Overall Teaching

Veṣṭhila realizes the buddhas don’t enter extinction and sees them all successively in successive moments.

Summary

1. Sudhana went to Veṣṭhila’s^[1] house in Śubhaparaṃgama, and asked him to teach him bodhisattva practice. Veṣṭhila explained:

a. He has attained a liberation called not ultimately exhausted. He realised that no buddha ever enters nirvāṇa (final extinction) except as a docetic (illusory teaching) device.

b. After opening the door of the shrine of the buddha Sandalwood Throne, he attained the samādhi called “manifestation of the endless lineage of buddhas.” When he is in that samādhi, all the successive buddhas of the universe from the past, future and present appear to him in a single moment, and in each one, infinite other buddhas are reflected. Their aspirations, attainments, perfections, and teachings are also revealed to him.

c. Of the Buddhas of the present, he sees them their infinite forms in successive instants, successively starting with Vairocana.

d. He hears what they each teach, take up what they teach, remember it, explain, analyse, follow, and elucidate it with wisdom.

e. Despite having this liberation, he claims to not be able to tell the virtues of bodhisattvas who have attained instantaneous knowledge of the three times who dwell in all samādhis in the space of an instant. Thus, Sudhana should go south to Potalaka where the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara lives, who will teach him. He emphasizes in verse:

i. Potalaka is the magnificently adorned land of Avalokiteśvara, who dwells there to benefit the world, and will teach great means of attainment.

2. Paying his respects, Sudhana left.

[1] Veṣṭhila represents the sixth dedication: Adaptively Stabilizing All Roots of Goodness. His name means “Embracer, illustrating the vastness of his knowledge and wisdom, which embraced all things.” (1600)

“This layman had before him a shine where there was placed a sandalwood throne without an icon on it; the idea is to illustrate how buddhas and sentient beings have no sign of origination and destruction, using the shrine with the sandalwood throne as a device to indicate this symbolically, to inform us that our own essence and manifestations are like the original formless Buddha on the throne.

“When you understand that essence is spacelike and find that appearances are like projections, you open up awakened knowledge and vision; then there is no beginning and no end, no present and no past. Thus Veṣṭhila said that when he opened the shrine he attained liberation without complete extinction (nirvāṇa), absorbed in the infinitiy of lineages of buddhas.