Chapter 6. Bestowal of Prophecy
The sixth chapter concerns the “bestowal of predictions,” which refers to the Buddha prophesying the future Buddhahood of his great disciples. Mahakashyapa, Subhuti, Mahakatyayana, and Mahamaudgalyayana all begin to receive their predictions of enlightenment here. We will set aside this discussion of predictions for now and return to it at the end. Let us proceed to the seventh chapter—”The Parable of the Conjured City.”
The Parable of the Conjured City
In this chapter, the Buddha tells the story of the Buddha named Mahabhijna Jnanabhibhu (Great Universal Wisdom Excellence). To illustrate how long ago this Buddha lived, he uses a metaphor. He tells the monks: “Suppose someone were to take all the lands in a trichiliocosm and grind them into ink. Suppose he then traveled toward the east, and after passing a thousand lands, he dropped a single speck of ink the size of a dust mote. After passing another thousand lands, he dropped another speck. Suppose he continued in this manner until all the ink was exhausted. Could you calculate the number of lands passed?” The monks replied that it would be impossible. The Buddha then said: “Monks, if all the lands this person passed through—both those where he dropped a speck and those where he did not—were further ground into dust, and each speck of dust were counted as one kalpa, the time since that Buddha entered parinirvana would exceed that number of kalpas by immeasurable, boundless hundreds of thousands of millions of billions of asamkhyeya kalpas.” It is an unimaginably distant time. Why does the Buddha go to such trouble to describe this antiquity? We might simply say “a long, long time ago,” but the Buddha uses this elaborate metaphor for a reason.
In this story, you will find that the Buddha was once one of the sons of Mahabhijna Jnanabhibhu. Before he attained Buddhahood, Mahabhijna Jnanabhibhu was a king with sixteen princes. Shakyamuni was one of these sons. When he followed Mahabhijna Jnanabhibhu into the monastic life and was still a novice (shramanera), he preached the Lotus Sutra and converted many disciples. After all these aeons, those same disciples are the voice-hearer (shravaka) disciples listening to him today at the Assembly of the Lotus Sutra. These disciples have followed him life after life.
The Buddha is demonstrating that these disciples have already been practicing for immeasurable kalpas. He is saying, “I began converting you when I was a novice, and I have continued to guide you until my own attainment of Buddhahood.” When he originally preached the Lotus Sutra, these disciples had also made the vow to seek unsurpassed complete enlightenment. However, now, great disciples like Shariputra have forgotten that initial resolve (bodhichitta) and have turned instead to the Lesser Vehicle (Hinayana). This shows that we can lose our way over the course of many lifetimes. At the same time, the Buddha manifests his tathagata powers, using the power of his wisdom to observe those ancient causes as clearly as if he were looking at the events of today, demonstrating that time and space do not restrict a Buddha.
When Mahabhijna Jnanabhibhu first left home to seek the Way, he sat in the place of enlightenment for ten kalpas, yet the Buddha- dharma did not manifest, and he did not attain realization. Only after practicing for a long time did he finally achieve unsurpassed complete enlightenment. Before he left home, he had sixteen princes. After their father attained the Way, they all followed him into the monastic life. When Mahabhijna Jnanabhibhu attained enlightenment, five million billion Buddha-lands in each of the ten directions trembled in six ways, and his body emitted a vast radiance. How bright was this light? It reached all the way to the Brahma heavens. The Buddha’s light shone everywhere! Within these lands, even the dark places where the light of the sun and moon could not reach—places we cannot see today, such as the realms of hell and hungry ghosts—were illuminated. The sentient beings in those lands could see one another in this light and cried out in astonishment, “Why are there so many beings here that we have never seen before?” The light from the palaces of all the Brahma kings in the ten directions was eclipsed by the radiance of Mahabhijna Jnanabhibhu. The scriptures describe how the various Brahma kings, carrying their palaces and filling their robes with heavenly flowers, set out together to find the source of this light.
Where did this light come from? The Brahma kings said, “This light shines throughout the ten directions. Has a great virtuous one been born? Or has a Buddha appeared in the world?” Because there had been many kalpas of decline, no one had encountered a Buddha for a very long time. Seeing this light, the Brahma kings said, “A Buddha must have been born; otherwise, how could the light be so bright as to outshine our palaces?”
When reading this chapter, several friends have asked me: “Why does it describe the Brahma kings of the ten directions coming one direction at a time? Why not just say they all came?” The text describes each direction individually, starting with one Brahma king asking, “Where does this light come from?” and the others replying, “Perhaps a great virtuous one or a Buddha has appeared.”
So, they took their retinues, their flowers, and their palaces to search for the source. There is a supernatural realm involved here that might seem confusing: why would they bring their palaces with them? This refers to one of the Buddha’s supernatural powers, known as the power of locomotion (riddhi-vidhi). What is the state of this power? When a Buddha attains enlightenment and his light radiates outward, everything is manifested within that light. To a Tathagata, he is omnipresent, filling all places, and all worlds are part of his light and part of his mind. When the Brahma princes saw this light and thought to find its source, the moment that thought arose, time and space began to shift, moving toward the source. This is the state of supernatural power. It is not that they used wagons to pull their palaces; rather, the moment they moved their minds, time and space itself shifted.
When each Brahma king arrived before the Buddha, he praised him, saying, “We have not seen a Buddha for a long, long time. Now that a Buddha has appeared, we entreat him to turn the Wheel of Dharma—to turn the unsurpassed Great Wheel of Dharma.” Imagine if a mani jewel fell from the sky and landed in our country, its light covering the entire nation. How would the news report it? It would say, “Last night a mani jewel descended, and its light covered the country. People from Beijing came, people from Tianjin came, people from Shanghai came…” Everyone would join the search, converging on that one spot. The news in the heavenly realms is similar; it reports how each direction arrived, one by one. The kings of the ten directions were all the same, each bringing their palaces and joining the sixteen princes to pray for the Buddha to turn the unsurpassed Wheel ofDharma.
Mahabhijna Jnanabhibhu accepted the request of the ten Brahma kings and the sixteen princes. He preached for them the Shravaka Vehicle, the Pratyekabuddha Vehicle, and the Bodhisattva Vehicle, and finally, he preached the Lotus Sutra.
At that time, the sixteen princes were still novices. After Mahabhijna Jnanabhibhu finished preaching, he entered meditation. Those sixteen novices then began to propagate the Dharma. They were novices who had already resolved to attain Buddhahood, determined to achieve unsurpassed complete enlightenment, and they expounded the Lotus Sutra for the masses.
Why are these sixteen princes mentioned repeatedly? The Buddha says that they have all since attained unsurpassed complete enlightenment and are now preaching the Dharma in the Buddha- lands of the ten directions, with immeasurable hundreds of thousands of millions of billions of Bodhisattvas and Shravakas as their retinues. Among them, the sixteenth Buddha is myself, Shakyamuni Buddha. Of the other fifteen Buddhas, one is named Lion Sound, another is named Lion Appearance; two are in each of the cardinal and intermediate directions, and one of them is the Amitabha Buddha with whom we are so familiar.
Of the Buddhas throughout the ten directions, we are only truly familiar with Amitabha and Shakyamuni. The Buddha said, “When I was a novice, you disciples already followed me to learn the Dharma, and you have followed me until this day. It is just that today you have forgotten, and you think of yourselves only as Arhats of the Lesser Vehicle. In truth, you resolved long ago to seek unsurpassed complete enlightenment.”