Homage to the Buddhas and the Bodhisattvas!
‘Call forth as much as you can of Love, of Respect and of Faith!Remove the obstructing defilements and clear away all your taints! Listen to the Perfect Wisdom of the Gentle Buddhas,Taught for the weal of the world, for heroic spirits intended!
No WIsdom can we get hold of, no higher perfection,
no Bodhisattva, no thought of Enlightenment either,
when told of this, if not bewildered and in no way anxious,
a Bodhisattva courses in the Well-Gone’s Wisdom.
In form, in feeling, in will, perception and awareness
nowhere in them they find a place to rest on.
without a home they wander, dharmas never hold them
nor do they grasp at them-the JIna’s Bodhi they are bound to gain.
The wandering Srenika in his gnosis of the truth
could find no basis, though the Skandas had not been undone.
just so, the Boshisattva, when he comprehends the
dharmas as he should, does not retire into Blessed Rest. In wisdom then he dwells.
What is this wisdom, whose and whence, he queries,
and then he finds that all these dharmas are entirely  empty.
Uncowed and fearless in the face of this discovery,
not far from Bodhi is that Bodhi-Being then.
To course in the skandhas, in form, in feeling, in perception,
will, and so on and fail to consider them wisely;
or to imagine these skandhas to be empty; means to course in the sign, the track of non-production ignored.
But when he does not course in form, in feeling, in perception,
in will, or consciousness, but wanders without a home
remaining unaware of coursing firm in wisdom,
his thoughts on non-production-then the best of all the
calming trances cleaves to him.
Through that the Bodhisattva now dwells calmly in himself,
his future Buddhahood assured by antecedent Buddhas.
Whether absorbed in trance or whether outside it, he minds not
for of things as they are, he knows the essential, original nature.
Coursing thus, he courses in the wisdom of the Sugatas,
and yet he does not apprehend the dharmas in which he courses,
This coursing he wisely knows as a no-coursing,
that is his practice of wisdom the highest perfection.
What exists not, that non-existent the foolish imagine;
non-existence as well as existence they fashion.
As dharmic facts existence and non-existence are both not real.
A Bodhisattva goes forth when wisely he knows this.
If he knows the five skandhas as like an illusion,
but makes not illusion one thing and the skandhas another;
if freed from the notion of multiple, things he courses in peace
then that is his practice of wisdom, the highest perfection.
Those with good teachers as well as deep insight,
cannot be frightened on hearing the mother’s deep tenets.
But those with bad teachers, who can be misled by others
are ruined thereby as an unbaked pot in contact with moisture.
What is the reason we speak of ‘Bodhisattvas’?
Desirous to extinguish all attachments, and to cut it off,
true non-attachment, or the Bodhi of the Jinas is their future lot.
‘Beings who strive for Bodhi’ are they therefore called.
What is the reason why ‘Great Beings’ are so called?
They rise to the highest place above a great number of people;
and of a great number of people they cut off mistaken views.
that is why we come to speak of them as ‘Great Beings’.
Great as a giver, a thinker, as a power,
he mounts upon the vessel of the Supreme Jinas.
Armed with the great armor, he will subdue Mara the artful.
These are the reasons why ‘Great Beings’ are so called.
This gnosis shows him all beings as like an illusion
resembling a great crowd of people, conjured up at the crossroads,
by a magician, who then cuts off many thousands of heads;
he knows this whole living world as a mock show,
and yet remains without fear.
Form, perception, feeling, will and awareness,
are ununited, never bound, cannot be freed.
Uncowed in his thought, he marches on to his Bodhi,
that for the highest of men is the best of all armors.
What then again is ‘the vessel that leads to Bodhi’?
Mounted upon it one guides to Nirvana all beings.
Great is that vessel, immense, vast like the vastness of space.
Those who travel upon it are carried to safety, delight and ease.
Thus transcending the world he eludes our apprehensions
‘He goes to Nirvana’, but no can say where he went to.
A fire is extinguished, but where, do we ask, has it gone to?
Likewise, how do we find him who has found the Rest of the Blessed?
The Bodhisattva’s past, his future and his present must elude us.
TIme’s three dimensions nowhere touch him.
Quite pure he is, free from conditions, unimpeded.
