འཕགས་པ་ཤན་ཏ་རྒྱས་པ་ཆན་པའ་སྡ་ཉ་མའ་སྙང་པ་ཞས་བྱ་བའ་མད 12.4

12.4

with a blazing body? Everything I touch with my body—even with the slightest brush—burns and is consumed by flames. I must always walk without sandals and move around naked. My parents enjoy perfect prosperity and an exalted status, similar to that experienced by universal monarchs ruling over the four continents.”

The Blessed One replied, “O, nāga! In the past, thirty-one eons ago, the thus-gone, worthy, perfect Buddha, blessed Śikhin, appeared in the world. At that time, there was a king named Free of Flowers. For three months, he offered all sorts of supplies to the thus-gone Śikhin and his retinue—saṅghas of hearers and bodhisattvas counting many hundreds of thousands of members—and he listened to the Dharma continuously. He made the aspiration to reach unsurpassed and perfect awakening. He also built the Blessed One a fully functional temple. King Free of Flowers had a son named Arjuna. Because of his intense fear of saṃsāra, this son became a renunciate in the presence of the Blessed One, and he then looked after the monastic compound of the saṅgha that his father had donated. Later on, the son of the king Free of Flowers—the monk Arjuna—became jealous of all the hearers of the Blessed One, those monks who were residing there while partaking of food, beverages, and bedding. Those monks, the hearers of the Blessed One, eventually left the place. Arjuna was extremely delighted by their departure, but he could neither partake of these provisions himself nor give them away to others. After he died, that monk was born within the great hells. For many trillions of years,