Overall Teaching

Muktaka teaches while in a samādhi, showing buddhas in all directions within his body as products of his own mind.

Summary

1. Sudhana, reflecting upon the instructions for bodhisattva practice given by Megha, proceeded to Vanavasin,^[1] for twelve years,^[2] where he saw Mutaka.^[3] (1192)

2. When he met Muktaka, Sudhana explained his aim to practice bodhisattva activities and realise buddhahood. He requested Muktaka to explain to him how he teaches beings to turn away from evil and attachments and establish them into awakened states of mind and practices. (1192-3)

3. Then Muktaka entered a samādhi called “Collection of all Buddha-fields” by the power of the buddhas and Mañjuśrī’s gift of the light of knowledge. In that samādhi all of the liberative practices, adornments, and lands of buddhas and bodhisattvas were visible in a whirlpool within Muktaka’s body engaging in all of their liberating deeds. (1194-5)^[4]

a. Sudhana saw these, took them in, and contemplated them. (1195)

4. Muktaka then arose and explained that he goes in and out of this samādhi and sees the buddhas in the ten directions with their associated groups of bodhisattvas, and yet they do not come there and he does not go there. He sees whatever buddha he wishes, whenever he wants, in whatever direction without discerning any coming or going—he knows them all like a dream, magically produced form, and his own mind as being the same, that all buddhas, bodhisattvas, and awakening practices are products of one’s own mind,^[5] which ought to be supported by roots of goodness. (1195-6)

5. He admits that he knows the liberation of unobstructed manifestation, but he cannot know the practice of those whose minds are unobstructed. Thus he must go south to Milaspharana, on the tip of the continent, where Saradhvaja lives.

6. Sudhana paid respects to Muktaka and, thinking good thoughts regarding spiritual benefactors, left. (1196-7)

[1] Meaning “Forest Dwelling”

[2] Li: “Indicative of the fact that the twelve links of conditioning … are the substance of meditation, Sudhana traveled for twelve years to get to Vanavasin.

“Before, with Sāgaramegha, he had observed the twelve links of conditioned life and attained transmundane awareness; here he neither destroys conditioned life nor clings to conditioned life. Traveling means not dwelling.” (1573)

[3] Meaning “Liberated One.” Li: “Muktaka was in the midst of the mundane, the same as Megha. The wise use places where there are many beings living and dying for meditation communities, and meditation communities are called forest, so Megha had indicated a community in the South called Forest Dweller.” (1573) He symbolizes the Fifth Abode: Full Equipment with Skill in Means.

[4] Li: “Because the subject of trance is immensely deep, all-pervasive, and completely fulfilling, Muktaka entered absorption into a concentration formula for the whirlpool of boundless buddha-fields, whereat there appeared in the ten directions the enlightenment sites of buddhas as numerous as atoms in ten buddha-fields.

“The whirlpool has the meaning of depth, the number ten has the meaning of fulfilment. In absorption, the buddhas resulting from his own knowledge and his own causal practices appeared in profound stillness, so Muktaka said that when he entered absorption in trance he saw ten buddhas in the ten directions, with their ten chief assistants.” (1573)

[5] Li: “Because buddha is the accord of the inner mind with reality, therefore one thought in harmony is a moment of buddhahood, while a continuum of thoughts in harmony is a continuum of buddhas.

“There is no country outside mind, no buddha outside mind, so Liberated One Muktaka said that if he wanted to see buddhas such as the Buddha of Infinitite Light in the Land of Bliss [Amitābha], he could see them as soon as he thought of them.” (1573-4)