(60) The Buddha then stopped pressing His toes on the ground and the world returned to its previous (filthy) condition. Thirty-two thousand devas and men aspiring to the sravaka stage understood the impermanence of all phenomena, kept from earthly impurities and achieved the Dharma-eye (which sees the truth of the four noble truths); eight thousand bhiksus kept from phenomena and succeeded in putting an end to the stream of transmigration (thus realizing arhatship).

(7) Among thousands of men, one strives for perfection and even among those who strive and succeed, one knows Me in essence.

(8) Having come to Me, these high-souled men are no more subject to rebirth, which is transitory and the abode of pain; for they have reached the highest perfection.

(6) 'He leads them to Brahman. This is the path of the Devas, the path that leads to Brahman. Those who proceed on that path, do not return to the life of man, yea, they do not return.'

(7) But frail, in truth, are those boats, the sacrifices, the eighteen, in which this lower ceremonial has been told. Fools who praise this as the highest good, are subject again and again to old age and death.

(11) If at this stage one do not meet with this kind of teaching, one's hearing [of religious lore] — although it be like an ocean [in its vastness] — is of no avail. There are even disciplines-holding abbots [or bhikkhus] and doctors in metaphysical discourses who err at this stage, and, not recognizing, wander into the Sangsdra.

(2) Wise men endowed with equanimity, having abandoned the fruits of action, go to the abode beyond all sorrow and evil.

(7) At the end of many births the man of wisdom seeks refuge in Me, realizing that Vāsudeva is all. Rare indeed is such a high-souled person.

(4) Let me not despair that the Enlightenment will come to me; for the Blessed One, the speaker of truth, has revealed this truth, that they who by force of striving have gained hard-won supreme Enlightenment have been erstwhile gnats, gadflies, flies, and worms. Now I am a man by birth, able to know good and evil: why shall I not win the Enlightenment by following the rule of the All-knowing? If I am afraid when I think that I must give my hand or foot, it is because in my heedlessness I confound things of great and of small weight. I may be cleft, pierced, burnt, split open many and many a time for countless millions of aeons, and never win the Enlightenment. But this pain that wins me the Enlightenment is of brief term; it is like the pain of cutting out a buried arrow to heal its smart. All physicians restore health by painful courses; then to undo much suffering let us bear a little. But even this fitting course the Great Physician has not enjoined upon us; he heals them that are grievously sick by tender treatment. At first our Lord ordains gifts only of herbs and the like, and then in due course brings men at last to surrender even their own flesh. When there comes to man the spirit that looks upon his flesh as no more than herbs, what hardship is it for him to surrender his flesh and bone? He is not hurt, for he has cast off sin, nor sad, for knowledge is his; for distress comes in the mind from false imaginations, and in the body from sin. The body is made happy by righteous works, the spirit by knowledge; what can vex the compassionate one who remains in embodied life only for the welfare of others? Annulling his former sins, amassing oceans of righteousness, by the power of his Thought of Enlightenment he travels more swiftly than the Disciples. Having thus in the Thought of Enlightenment a chariot that removes all vexation and weariness, travelling from happiness to happiness, who that is wise will despair?

(32) Those who are voraciously inclined towards this [i.e. sangsaric existence], or those who do not at heart fear it — O dreadful! O dreadful! Alas! — and those who have not received a guru's teachings, will fall down into the precipitous depths of the Sangsdra in this manner, and suffer interminably and unbearably. Rather than meet with a like fate, listen thou unto my words and bear these teachings of mine at heart.

(8) 'But he who has understanding, who is mindful and always pure, reaches indeed that place, from whence he is not born again.'

(11) As for the common worldly folk, what need is there to mention them! By fleeing, through fear, terror, and awe, they fall over the precipices into the unhappy worlds and suffer. But the least of the least of the devotees of the mystic mantrayand doctrines, as soon as he sees these blood-drinking deities, will recognize them to be his tutelary deities, and the meeting will be like that of human acquaintances. He will trust them; and becoming merged into them, in at-one-ment, will obtain Buddhahood.

(4) Verily, while we are here we may know this. If you have known it not, great is the destruction. Those who know this become immortal, But others go only to sorrow.

(7) 'He who has no understanding, who is unmindful and always impure, never reaches that place, but enters into the round of births.'

(26) The Buddha said:

“Ananda, do not give way to backsliding. Why? Because I have said that you have heard much more about the Dharma than the sravakas but not than the Bodhisattvas. Ananda, a wise man should not make a limited estimate of the Bodhisattva stage (because) the depths of the oceans can be measured but the Bodhisattva’s serenity, wisdom, imperturbability, power of speech and all his merits cannot be measured. Ananda, let us put aside the Bodhisattva conduct. The transcendental powers which Vimalakirti has demonstrated today cannot be achieved by all sravakas and pratyeka-buddhas using their spiritual powers for hundreds and thousands of aeons.”

(8) Sariputra said: “It is a rare thing, World Honoured One, that this man could leave a pure land to come to this world full of hatred and harmfulness!”

(7) 'He (the Self) of whom many are not even able to hear, whom many, even when they hear of him, do not comprehend; wonderful is a man, when found, who is able to teach him (the Self); wonderful is he who comprehends him, when taught by an able teacher.'

(9) People who have no faith in this dharma are unable to attain Me, O conqueror of enemies. They repeatedly come back to this world in the cycle of birth and death.

(82) But the man of conviction escapes illusion; He who is divorced from 'Omar's light Thousands of ships, in all their majesty and pomp, The monk's search for a man. The monk said, "I am searching everywhere for a man Who lives by the life of the breath of God." The other said, "Here are men; the bazaar is full; These are surely men, O enlightened sage!" The monk said, "I seek a man who walks straight Where is one who shows himself a man in anger and lust?

(2) 'Do you know to what place men go from here?' 'No, Sir,' he replied. 'Do you know how they return again?' 'No Sir,' he replied. 'Do you know where the path of Devas and the path of the fathers diverge?' 'No, Sir,' he replied.