of rays 3. From each of those rays issued many hundred thousand myriads of kotis of Bodhisattvas, with goldcoloured bodies and possessed of the thirty-two characteristic signs of a great man, and seated on thrones consisting of the interior of lotuses. Those
From this it appears that the abode of the monks &c. in the assembly of the Lord Sâkyamuni is in the sky, at least occasionally. Their attribute of an invisible body' shows them to be identical with the videhas, the incorporeal ones, i.e. the spirits
f the blessed departed, Arhats, Muktas, Pitaras. The Pitaras form the assembly of Dharmarâga.
Cf. Chapter XI.
It is quite true that the moon as well as the sun is sahasrarasmi, possessed of thousand rays, but it is difficult to understand how the Bhagavat Prabhůtaratna can show his magic power in his state of extinction.
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