Day 29

Day 29 covers all of Chapter 25, The Universal Gate of World-Voice-Perceiver Bodhisattva.

Having last month heard the Buddha list the supernatural powers of World-Voice-Perceiver, we conclude Chapter 25, The Universal Gate of World-Voice-Perceiver Bodhisattva.

Suppose you are in a law-court for a suit,
Or on a battlefield, and are seized with fear.
If you think of the power of World-Voice-Perceiver,
All your enemies will flee away.

His wonderful voice [comes from] his perceiving the voice of the world.
It is like the voice of Brahman, like the sound of a tidal wave.
It excels all the other voices of the world.
Therefore, think of him constantly!

Do not doubt him even at a moment’s thought!
The Pure Saint World-Voice-Perceiver is reliable
When you suffer, and when you are confronted
With the calamity of death.

By all these merits, he sees
All living beings with his compassionate eyes.
The ocean of his accumulated merits is boundless.
Therefore, bow before him!

Thereupon Earth-Holding Bodhisattva rose from his seat, proceeded to the Buddha, and said to him:

“World-Honored One! Those who hear of his supernatural powers by which he opened the universal gate without hindrance, and which are expounded in this chapter of World-Voice-Perceiver Bodhisattva, know this, will be able to obtain not a few merits.”

When the Buddha expounded this chapter of the Universal Gate, the eighty-four thousand living beings in the congregation began to aspire for the unparalleled Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi.

Continuing with tales of the Hoke-kyō (Lotus Sūtra) from Miraculous Stories from the Japanese Buddhist Tradition (Nihon ryōiki), we consider On the Tongues of the Reciters of the Hoke-kyō Which Did Not Decay in the Skulls Exposed to the Elements