Day 29 covers all of Chapter 25, The Universal Gate of World-Voice-Perceiver Bodhisattva.
Having last month covered examples of World-Voice-Perceiver’s wisdom, we conclude the chapter.
Suppose you are in a law-court for a suit,
Or on a battlefield, and are seized with fear.
If you think of the power of World-Voice-Perceiver,
All your enemies will flee away.His wonderful voice [comes from] his perceiving the voice of the world.
It is like the voice of Brahman, like the sound of a tidal wave.
It excels all the other voices of the world.
Therefore, think of him constantly!Do not doubt him even at a moment’s thought!
The Pure Saint World-Voice-Perceiver is reliable
When you suffer, and when you are confronted
With the calamity of death.By all these merits, he sees
All living beings with his compassionate eyes.
The ocean of his accumulated merits is boundless.
Therefore, bow before him!Thereupon Earth-Holding Bodhisattva rose from his seat, proceeded to the Buddha, and said to him:
“World-Honored One! Those who hear of his supernatural powers by which he opened the universal gate without hindrance, and which are expounded in this chapter of World-Voice-Perceiver Bodhisattva, know this, will be able to obtain not a few merits.”
When the Buddha expounded this chapter of the Universal Gate, the eighty-four thousand living beings in the congregation began to aspire for the unparalleled Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi.
The Daily Dharma from June 28, 2017, offers this:
Do not doubt him even at a moment’s thought!
The Pure Saint World-Voice-Perceiver is reliable
When you suffer, and when you are confronted
With the calamity of death.
The Buddha sings these verses in Chapter Twenty-Five of the Lotus Sūtra. The calamity of death is something we all will face eventually, whether it our own or that of those we love. The other calamities in our lives are relatively minor losses which can prepare us for this great calamity. The Bodhisattva World-Voice-Perceiver is the embodiment of Compassion: the desire to benefit all beings. When we learn to use all of the suffering in our lives, especially the calamity of death, as a way to remove our delusions and benefit others, then we can see the world with the eyes of the Buddha and know the joy he declares is at the core of our being.
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