bodhisattva

A Puja to Manjughosha

Image by Dh. Aloka

  1. Bowing to Manjughosha’s Mind, Speech and Body

To you whose wisdom
Purifies like a cloud-free sun
The veils of passions and of ignorance,
Yielding perfect clarity;

To you who sees all matters as they are,
And so holds the book
Of Prajnaparamita to your heart,
To your mind, Manjughosha, I bow.

To you whose kindness
Views each being as your only son,
Covered in avidya’s darkness,
Afflicted in the prison of time;

To you who utters the sixty-four-fold voice,
Resounding loud as thunder,
Rousing from passion’s sleep,
Shattering karma’s prison fetters,
Dispelling avidya’s darkness;

To you who grasps the sword of wisdom
To cut every shoot of duhkha,
To your speech, Manjughosha, I bow.

To you whose perfect body-of-virtues,
Chief among the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas,
Always pure, yet completing the Bodhisattva path,
Adorned with one hundred and twelve blazing ornaments,
Dispersing my mind’s darkness,
To your body, Manjughosha, I bow.

  • Manjughosha mantra, and offerings

2. Praise of body

O Manjughosha, treasure of wisdom,
Please for one moment consider
These flowers of verses of praise
Quivering in the wind of faith,
O radiant mass of rays of saffron light,
Like a golden mountain
Embraced by the rays of the rising sun.

Your mountain body is tall and stable,
Your skin is pure and clear
Like soft dust of gold.

Your long, lustrous black hair
Is bound in a knot
And five gem-adorned crests,
Above a brow like the waxing moon.

Your eyes are long, and blue as utpala,
Your mouth is smiling and well-pleased.
From your fine ears
Dangle gem-adorned earrings,
And you wear many other ornaments.

Adorned with armlet and bracelet
Your right hand holds the sword
That cuts the root of the tree of materialism.
Your left hand holds to your heart
The supreme volume
Of exact and full teachings
Of the sole doorway to peace.

Your robe of silk shimmers
And is hemmed with tinkling bells.
You sit in vajra posture
On moon disc, and the saffron centre
Of a six-petalled lotus.

Like the thousand rayed sun
Plunging its seven horses
Into the golden ocean,
Your body everywhere shines.

When I behold your body
I weary of my long wandering.
May my erring mind
Come into the spirit of Enlightenment.

  • Reading
  1. Praise of Speech

O Manjughosha, Lord of sweet speech
Your many voices fill all lands
In every different language
Like a crystal prisming all colours,
Satisfying all living beings.

The melody of your speech
Is like a sphere of music,
Outlasting all the Samsara,
Releasing from sickness, age, and death.

It is pleasant, gentle, heart-stirring,
Harmonious, stainlessly clear, and sweet.
It is not rough, very calm, painless,
And satisfies body, mind, and heart.

It is rational, relevant,
Free of all redundancy,
All-informing, totally illuminating, enlightening.
Its rhythm not too fast or slow,
Its tone sweet, penetrating everywhere.

Its phrases are complete and confident,
Pervaded with joy and insight.
Emerging victorious, it dispels the three times.

These are some of the qualities
present in each and every utterance
Of your Brahma voice.

Not too loud when near,
Not too faint when far,
As if it manifests from the sky
Like the thunder in the rain-cloud
Girt with its belt of red lightning.

Just by hearing your stream of speech,
The receptive accept it,
Condemning wrong discourse,
May I never be parted from hearing your speech!

  1. Manjughosha’s teaching

O Manjughosha, Lord of Dharma,
Certain of the true colour
Of all that can be known
May you grant superlative wisdom
As the supreme refuge.

Not one phenomenon
Is hidden from you,
Thus you never exceed just proportion
In the training of your pupils’ faculties.
You see how sharp or dull are their abilities,
In faith, memory, samadhi and so on,
And so yours is the highest skill
In teaching Dharma.

Since you know entirely
The spiral path
And the Transcendental path,
And the way that leads
To states of misery,
You are the best spiritual friend
Of living beings.
Please grant the supreme instruction
Of the Buddhas!

The elephant of my mind
Is hard to tame,
As it runs amok
In the jungle of unconsciousness.
It is drunk on the liquor of materialism,
Knowledge of right and wrong forgotten,
Wrecking the trees of virtue,
Dragged by the chains of existence’
Losing the female elephant of success.

I should bind it with the rope
Of conscience and mindfulness,
And guide it with the goad of true reasoning
Onto the good Aryan path,
Trodden by millions of supreme sages.

