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Mahayana Tripitaka - Northern Transmission
The gift of fearlessness is the offering of peace to others, extinguishing the fear of birth, old age, sickness, death, and all uncertainties. In the Lotus Sutra, the Bodhisattva Inexhaustible Intent removes his precious necklace to make an offering to Avalokiteshvara. At first, she refuses, but with the Buddha’s intervention, she accepts it on behalf of all four assemblies (devas, dragons, yakshas… humans and non-humans) and divides it into two parts, offering one to Shakyamuni Buddha (the historical dimension) and one to Many Treasures Buddha (the ultimate dimension) – symbolizing the balanced respect between the accumulation of merit and the realization of true mind.
Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, for countless eons near innumerable Buddhas, is endowed with miraculous powers, freely manifesting in all ten directions, saving beings through the wondrous power of mindfulness: hearing her name or seeing her image with a mindful heart brings an end to suffering; fiery pits, stormy waves, high mountains… all become peaceful. The Sutra clearly sets forth five contemplations and five kinds of sounds associated with the name of Avalokiteshvara:
- Contemplations: true contemplation, pure contemplation, vast wisdom contemplation, contemplation of compassion, contemplation of loving-kindness.
- Sounds: wondrous sound, Avalokiteshvara sound, Brahma sound, Sound of the Rising Tide, sound surpassing the world.
Thay Nhat Hanh proposes dividing the Lotus Sutra into three distinct gates – the historical dimension (accumulation), the ultimate dimension (ontological ground), and the gate of practice – in which the gate of practice includes the ten great vows of Samantabhadra, the images of Earth Holder, Kshitigarbha, and so on, in order to perfect both understanding and action, helping the practitioner to both realize the true mind and continue to rescue living beings.