That is his practice of wisdom, the highest perfection.
Wise Bodhisattvas, coursing thus, reflect on non-production,
and yet, while doing so, engender in themselves the great compassion, which is however, free from any notion of Being.
Thereby the practice of wisdom, the highest perfection.
But when the notion of suffering and Being leads him to think: ‘suffering I shall remove, the weal of the world I shall work!’
Beings are then imagined, a Self is imagined,
the practice of wisdom, the highest perfection, is lacking.
He wisely knows that all lives is unproduced as he himself is;
he know that no more exists than he or any beings;
The unproduced and the produced are not distinguished,
That is the practice of wisdom, the highest perfection.
All words for things for use in this world must be left behind,
all things produced and made must be transcended-
the deathless, the supreme, the incomparable gnosis is then won.
That is the sense in which we speak of perfect wisdom.
When free from doubts the Bodhisattva carries on his practice,
as skilled in wisdom he is known to dwell.
All dharmas are not really there, their essential original nature is empty, to comprehend that is the practice of wisdom, perfection supreme.
He does not stand in form, perception or in feeling
in will or consciousness, in any skandha whatsoever.
In dharma’s true nature alone he stands,
then that is his practice of wisdom, the highest perfection.
Change and no-change, suffering and ease, the self and not-self,
the lovely and the repulsive-one Suchness in this Emptyness they are. And so he takes not his stand on the fruit which he won which is three-fold-that of an Arhat, a Buddha, a Buddha fully enlightened.
The leader himself was not stationed in the realm that is free from conditions, nor in the things which are under conditions, but freely he wandered without a home: just so without support or basis a Bodhisattva stands. A position devoid of a basis, has that position been called by the Jina.
Those who wish to become the Sugata’s disciples,
or Pratyekabuddhas, or likewise kings of the dharma,
without resort to this patience they cannot reach their respective goals, they move across, but their eyes are not on the other shore.
Those who teach the dharma, and those who listen to it taught;
those who have won the fruit of an Arhat, a single Buddha, a world-saviour; and the Nirvana won by the wise and the learned-
mere illusions, mere dreams-so has the Tathagatha taught us.
Four kinds of persons are not alarmed by this teaching:
sons of the Jina skilled in the truth; saints unable to turn back,
Arhats free from defilements and taints and rid of their doubts;
those whom good teachers mature are reckoned the fourth.
Coursing thus, the wise and learned Bodhisattva,
trains not for Arhatship, nor the level of a Pratyekabuddha,
in the Buddhadharma alone he trains, for the sake of all-knowledge.
No training is his training, and no one is trained in this training.
Increase or decrease of forms is not the aim of this training,
nor does he set out to acquire various dharmas.
All-knowledge alone he can hope to acquire by this training.
To that he goes forth when he trains in this training, and delights in its virtues.
Forms are not wisdom, nor is wisdom found in form,
in consciousness, perceptions, feelings or in will.
They are not wisdom, and no wisdom lies in them.
Like space it is without a break or a crack.
Of all objective supports the original essential nature is boundless;
of Beings likewise, the original essential nature is boundless.
As the original essential nature of space has no limits,
just so the wisdom of the world-knowers is boundless.
‘Perceptions’-mere words, so the leaders have told us;
perceptions forsaken and gone, and the door is open to the beyond.
Those who succeed in ridding themselves of perceptions,
they, having reached the beyond, fulfill the teachers commandments.
If, for aeons countless as the sands on the Ganges
the leader himself would continue to pronounce the word ‘Being'; still, pure from the very start, no Being could ever result from his speaking. That is the practice of wisdom, the highest perfection.
And so the Jina concludes his preaching and finally tells us: ‘When all I said and did at at last agreed with perfect wisdom, then this prediction I received from one who went before me:
‘Fully enlightened, at a future time, thou shalt a Buddha be.’END=NAM MO SAKYAMUNI BUDDHA.( 3 TIMES ).WORLD VIETNAMESE BUDDHIST ORDER=VIETNAMESE BUDDHIST NUN=GOLDEN LOTUS MONASTERY=THE EIGHTFOLD PATH.THICH CHAN TANH.THE MIND OF ENLIGHTMENT.AUSTRALIA,SYDNEY.20/3/2015.