With tireless effort on that path,
By meditating again and again
Without giving up,
I shall reach the Vajra-like Samadhi,
And the mountain of extremisms
Shall be rendered merely a name.

  • Reading: The Song of the four mindfulnesses. (A teaching said to have been received by Tsongkapa from Manjughosha.)

4. Praise of mind

O Manjughosha, lord of Wisdom
Just as the king of eagles
Soars in the heavens,
Your mind stays neither in existence
Nor in peace.
By praising your mind,
May I never part from the wisdom
And love of Manjughosha.

False appearances entirely conquered,
You dwell in the chief of all samadhis.
By your power over appearances,
And your clear knowledge of all experience,
You enter the ultimate realm.

Like a poison tree whose root is destroyed,
And the seeds of all habits eradicated,
how could you ever deviate, O refuge,
From the Dharmakaya?

Though you never leave the ultimate realm,
You know individually in every instant
The vivid appearance of many objects,
Like a rainbow, or reflections in a mirror.

Your direct vision, free of all veils,
Sees the Nirvana that ends defilements,
And its means, the eightfold path.
Thus you are the best of all refuges.

Long you practised the goal of compassion,
The sole path of all victors,
The entrance to the battle
Of the hero Bodhisattvas.

Loving one, you see the errors
Of forsaking others’ happiness.
You never allow suffering to continue,
And are never content
With the most alluring of pleasures.

By your long cultivation of Bodhicitta,
Seeing the equality of self and others,
Practising the exchange of self and others,
You hold all beings as yourself.

  • Svabhavashuddha mantra –

5. Aspiration

Though seeking desperately,
I find no good refuge other than you.
Turning to you, my mind
Feels like a sunburnt elephant
Plunging in the lotus pool!

Having attained an infinite store
Of samadhis and doors of liberation,
May I manifest limitless bodies
To see the Jinas
In a million universes.

Then, having reached the limit of wide learning,
Satisfying limitless beings
With the Dharma,
May I before long attain
The supreme body
Of the chief of jinas, Manjughosha!

Obtaining supreme understanding,
May I cut off the doubts
Of all living beings.
Never transgressing your instructions,
Through devoted, one-pointed practice,
May I quickly gain mastery of speech.

With the vision that belies all extremism,
And the compassion that sees all
As my only child,
May I lead all beings
Onto the supreme vehicle.

Remembering all teachings,
Able to answer all questions,
May I spread out the feast
Of eloquent Dharma.

By the glory of the mind of Manjughosha,
Who, without calculating,
Fulfils the hopes of all,
May I become like you,
As beautiful as the autumn moon,
Whose sweetness fills the limitless sky.

  • Concluding mantras

Ratnaprabha, compiled and re-rendered September 1994, at Guhyaloka retreat Centre, Spain.

The first part is a revised version of the traditiona Manjughosha Stuti. The rest is all adapted from Tsong Khapa’s ‘Cloud Ocean of Praises of Manjushri’, in Thurman, R., ed., Life & Teachings of Tsong Khapa (Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, Dharamasala, 1982), 188-197.

The Vimalakirti Sutra

the_vimalakirti_sutra_large

Review by Ratnaprabha of The Vimalakirti Sutra, translated by Burton Watson (Columbia University Press, New York, 1997).

Towards the end of this great Buddhist classic, the Buddha remarks that ‘those who love varied phrases and literary embellishments … are beginners in the bodhisattva way’. However, highly experienced bodhisattvas are ‘not afraid of deeper principles, and [are] able to enter into the true meaning.’ The Vimalakirti Sutra is a repository of deep principles: its spiritual teaching catapults one way beyond familiar ground. Paradoxically (paradox is one of its methods) it also fascinates as literature. Descriptions of fantastic spectacle, verbal contests, and even slapstick humour, all revolve around Vimalakirti. Vimalakirti is an enlightened bodhisattva, devoted to establishing people on the Buddha way. This he does imperceptibly, irresistibly, because he adapts so well into their various ordinary lives. He can use anything as an ‘expedient means’ towards the benefit and enlightenment of others.

As a demonstration of the unsatisfactoriness of a life that identifies with this fragile body, Vimalakirti falls ill. The Buddha asks his disciples to visit the sick bodhisattva, but one by one they refuse, recounting how Vimalakirti had exposed the limitations of their approaches to Buddhism. All-wise Manjushri is the only worthy opponent to agree to go, and Vimalakirti magically transforms his sickroom to accommodate the crowds who come to hear a breathtaking series of profound exchanges, forming the central portion of the Sutra.

