Having last month considered the benefits of resolutely internalizing and keeping faith with the Great Vehicle sutras, we consider the six-tusked white elephant.
The elephant has six tusks, and seven limbs support it on the ground. From beneath its seven limbs, seven lotus flowers grow. The elephant’s color is vivid white, a white surpassed by no other of its hue: even crystalline Himalayan peaks cannot compare. The elephant’s body measures four hundred and fifty yojanas in length, and it is four hundred yojanas tall. At the tips of the six tusks are six bathing pools. Fourteen lotus flowers are growing in each pool, filling each pool completely and blossoming in all their glory like the king of celestial trees. Atop each flower is a maiden, as exquisite as a jewel, whose face glows with a color of rouge more radiant than that of maids in the heavens. Five harps spontaneously appear in the hands of each maiden, and five hundred musical instruments accompany each harp. Five hundred flying birds – wild ducks and geese and mandarin ducks, all colored like various jewels – come forth from the flowers and leaves. There is a lotus flower on the elephant’s trunk: its stalk has a color like that of a red pearl; the flower is a golden bud that has not yet bloomed.
A practitioner, having perceived these things, should reengage in self-amendment9 – again plumb and ponder the Great Vehicle with total commitment, without rest or resignation. The practitioner will then see the golden bud blossom fully in an instant and radiate a golden glow. The lotus flower’s pod is a kimśuka gem, its calyx is made of wonderful brahma-maṇi jewels, and its stamens are made of diamonds. A manifested buddha form10 is seen sitting on the pod of the lotus flower, and a great number of bodhisattvas are seen sitting on the stamens.
The manifested buddha form emits from between its eyebrows a golden beam of light that enters the elephant’s trunk.11 Emerging from the elephant’s trunk, it goes into the elephant’s eyes. Coming out of the elephant’s eyes, it goes into the elephant’s ears. The beam then comes out of the elephant’s ears, illuminates the top of its head, and transforms into a golden platform. Three manifested human forms will be there on the elephant’s head: one is clutching a golden wheel, one is carrying a maṇi jewel, and one, holding a diamond cudgel, raises the cudgel and points it at the elephant, instantly enabling the elephant to move. The elephant floats seven feet above the ground and treads in the air. Without touching down it makes impressions in the ground, each containing a perfect imprint of a wheel, complete with one thousand spokes radiating from hub to rim. A great lotus flower comes forth from each space within the wheel, and an elephant form manifests itself above it. This elephant also has seven limbs, and it walks following the great elephant. With each raising and lowering of its limbs, seven thousand elephants appear and form a retinue that accompanies the great elephant.
The elephant’s trunk becomes the color of a red lotus flower. On the trunk, the manifested buddha form emits a beam of light from between its eyebrows. The beam is golden-colored and, as before, goes into the elephant’s trunk, emerges from inside the trunk and enters the elephant’s eyes, then comes out of the elephant’s eyes and curls back to enter its ears. The beam comes out of the elephant’s ears and extends to the top of its neck; then it gradually moves up to the elephant’s back and transforms into a golden saddle. The saddle is inlaid with the seven precious metals and gems, it has posts on four sides made of the seven precious metals and gems, and a multitude of jewels adorn it so as to form a jeweled platform. In the middle of the platform is a single lotus flower made of the seven precious metals and gems. One hundred jewels combine to form the stamens of this lotus flower, and its pod is a magnificent maṇi jewel. A single bodhisattva will be there, sitting erectly in the lotus posture: his name is Universal Sage. His body is the color of a white jewel, fifty kinds of rays of light, in fifty kinds of colors, are radiating from the nape of his neck, and golden rays of light are coming forth from all the pores of his body. Innumerable manifested buddha forms are at the ends of these golden rays, accompanied by manifested bodhisattva forms as their retinues.