DESCRIPTION

Chapter Thirty-One is the shortest chapter of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, constituting a single paragraph. In it, a bodhisattva called ‘Mind King’, mentioned only by name in the opening of the Seventh Assembly in Chapter Twenty-Seven. The bodhisattva-mahāsattva tells the assembly of bodhisattvas about the relative time frames of different Buddha Lands in terms of kalpas. The chapter concludes:

“Following an orderly sequence such as this on through beyond a hundred myriads of asaṃkhyeyas of worlds, a kalpa in the very last of those worlds is just a day and a night in the world Supreme Lotus, the buddha land of Worthy Supremacy Buddha. It is completely filled with Samantabhadra Bodhisattvas and other such great bodhisattvas who cultivate the same practices.”