The comically bewildered monk Shariputra, representing a limited, self-centred view of Buddhist practice, stimulates Vimalakirti’s magical displays, all of which demonstrate the richness of an unlimited perspective. When Shariputra wonders where everyone is going to sit (‘did you come here for the sake of the Law, or are you just looking for a place to sit?’, Vimalakirti asks), Vimalakirti imports millions of vast thrones, and somehow fits them all into the room. Later, an enlightened goddess sprinkles Shariputra with flowers, not allowed to monks, yet he cannot brush them off. He is so impressed by her deep explanations that he asks her why she doesn’t become male (Buddhas being traditionally thought of as always male). In reply, she swaps gender with him, and then swaps back, to demonstrate that ‘all phenomena are neither male nor female’. Later still, Shariputra’s mind wanders again, this time to thoughts of lunch, and Vimalakirti sends a phantom bodhisattva to a pure land in a distant galaxy to fetch fragrant ambrosia for all.

Vimalakirti’s profound teachings bear the same message as his jokes and spectacular displays. Let go of restrictive viewpoints, he says, and the splendour of non-dual reality will simply become apparent in the here and now. Every emotion, every action, potentially displays the truth. Letting go into a true vision opens innumerable doors that enable one to help others in their turn to let go into truth, so that they will see every frustration, every grief evaporate. Like the Buddha, Vimalakirti teaches the altruistic bodhisattva ideal. He also universalises the goal of Buddhism: he displaces any thoughts of a personal escape into the relief of ‘Nirvana’ by demonstrating how the actual world one lives in can become, for everybody, a pure Buddha land, perfumed with bliss, vibrant with ultimate significance.

However, you will look in vain for detailed blueprints for ‘purifying the Buddha field’, even for instructions in living one’s daily life or in practising meditation. Instead, the Sutra seeks to stretch the mind with its refutations of plodding thought processes based on the rearrangement of labels, until, perhaps, the mind gives up, and yields to ’empty’ reality unmediated by labels. Then it swoops down from a different angle, and uncloses the sense of wonder with brilliant son-et-lumiére. As I go back again and again to the Vimalakirti Sutra, I might realise one day that ‘how things are’ is inconceivable and unimaginable simply because thinking is not everything, envisaging is not everything. ‘How things are’ is everything, and that can be appreciated only with one’s every faculty attending completely, right now.

Burton Watson’s new translation uses the Chinese version by Kumarajiva, who was renowned as Buddhism’s greatest translator because his own realisation was so deep, and because his style was so fluent. It may be that Watson saw the Vimalakirti Sutra as an inevitable addition to his acclaimed series of translations of Chinese classics: it does not seem to me to be superior to the one we already have, by Charles Luk. (The jacket notes are incorrect to claim that Watson’s is the ‘first ever translation’.) I really have to warn you of some of his odd renderings. Maitri (loving kindness) becomes ‘pity’, and is sometimes confused with compassion; upeksha (equanimity) is ‘indifference’; dana (generosity) is ‘almsgiving’; Mara is christianised into ‘the devil’, and Watson also chooses the biblical resonance of ‘the Law’ for the Dharma (truth and teaching).

The most reliable version in English, apart from the incredibly thorough scholarly text by Lamotte, is Robert Thurman’s from the Tibetan (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1976), which also scores for its elegance and vividness. But there is something to be said for taking advantage of the filter of Kumarajiva’s mind. Like many texts of Indian Mahayana Buddhism, the Vimalakirti Sutra overflows with extended series of stock Buddhist lists, as well as the baffling intellectual subtleties of analysis and negation. Kumarajiva softens these, sometimes by shortening passages, sometimes with simpler, more direct glimpses of the Dharma.

The Great Monkey and the discovery of mangoes (a Jataka story)

Animals

Illustration by Andy Gammon

Long ago, before men had tasted mangoes, the bodhisattva was reborn as a monkey, near the banks of the Ganges. Growing up strong and vigorous, he became leader of his troop. The monkeys found a huge mango tree on the river bank: ‘Its sweet fruits of divine flavour were as large as water jars, and from one branch the fruit fell on dry ground, from another they fell into the Ganges.’ The troop feasted eagerly on the fruit, but the bodhisattva pondered, and decided that he must not let the ripe fruit fall into the river, or there would come a time when disaster would befall his followers.

So after the next blossoming, he made the monkeys eat or discard all the fruitlets on the branch that overhung the river. However, one single fruit ripened because an ants’ nest hid it from view, and it fell into the water.

