法苑珠林 55.23

55.23

Thereupon the brahman stood quietly listening, and hearing the Buddha's praise, he felt doubt in his heart. Stepping forward, he asked the Buddha: "What is a ladle of rice broth worth, that you praise it above various gifts of jewels, saying they cannot equal the gift of a ladle of broth? This rice broth is not worth a single coin, yet you extol it several billion times over. Who could believe this?" Then the World-Honoured One immediately displayed his broad and long tongue, covering his face with it and reaching up to the Brahmā heaven. He said to the brahman: "Throughout countless hundreds of thousands of koṭis of kalpas, I have constantly practiced perfect truthfulness, and only thus did I obtain this tongue. Could one ever acquire it through falsehood? I wish to ask you a question; answer me truthfully. Have you ever traveled back and forth between Śrāvastī and Rājagṛha, and on the way is there a tree called the nyagrodha, which can shade a crowd of people with five hundred chariots?" He answered: "Yes, indeed, there is; I have seen it." The World-Honoured One asked again: "How large are its seeds?" He answered: "They are the size of a mustard seed." The Buddha said to the brahman: "You are truly speaking with a double tongue! If it is truly as small as a mustard seed, how could the tree be so vast?" He replied: "It is truly so; I dare not deceive you." The Buddha again told him: "A seed as small as a mustard seed grows into a vast tree; the earth's production of plants is such that nothing can contain it, and what it covers is exceedingly broad. How much more so the Tathāgata, the Unsurpassed Fully Awakened One, a supreme field of limitless merit! With great compassion and vast sympathy, there is none he does not deliver; the fortune and merit of offering him food are beyond reckoning." The brahman fell silent, unable to offer any further retort. The Buddha said to Ānanda: "When this woman's life ends, she will shed her female form, become a man, and be born in heaven. Born down as a human, she will understand the profound and wondrous Dharma, and after thirteen kalpas she will become a Buddha named Tathāgata Xinming (Cittaprabhāsa)." The brahman submitted at heart, cast his five limbs to the ground, reproached himself within, and took refuge in the Buddha. He begged for mercy and acceptance, requesting to leave the household life. The Buddha immediately received him as a śramaṇa. The Buddha taught the Four Truths, and his outflows were extinguished and his mind liberated. Furthermore, the Nirvāṇa Sūtra says: At that time, ten heterodox ṛṣis wished to compete in spiritual power with the Buddha. King Ajātaśatru told the non-Buddhists: "You now wish to scratch Mount Sumeru with your fingernails, and gnaw vajra with your teeth! Worthy sirs, it is like a fool who sees the king of lions sleeping when hungry and wishes to wake him; like a man putting his finger into the mouth of a venomous snake; like wishing to touch with one's hand a fire covered with ashes. You are now just like this. Good men, it is like a wild fox roaring like a lion; like a mosquito racing against a garuḍa; like a hare crossing the ocean and wishing to plumb its depths. You are now just like this. In conceiving this intention now, you are like moths throwing themselves into a blaze. Follow my advice, and speak of this no more!"