འཕགས་པ་དཀན་མཆག་སྤྲན་ཅས་བྱ་བ་ཐག་པ་ཆན་པའ་མད intro.10

intro.10

Sarva­nīvaraṇa­viṣkam­bhin then asks Buddha Śākyamuni a long series of questions, all of which are concerned with the nature, qualities, and activities of bodhisattvas. The main part of the sūtra consists of Śākyamuni’s detailed replies to these questions, interspersed with supportive dialogues between Sarva­nīvaraṇa­viṣkam­bhin and the Buddha. The carefully structured enumeration of subjects is a particular feature of this sūtra. Starting with the ten perfections, over one hundred topics are explained in detail, many of them subdivided into groups of ten subtopics, and some branching out into many more. The sixth of ten topics within a section on how bodhisattvas are similar to the wind, for example, includes a long series of further lists of the qualities of bodhisattvas, and then of the qualities of thus-gone ones, too—all within the analogy of how the activity of bodhisattvas creates a whole “universe” of positive qualities in the same way that the element wind is instrumental in creating the physical universe.¹³ Despite this latter mention of the qualities of thus-gone ones (and another passage on their greatness, –, within the section on abundant faith), the large majority of these topics focus firmly on the bodhisattva path in all its ramifications, the predominant theme of Sarva­nīvaraṇa­viṣkam­bin’s questions. Indeed, the Buddha’s replies follow Sarva­nīvaraṇa­viṣkam­bhin’s initial questions so closely that the paragraphs containing those questions (–) provide a concise and useful table of contents of the themes treated in the sūtra.