A Bodhisattva’s Skillful Means (Part2/4)

 

In part one of the story, King of the Honored Multitude Bodhisattva first displayed supernatural transformations, enabling the adept Venerable Ānanda to understand that he was a great bodhisattva who purely upheld the precepts, was free from sensual desire, and came to possess supernatural powers and transformative abilities through genuine practice and realization. Upon learning this, Ānanda immediately kneeled on the ground with a grief-stricken expression on his face and earnestly beseeched the World-Honored One to allow him to publicly confess his transgression of ignorantly accusing King of the Honored Multitude Bodhisattva of violating the precept against sexual misconduct.

The World-Honored One then told Ānanda, “One must not judge the actions of Mahāyāna bodhisattvas as violating the pure precepts based solely on superficial appearances! For after Mahāyāna bodhisattvas take refuge in the mind of all knowledge, when they encounter pleasing forms, sounds, scents, tastes, and tactile sensations or the five desirous states of wealth, sensuality, fame, food, and sleep, which delight the mind, they will partake in and utilize these objects together with sentient beings, and then seize the opportunity to exhort these beings to take refuge in the Three Jewels of the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha and to generate an unsurpassed aspiration for Buddha Bodhi. Such Mahāyāna bodhisattvas neither violate the precepts nor fail to liberate and guide sentient beings. Therefore, the World-Honored One said, “Only they can perfectly and fully accomplish the meritorious qualities and wisdom required to become Buddhas and Tathāgatas.”

The World-Honored One also explained the past karmic connection between King of the Honored Multitude Bodhisattva and the woman whom Venerable Ānanda saw him sitting with on the same seat. In the past, this woman had been the wife of King of the Honored Multitude Bodhisattva for five hundred lifetimes. Due to the habitual tendencies of marital emotional attachment from those past lives, when she saw King of the Honored Multitude Bodhisattva, craving for and attachment to him immediately arose in her mind. Especially upon seeing that he was a bodhisattva disciple under the World-Honored One who faithfully upheld the precepts and possessed a dignified demeanor and majestic virtue, she felt great joy in her heart and thought to herself, “If I could have the opportunity to sit together with King of the Honored Multitude Bodhisattva, I would also take refuge in the World-Honored One, generate an aspiration for the Bodhi mind of attaining unsurpassed perfect enlightenment, and become a Mahāyāna bodhisattva.”

King of the Honored Multitude Bodhisattva had already attained supernatural powers and transformations, so he naturally knew of his past-life karmic connection with the woman he was sitting with and understood her thoughts. He decided to liberate and guide her. The next morning, he took his alms bowl and entered the city, going from house to house to beg for food. When he arrived at this woman’s house, he entered. In his mind, he immediately contemplated a dharma principle: “Whether the internal great earth element within or the external great earth element, it is still the great earth element” (Mahāratnakūṭa Sūtra, fascicle 106). That is, the solid parts of our body and the solid things in the external material world are actually composed of the same solid great element—the “great earth element.”  (Part 2/4)