So this morning as I was reading the Sutra of How to Practice Meditation on Bodhisattva Universal Worth (Burton Watson’s translation), I was struck by this instruction:
After the practitioner has made this vow, then at six times in the day and night he should pay obeisance to the buddhas of the ten directions, practice the method of repentance, read the great vehicle sutra, recite the great vehicle sutra, ponder the meaning of the great vehicle, keep in mind the concerns of the great vehicle, and reverently offer alms to those who uphold the great vehicle.
For a brief moment — the time it takes to complete one sentence and then move on to the next — I flashed on the question: What does it mean to ponder “the meaning of the great vehicle, keep in mind the concerns of the great vehicle”?
And in the next sentence was my answer:
He should view all people with the thought that they are buddhas, and all living beings with the thought that they are his father and mother.
Never despising. Always respectful.
See Washing Away Muddy Illusions Covering Our Invaluable Gem
A note about translations
In the Burton Watson translation of this sutra, it says on page 383:
Then Universal Worthy will speak once more: ‘Over a period of many kalpas, because of the organ of your ear you have chased about after external sounds. When you heard some wonderful sound, your mind was roused to delusion and attachment, and when you heard an evil sound, your mind gave way to eight hundred varieties of earthly desires that plagued you.
This puzzled me because I knew that in the new Threefold Lotus Sutra translated by Shinozaki, Ziporyn and Earhart for Kosei Publishing the number of earthly desires was the expected 108.
When you heard beautiful sounds, you produced delusive attachments to them. And when you heard dreadful sounds, you gave rise to one hundred and eight kinds of delusions that inflict damage and harm.
Did characters for eight and 100 get transposed?
I found the answer in a footnote added to the BDK English Tripitaka translation by Kubo and Logan:
We chose to follow the phrasing of the Yuan and Ming editions, as indicated in note 3 in the Taishō text, which give the number as one hundred and eight rather than the number eight hundred that appears in the source text.