The Dharma Gate of Perfect Penetration of the Twenty-five Sages, Volume Five of the Śūraṅgama Sūtra: The Two Dharma Princes, Bhaiṣajyarāja and Bhaiṣajyasamudgata

Original text: 药王药上二法王子。并在会中。五百梵天。即从座起。顶礼佛足。而白佛言。我无始劫。为世良医。口中尝此娑婆世界。草木金石。名数凡有十万八千。如是悉知苦醋咸淡。甘辛等味。并诸和合俱生变异。是冷是热。有毒无毒。悉能遍知。承事如来。了知味性。非空非有。非即身心。非离身心。分别味因。从是开悟。蒙佛如来。印我昆季。药王药上二菩萨名。今于会中。为法王子。因味觉明。位登菩萨。佛问圆通。如我所证。味因为上。

Explanation: The two Dharma Princes, the Medicine King and the Medicine Supreme, together with the five hundred Brahmā devas in the assembly, rose from their seats, bowed at the Buddha's feet, and addressed the Buddha: "For countless eons without beginning, we two brothers have been excellent physicians in this world, life after life. With our mouths we tasted the medicinal herbs, medicinal materials, metals, and minerals of this Sahā world—by name and number, one hundred and eight thousand in all. Thus we came to know their bitter, sour, salty, bland, sweet, and pungent flavors, as well as the blended, co-arising, and transformed flavors when these flavor objects combined together. Whether these medicinal materials were cooling or heating in nature, toxic or non-toxic, we could know them all completely." After they began to serve and make offerings to the Tathāgata, they gradually came to understand that the nature of these flavors is neither empty nor existent, neither belonging to body and mind, nor existing apart from body and mind. They investigated the cause of the arising of flavor objects and thereby awakened. By the Tathāgata's confirmation, the two brothers were given the names Medicine King Bodhisattva and Medicine Supreme Bodhisattva. In this great assembly, they participate in the Dharma assembly as Dharma Princes; because they awakened to the clarity of the dharmas through discerning flavor, they attained the bodhisattva stage. When the Buddha asks about the gateway to perfect penetration, as they have realized it, discerning the cause of flavor objects is the foremost gateway to perfect penetration.

The Medicine King and Medicine Supreme Bodhisattvas entered the Way through the flavor object among the six sense objects, cultivating to the stage of Dharma Prince, becoming the highest-grade and wondrous-enlightenment bodhisattvas closest to the Buddha. In the long process of contacting and tasting the flavors of medicinal materials, a questioning doubt arose—they wanted to investigate the origin of flavor objects. Investigating over and over, they could not find where flavor objects come from or where they go, and they realized that flavor objects are dharmas born of the conjunction of causes and conditions: neither empty nor existent; their emptiness is not true emptiness, and their existence is not real existence—they are products conjured up by the tathāgatagarbha in dependence on conditions. Thereupon the great wisdom of prajñā was born, and they were confirmed and received the prediction by the Buddha, becoming Dharma Princes who were about to attain buddhahood. For all the myriad dharmas, if one investigates their causes of arising within profound meditative concentration, then when the conditions and the season of causes ripen, one will realize both the emptiness of the Small Vehicle and the emptiness of the Great Vehicle, clearly understanding the subtle relationship therein that emptiness and existence are not two, neither one nor different—and from then on one will never again be deluded by any dharma.