འཕགས་པ་ཀླའ་རྒྱལ་པ་མ་དྲས་པས་ཞས་པ་ཞས་བྱ་བ་ཐག་པ་ཆན་པའ་མད 86

86

the quality of not falling into errors is known as irreversibility. Lord of nāgas, the entrance into the flawlessness of hearers is not transcendent, although it leads with certainty to the attainment of fruition. The entrance into the flawlessness of bodhisattvas is transcendent. Rather than leading to the hearers’ attainment of fruition, it brings one closer to ultimate fruition—the seat of awakening. Therefore, the flawlessness of hearers is limited, while the flawlessness of bodhisattvas is unlimited.

“Lord of nāgas, imagine two persons who have fallen into a deep crevasse. One of them is strong, diligent, courageous, skilled, well prepared, and clever. After he has fallen there, he manages to pull himself out of that crevasse through his own great effort, while the other person, who is weaker and unskilled, remains stuck at the bottom. Similarly, lord of nāgas, bodhisattvas, through the power of their insight, see and realize that all phenomena are empty, signless, wishless, and unfabricated, and having perfected skillful means through their great compassion toward all beings, they abide in the mind of omniscience, while those who follow the vehicle of the hearers achieve their result by means of the intellectual analysis of phenomena. Lord of nāgas, in that analogy, the deep crevasse represents uncompounded phenomena, the diligent person represents a bodhisattva, and the person who is unable to climb out of that crevasse into which he has fallen represents a follower of the vehicle of hearers. Lord of nāgas, those who hear about this flawlessness will certainly proceed to unsurpassed, perfect awakening