Even in former births the Lord showed His innate, disinterested, and immense love towards all creatures, and identified himself with all beings. For this reason we ought to have the utmost faith in Buddha, the Lord. This will be instanced by the following great performance of the Lord in a previous birth, which has been celebrated by my guru, a venerator of the Three Jewels, an authority because of his thorough study of virtues, and beloved by his own guru by virtue of his religious practices.
In the time that the Bodhisattva, who afterwards became our Lord, benefited the world by manifold outpourings of his compassion: gifts, kind words, succour, and similar blameless deeds of a wisdom-cultivating mind, quite in accordance with the excessive engagements to which he had bound himself, he took his birth in a most eminent and mighty family of Brâhmans, distinguished by the purity of their conduct owing to their attachment to their (religious) duties. Being purified by the gâtakarma and the other sacraments in due order, he grew up and in a short time, owing to the innate quickness of his understanding, the excellent aid in his studies, his eagerness for learning and his zeal, he obtained the mastership in the eighteen branches of science and in all the arts (kalâs) which were not incompatible with the custom of his family.
5. To the Brâhmans he was (an authority) like the Holy Writ; to the Kshatriyas as venerable as a king; to the masses he appeared like the embodied Thousand-eyed One[23]; to those who longed for knowledge he was a helpful father.
In consequence of his prosperous destiny (the result of merits formerly earned), a large store of wealth, distinction, and fame fell to his share. But the Bodhisattva took no delight in such things. His thoughts had been purified by his constant study of the Law, and he had become familiar with world-renunciation.
6. His former behaviour had wholly cleared his mind, he saw the many kinds of sin which beset (worldly) pleasures. So he shook off the householder's state, as if it were an illness, and retired to some plateau, which he adorned by his presence.
7. There, both by his detachment from the world and by his wisdom-brightened tranquillity, he confounded, as it were, the people in the world, who by attachment to bad occupations are disinclined for the calmness of the wise.
8. His calmness full of friendliness spread about, it seems, and penetrated into the hearts of the ferocious animals so as to make them cease injuring one another and live like ascetics.
9. By dint of the pureness of his conduct, his self-control, his contentment, and his compassion, he was no less a friend even to the people in the world, who were unknown to him, than all creatures were friends to him.
10. As he wanted little, he did not know the art of hypocrisy, and he had abandoned the desire for gain, glory, and pleasures. So he caused even the deities to be propitious and worshipful towards him.
11. On the other hand, those whose affection he had gained (in his former state) by his virtues, hearing of his ascetic life, left their families and their relations and went up to him as to the embodied Salvation, in order to become his disciples.