Extraordinary Power to Know the Minds of Others
From Amitabha Buddha’s Great Vow 9
Extraordinary Power to Know the Minds of Others
Amitabha Buddha’s Great Vow 9
Sakyamuni Buddha speaks of the monk Dharmakara, his practice, and his forty-eight vows before he became Amitabha Buddha. Excerpted from the Infinite Life Sutra:
When I become a Buddha, all the beings born in my land will attain the extraordinary power of wisdom to know the minds of others. If they do not completely know the thoughts of the beings in hundreds of millions of nayutas of hundreds of thousands of buddha-lands, I will not attain perfect enlightenment.
- Vow 9. The extraordinary power of knowing the minds of others.
Knowing what beings are thinking helps us understand them better. Intuitively, we will know what the being really needs and precisely how and when we can help. No longer will we need to wonder why people are behaving the way they are. No longer, despite our best intentions, will we blunder about in a situation. Having learned the teachings of the Buddhas and knowing the minds of others, we will know how to properly guide them.
Being able to know the minds of others is an amazing ability. All beings born in the Western Pure Land will have this power. Even more amazing is the number of beings whose minds we are able to know. Frankly, this number is beyond our comprehension or even our imagination. To say that it is countless is an understatement.
Consider the number of beings now living in our world. We can estimate the number of people and hazard a guess at the number of certain kinds of animals. Far more numerous are the creatures we’re aware of but which are impossible to count. Insects like flies and ants. Nor can we even begin to know how many beings exist in the hell, hungry ghost, asura, and heaven paths. And that’s just considering our planet, one of many in our buddha-land.
And of buddha-lands, there are “hundreds of millions of nayutas of hundreds of thousands” of them. “Nayuta” is a Sanskrit word for a number that is defined as ranging from 100,000 to over 10,000,000. Hundreds of millions of nayutas of hundreds of thousands of buddha-lands are, quite frankly, beyond mind-boggling.
As unimaginable as such numbers are, we will have the ability to know the thoughts of all the beings in all the buddha-lands. And when conditions are right, we will know how to guide them. But we need to remember that while we can guide beings, we cannot alter their karmic retributions.
Consider this account from the sutras. Before Prince Siddhartha became a Buddha, the king from the kingdom of Kosala sent an ambassador to the Sakyan kingdom to arrange for the hand of a royal princess in marriage. These were two neighboring kingdoms that had fought each other many times. The Sakyans, not wishing to offend the more powerful king of Kosala, did not dare refuse.
A general who was a high-ranking advisor to King Suddhodana, the Sakyan king, proposed sending one of his slaves, who was very beautiful. The Sakyans could say that she was the general’s daughter. King Suddhodana agreed, even though it was unheard of for a person of royal blood to marry a slave. When Siddhartha heard of the plot, he disagreed, saying it was deceitful and should not be done. But his advice was ignored, and the girl was sent to marry the king of Kosala.
Some years later, their son, the young Kosalan prince, went to the Sakyan kingdom to study weaponry. One day, some soldiers found him playing in a restricted area. Their commander, knowing that slaves and their offspring were forbidden to be in the area, had him roughly ejected. It was then that the prince learned of his mother’s actual status. Enraged, he vowed revenge for the cruel trick the Sakyans had played.
Years later, after the prince became king, he declared war on Kapilavastu, the capital of the Sakyan kingdom. The Buddha, learning of the threat of war and knowing how the Sakyans had broken protocol and thus insulted the royal family of Kosala, tried to intervene. He succeeded three times, for when the Kosalan army came upon him, they respected the custom for coming upon such a mendicant, turned back, and returned home. But when the Buddha was away, the army set out on their fourth attempt to march to Kapilavastu.
Knowing what was going to happen, the Buddha told Ananda that the Sakya people would be massacred in one week. They never expressed any regret over their treachery. They never admitted to the wrongdoing, and they never apologized.
Upon hearing this, Mahamaudgalyayana, who was renowned for his extraordinary powers, cried out that he would help the Sakyans. The Buddha reminded him that no one can escape their karmic retribution.
Undeterred, Mahamaudgalyayana flew to the capital, put 500 Sakyans into his alms bowl, and flew back to safety. Once there, Mahamaudgalyayana looked down at the bowl.
It was filled with blood.
We thus have a tragic example of how, when we wish to help others, we cannot do so through outright intervention. We help by knowing their thoughts and guiding them through our words and behavior.
>> Learn more: The Initiation, Amitabha Buddha’s Forty-eight Vows
—
Dedication of Merit
May the merits and virtues accrued from this work
adorn the Buddha’s pure land,
repay the four kinds of kindness above,
and relieve the sufferings of those in the three paths below.
May all those who see and hear of this
bring forth the bodhi mind
and at the end of this life,
be born together in the Land of Ultimate Bliss.
Note: The above is excerpted from the book “Awakening the Bodhi Mind: Amitabha Buddha’s Forty-Eight Vows”, which is available for download at eLibrary collection, Amitabha Gallery.
The Amitabha Buddha’s forty-eight vows is derived from the Chinese verses of the Infinite Life Sutra, that we are immensely grateful to the compilation efforts by Mr Xia Lianju. Translation credits go to The Pure Land Translation Team, Pure Land College Press.
