Chapter 29 - Sonam Gyatso (bsod nams rgya mtsho)

Now the Great Translator Sonam Gyatso (bsod nams rgya mtsho): In the garland of his former existences, he performed the labours of the three boundless accumulations.

For the welfare of living beings, he reached the end of the Path. Though he had attained the Highest Enlightenment (Abhisambodhi), a state characterized by renunciation and knowledge which cannot be improved upon, there is no doubt that he had assumed the form of a mahāsattva, a leader, who strove to convey the travellers-disciples to the firm ground of salvation.

Having equipped the boat of action by crowding the sails of wisdom and commiseration for the benefit of the helpless who had sunk into the dreaded ocean of Phenomenal Existence (saṃsāra), stirred up by a hundred waves of imagination,^[1] filled with waves of defilement and the sea monsters of Karma, and surrounded by the fire of the Aśvamukha range (rta gdong)^[2] of the (five) groups of elements, constituting an ordinary individual,^[3] took rebirth as the equal of ordinary living beings in the eyes of his disciples.

The manner of his labours for the sake of the Doctrine can be best told in eight chapters:

[1. Birth]

[2. Deeds as a child]

[3. Ordination and early education]

[4. Acquisition of virtues of an ordained monk]

[5. Knowledge through reflection]

[6. Spiritual realization]

[7. Labors for the doctrine]

[8. Paranirvāṇa]

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

saṃkalpa, kun rtog

[2]:

The iron mountain range surrounding the Ocean.

[3]:

upadāna-skandha, nge bar len pa'i phung po