Meanwhile, many miles downstream in the great royal capital Benares, King Brahmadatta was idling away his life. His many wives did their best to keep him amused, his courtiers flattered him and devised elaborate feasts, and the king himself grew more fat and more bored. In the afternoon he would go with his court to his bathing place on the Ganges. Nets were strung across the river, upstream and downstream, to keep out the crocodiles, and the king would wallow in the shallows to his heart’s content, and then emerge for a picnic.

One night, after the king had returned to his palace, the fisherman who put away the crocodile nets found a strange object caught in the mesh. Was it the egg of some huge water bird? Red and green it was, weighty, soft to the touch; swollen, blushing, and fragrant. Did the fisherman know what it was? no! — So he gave it to the chief queen. Did the queen know what it was? no! — So she gave it to the king. Did the king know what it was? no! — So he asked the queen, who asked the fisherman, who did not know. The fisherman fetched the woodman: he would know. He said to the king ‘Eat it, sire’. Suspiciously, the king made the woodman taste some first, and an enchanting perfume filled the palace as the fruit was cut.

Yes, it was the very mango that had fallen from the monkey’s tree, and the king was soon guzzling its flesh, leaving some small pieces to tantalize his wives and courtiers. He was delighted, and the fragrant essence pervaded his body. They were ecstatic, and the fragrant essence pervaded their bodies. But when the mango was finished, the sensuous king craved more; the whole gourmand court were obsessed with mangoes. So Brahmadatta ordered an expedition for the next morning. They would all go up river to look for the tree. The bodhisattva monkey’s worst fears were about to be realized.

The king’s boats stopped under the mango tree, its branches bending with ripe fruit, and Brahmadatta and his wives and courtiers feasted to repletion, all falling asleep under the great tree. The moon rose. At midnight, our monkey troop arrived for their mangoes, not noticing their new and deadly rivals snoring contentedly on the ground. The noise of the monkeys woke the king, who saw them and smiled. `The mango is an ideal fruit, but it lacks a savoury. Tomorrow we will eat mangoes and roast monkey!’ Brahmadatta awakened his men and had the tree surrounded by archers, ready to shoot at first light.

Trembling, the monkeys came to their leader — ‘What shall we do?’ ‘Do not fear,’ he whispered, and climbed to the very end of the bough which overhung the river. With a prodigious leap, he made the far river bank, landing in a bush. There, he carefully calculated the length of his leap, broke off a long bamboo pole to reach the branch, tied one end to the top of the bush, and tied the other end to his waist. The great monkey gathered every sinew for a mighty leap, and ‘with the speed of a wind‑torn cloud’ he sprang for the branch. But oh! the pole was just too short. With a despairing convulsion, the bodhisattva clutched the branch as he fell. ‘O monkeys, my back must be the bridge. Run swiftly to the pole and safety.’

So the troop escaped the dreadful fate of adorning Brahmadatta’s breakfast table. But look — the last monkey to cross is the bodhisattva’s great rival, and he stamps on his chief’s back as he passes, causing his heart to crack in a wave of pain. The cruel rival fled, laughing. The bodhisattva was alone, lashed to a bamboo pole, hanging on to the tree.

Brahmadatta had seen all in the growing light. ‘This is but a beast, yet he risks all to save his kin!’ and at daybreak he sent his boats into midstream and had a platform built on them. Gently, the dying monkey was taken down and tended. The king sat next to him on the ground and spoke, his heart full. ‘You could have saved yourself, great being. What are you to those chatterers, what are they to you?’ ‘Those monkeys are my charge, king. In terror of your brutal arrows, they looked to me, and so I saved them. Neither death nor bondage will disturb my breast, since those I ruled are now safe. I tell this to you, O king, that you may learn that a wise ruler seeks the welfare of all in his domain.’

And so the bodhisattva died, and Brahmadatta gave him a monarch’s funeral, enshrined his bones, and abandoned his own luxurious ways to rule righteously, following the instructions of a monkey.

Catherine RhysDavids, Stories of the Buddha, Dover, New York 1989 (1st edn 1929), 149–53. Tradition says that the Buddha told this story when discussing the value of seeking the welfare of one’s kin. Feats of courage and self sacrifice in defence of the troop are well known among the macaque group of monkeys (an early illustration of this birth story from the Bharat Stupa shows monkeys of this type), and are ascribed to kin selection. The idea is that it is genetically worth while to risk your life if you save the lives of close relatives, since they carry similar genes to yours. However, despite the naturalistic observation of much of this two thousand year old story, it is important as a moral fable, and not for its portrayal of animal behaviour.