DESCRIPTION

The Qualities or Merit of the Light of the Tathāgata’s Secondary Signs (Anuvyañjana) is a brief chapter in which the Buddha describes three (?) lights associated with the ‘embellishments’ of the Buddha to Ratnapāṇi Bodhisattva.

The first sign is known as “the king of perfect fulfillment.” From within this subsidiary sign there comes forth a great light known as “flourishing abundance” with a retinue of seven hundred myriads of asaṃkhyeyas of light rays.

The second sign is described by a story about when the bodhisattva was/is abiding in the Tuṣita Heaven Palace and emanated a great light known as “the king of light banners” that illuminates worlds as numerous as the atoms in ten buddha kṣetras and the beings touched by this light are reborn in the Tuṣita Heaven where there is a Celestial Drum called “Most Delightful” that speaks to them about the great awesome spiritual powers of Vairocana.

The third sign is described in a very long section about the thousand-spoked wheel emblems on the bottom of the bodhisattva’s feet known as “the king of universally illuminating light,” which has a subsidiary sign known as “the king of perfect fulfillment” which always emanates forty kinds of light, among which one of those lights is known as “pure meritorious qualities” able to illuminate worlds as numerous as the atoms in a koṭī of nayutas of buddha kṣetras and, adapting to all beings’ many different kinds of karmic actions and many different sorts of aspirations, enables them to become fully ripened. As with the previous section, those touched by the light are reborn in the Tuṣita Heaven where they too then hear the sound of the Celestial Drum telling them about referring to an “I” without attaching to any self and without attaching to anything belonging to a self, emanating sound that does not come from the east and does not come from the southerly, westerly, or northerly directions, the four midpoints, the zenith, or the nadir, like the karmic reward of realizing buddhahood, which does not come from any of the ten directions. The drum also explains “Just as I, as a celestial drum, am neither male nor female, and yet I am able to bring forth countlessly and boundlessly many inconceivable phenomena, so too it is with you devas’ sons and devas’ daughters, for you are neither male nor female, and yet you are still able to enjoy the use of all sorts of different supremely marvelous palaces, parks, and groves.”

This chapter concludes with a description of floral offerings.