Overall Teaching

Due to offering a ball of incense to a buddha in the past, Ratnacūḍa created a house with ten floors representing the ten pāramitās.

Summary

1. Resorting to the water of goodness of Vidvān, Sudhana went to Siṃhapota^[1] and saw the religious eminent Ratnacūḍa^[2] in the marketplace^[3] and requested him to teach him the bodhisattva’s practice.

2. Ratnacūḍa took Sudhana to his house and told him to look at it: he saw it was adorned with the seven jewels and had a thrown in it made of jewels and surrounded by a lotus pond.

It was ten stories tall with eight doors.^[4]

a. After entering, he saw on the first floor food being given away,

b. clothing on the second floor,

c. jewelry on the third,

d. royal concubines on the fourth,

e. bodhisattvas singing about the Dharma on the fifth,

f. and a gathering of bodhisattvas who had attained the Prajñāpāramitā on the sixth, opening doors of the Prajñāpāramitā for beings.

g. A gathering of bodhisattvas on the seventh floor who knew about skillful means.

h. A gathering of bodhisattvas on the eighth who had attained irreversibility.

i. A gathering of bodhisattvas on the ninth who would attain buddhahood in one lifetime.

j. On the tenth floor, he saw all of the methods of teaching employed by the buddhas:

emanations, practices, vows, displays, audiences, sounds, inspirations.^[5]

3. Sudhana asked Ratnacūḍa where he planted the roots of goodness to create this house.

a. Ratnacūḍa recalled that in the endless past,^[6] under a past buddha, he went to play music^[7] for that buddha in the marketplace and offered incense for him and his assembly. Due to burning one ball of incense,^[8] the entire continent was covered by clouds of incense for three days, from which sounds praising the buddhas emerged. The merit of this was dedicated to 1. Ending poverty, 2. Forever hearing the truth, and 3. Meeting all awakened and awakening spiritual benefactors.^[9]

4. Ratnacūḍa explained that despite knowing this liberation, he cannot tell the virtues of bodhisattvas who have attained indivisible attainments and who are in the stage of the sphere of the unfragmented universal eye. Thus, Sudhana must go south to Vetramulaka where the perfumer Samantanetra can teach him.

5. Sudhana respecting Ratnacūḍa, left.

[1] Meaning Lion Foundation: “To represent the fearlessness attained through meditation. The body of samādhi pervades all practices: just as Muktaka in the fifth abode contained innumerable lands in himself and took for his meditation the provenance of objects from the body, here in the fifth practice the body is in function; so countless objects are all included in one meditation, reaching the crown of the Dharma—herefore Ratnacūḍa is called Jewel Topknot.”

[2] Meaning Jewel Topknot, representing the fifth practice: nonconfusion.

[3] Representing that the “silent function of the body of practice is always concentrated, undiminished in the midst of the marketplace of life and death; so Sudhana saw Ratnacūḍa in a marketplace.”

[4] “Ratnacūḍa used meditation to embody the ten pāramitās and the noble eightfold path, so he is represented as living in a building with ten stories and eight doors.”

[5] These each represent one of the ten perfections; the tenth floor representing the knowledge of buddhahood. These also take in entirely the five ranks. “Since the substance was independent meditation in the real universe, the stories of the building were adorned by the ten pāramitās within meditation.” (1587)

[6] “The remoteless of that past event symbolizes the transcendence of feelings and entry into concentration.”

[7] “The music symbolizes explanation of truth. This represents producing insight through samādhi.”

[8] “The ball of incense represents one kind of ‘scent’—samādhi—including the five kinds of ‘scent,’ the fivefold spiritual body consisting of discipline, samādhi, insight, liberation, and knowledge and vision of liberation.”

[9] “The message [here] is that the substance or body of samādhi has already been attained in the ten abodes, and now, in the meditational aspect of the ten practices, independence of tranquil function is attained. Ratnacūḍa’s attainment of liberation of the treasury of infinite blessings means fulfilment of myriad practices within meditation.” (1588)