Day 5 begins Chapter 3, A Parable.
Sariputra feels like dancing for joy at the news that sravakas like himself will be able to attain Buddhahood.
“World-Honored One! I reproached myself day and night [after I saw that the Bodhisattvas were assured of their future Buddhahood]. Now I have heard from you the Dharma that I had never heard before. I have removed all my doubts. I am now calm and peaceful in body and mind. Today I have realized that I am your son, that I was born from your mouth, that I was born in [the world of] the Dharma, and that I have obtained the Dharma of the Buddha.”
And in gathas:
I hear your gentle voice.
Your voice is deep and wonderful.
You expound the Pure Dharma.
My heart is filled with great joy.
All my doubts are gone.
I have obtained true wisdom.I shall become a Buddha without fail.
I shall be respected by gods and men.
I will turn the wheel of the unsurpassed Dharma,
And teach Bodhisattvas.
Now Sariputra isn’t the only one who feels like dancing at the news:
At that time the great multitude included bhikṣus, bhikṣuṇīs, upāsakas and upāsikās, that is, the four kinds of devotees; and gods, dragons, yakṣas, gandharvas, asuras, garuḍas, kiṃnaras and mahoragas. When they saw that Śāriputra was assured of his future attainment of Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi by the Buddha, they danced with great joy. They took off their garments and offered them to the Buddha. Śakra-Devānām-Indra, the Brahman Heavenly-King, and innumerable other gods also offered their wonderful heavenly garments and the heavenly flowers of mandāravas and mahā-mandāravas to the Buddha. The heavenly garments, which had been released from the hands of the gods, whirled in the sky. The gods simultaneously made many thousands of millions of kinds of music in the sky, and caused many heavenly flowers to rain down. They said, “The Buddha turned the first wheel of the Dharma at Vārāṇasī a long time ago. Now he turns the wheel of the unsurpassed and greatest Dharma.”
I’m having fun with the vision of “heavenly garments, which had been released from the hands of the gods, whirl[ing] in the sky” as the aforementioned gods – now sans garments – make music and cause heavenly flowers to rain down on the gathering. Heavenly bodies in the sky, indeed.
The parable from which the chapter takes its name is set up by a question put to the Buddha by Sariputra:
Thereupon Śāriputra said to the Buddha:
“World-Honored One! Now my doubts are gone. You assured me of my future attainment of Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi. These twelve hundred people now have freedom of mind. When they had something more to learn, [that is to say, when they had not yet completed their study for Arhatship,] you taught them, saying, ‘My teaching is for the purpose of causing you to emancipate yourselves from birth, old age, disease, and death, and to attain Nirvāṇa.’ The [two thousand] people, including those who have something more to learn and those who have nothing more to learn, also think that they attained Nirvāṇa because they emancipated themselves from such a view as ‘I exist,’ or ‘I shall exist forever,’ or ‘I shall cease to exist.’ But [both the twelve hundred people and the two thousand people] are now quite perplexed because they have heard from you [the Dharma] which they had never heard before. World-Honored One! In order to cause the four kinds of devotees to remove their doubts, explain why you said all this to them!”
I’m ending Day 5 here. It’s possible the Romanized text includes some of the parable, but for my study it makes more sense to break here and continue with the parable in Day 6.
