To encourage the study of this seminal chapter 12, here is the translator's summary of it:
Chapter 12
Foremost Worthy
Having already spoken of the merit of the pure conduct, Mañjuśrī began
this chapter by asking Foremost Worthy Bodhisattva to expound on the
meritorious qualities associated with making and cultivating the resolve to
attain bodhi, whereupon Foremost Worthy replied with three hundred and
seventy-two verses in which he made it clear that the meritorious qualities
flowing from this are measureless, how much the more so when the bodhisattva
then fully cultivates the grounds and perfections.
Foremost Worthy then observed that, when the bodhisattva arouses the
resolve to attain highest bodhi, this is a result of causes and conditions of
which the first and foremost is faith in the Buddha, the Dharma, and bodhi.
Having generated such faith, he then does not seek worldly aims such as
the five objects of desire, kingship, wealth, personal pleasure, or great fame.
Rather, he makes this resolve with the aim of extinguishing the suffering of
beings and enabling them to attain the highest happiness.
Foremost Worthy then pointed out that it is due to this faith that the bodhisattva
is then able to uphold the precepts, cultivate the bases of training,
and fulfill all the meritorious qualities. Foremost Worthy then embarked
on a long series of some forty-five “if this, then that” verses by which he
described how it is that each of the subsequent developments based on faith
and cultivation result in the highest levels of accomplishment on the path
to buddhahood.
Foremost Worthy then proceeded to describe how the bodhisattva then
uses the skillful means of appearing in the forms of all different kinds of
beings in order to successfully teach right Dharma to all beings, thus carrying
out the Dharma works of all the great bodhisattvas and buddhas, sometimes
using song, dance, discussions, and worldly arts and skills to spread
the Dharma, sometimes becoming village elders, caravan guides, kings,
great officials, or physicians, and sometimes becoming even large trees on
a vast plain, medicine, a trove of jewels, sometimes becoming renunciates
from other religious traditions, manifesting in all these different ways for
the sake of turning beings to the path of right Dharma.
Foremost Worthy next described in some eighty stanzas a supreme
“happiness” samādhi developed by the bodhisattva by which he is able
to liberate the many kinds of beings, emanating many different kinds of
inconceivable radiance that enable all who see these lights to take up the
training. He then described this bodhisattva’s amazing uses of right concentration
by which he may enter concentration in a single pore and emerge
in any manner of different phenomena, summarizing this very long section
by saying, “This is what is meant by the inconceivable sovereign mastery of
samādhi of those of countless meritorious qualities.”
Foremost Worthy continued on to the end of the chapter rhapsodizing
on the qualities and capacities that ultimately develop from the momentous
act of long ago having made the resolve to attain the highest enlightenment,
the resolve that finally, after the passage of countless lifetimes of
using innumerably many different skillful means to bestow every kind of
marvelous benefit on every sort of being then ultimately culminates in the
realization of buddhahood. When Foremost Worthy came to the end of his
verses, the lands of the ten directions shook and moved in six ways, the
light of Māra’s palaces became obscured, the wretched destinies came to a
standstill, and the buddhas of the ten directions all appeared directly before
him, touched the top of his head with their right hands, and said in unison,
“It is good indeed, good indeed that you so quickly proclaim this Dharma.
We all rejoice in accord with this.” It was at this point that the second of this
sutra’s eight assemblies came to an end.
