ཡ་དགས་ཁ་ནས་མ་འབར་བ་ལ་སྐྱབས་མཛད་པ་ཞས་བྱ་བའ་གཟངས 2

2

the Bhagavān was.

Arriving in the presence of the Bhagavān, Nanda fell before him, touching the five points of his body to the ground. Then, after prostrating with his head to the feet of the Bhagavān, with his body trembling, he implored the Bhagavān, “I beseech you to grant me final relief from being tormented by this suffering!”

He continued, “I was off at a distance, having been contemplating the Dharma, when a preta called Flaming Mouth said to me, ‘You! Seven days from now, your life will end, and you will be reborn in the realm of the pretas!’ When I asked, ‘What can be done about this, so that I might be liberated from the sufferings of the preta realm?’ the preta said to me, ‘If you make bali offerings to pretas as numerous as the hundred thousand million billion grains of sand of the river Ganges, and offer the finest food to each and every one of the many hundreds of thousands of brahmins and ṛṣis and so on, then your life will be long.’ If I am to provide this, Bhagavān, how can I prepare so much food for so many pretas, brahmins, ṛṣis, and so forth?”

“Do not let this frighten you,” said the Bhagavān to Nanda. “I have a method by which you may prepare food and many balis for pretas as numerous as the hundred thousand million billion grains of sand of the river Ganges, and brahmins and ṛṣis and so forth. So do not let this upset you.”

Then the Bhagavān said to Nanda, “I have a mantra dhāraṇī called the power of all-conquering rays of light by which all are brought under the influence of immeasurable radiance.¹⁹ When anyone utters this dhāraṇī, there will be food and the finest bali for pretas as numerous as the hundred thousand million billion grains of sand of the river Ganges, and the many brahmins and ṛṣis and so forth, so that each and every one of those pretas and others will receive seven portions of food weighed according to Magadhan measures.

“Nanda, when I was a brahmin in a previous life,