Day 1 covers the first half of Chapter 1, Introductory

Having last month covered Maitreya’s reaction to the ray of light illuminating the worlds to the east in prose, we repeat in gathas.

Thereupon Maitreya Bodhisattva, wishing to repeat what he had said, asked him in gathas:

Mañjuśrī!
Why is the Leading Teacher
Emitting a great ray of light
From the white curl between his eyebrows?

[The gods] rained mandarava-flowers
And manjuaka-flowers.
A breeze carrying the fragrance of candana
Is delighting the multitude.

Because of this, the ground has become
Beautiful and pure;
And this world quaked
In the six ways.

The four kinds of devotees
Are joyful.
They are happier than ever
In body and mind.

The light from [the white curls]
Between the eyebrows of the Buddha illumines
Eighteen thousand worlds to the east.
Those worlds look golden-colored.

I see from this world
The living beings of the six regions
Extending down to the Avici Hell,
And up to the Highest Heaven

Of each of those worlds,
I see the region to which each living being is to go,
The good or evil karmas he is doing,
And the rewards or retributions he is going to have.

I’m pondering, as I always do at this point, what it would be like to “see the living beings of the six regions, extending down to the Avici Hell and up to the Highest Heaven” and to know “the region to which each living being is to go, The good or evil karmas he is doing, And the rewards or retributions he is going to have.”