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Category：Methods for Cultivating Samādhi Reads：
This sutra is the most foundational among Mahāyāna sutras, because the sutra states that it was preached by the World-Honored One to the assembly at the Great Lecture Hall on Gṛdhrakūṭa Mountain about ten years after He attained buddhahood. It is the first sutra the World-Honored One expounded when He turned from teaching the Hīnayāna dharma to the Mahāyāna dharma, which shows that this sutra is the foundation of the Mahāyāna dharma, serving to inspire faith—inspiring the assembly's confidence in the Mahāyāna Buddha-dharma, leading them to accept the tathāgatagarbha dharma, and enabling sentient beings to believe that each of them possesses the subtle and profound tathāgatagarbha within their own body. When sentient beings have unwavering faith in the dharma that they possess the tathāgatagarbha, the faith stage of a bodhisattva is cultivated to completion, and thereafter they enter the abiding stage, beginning to cultivate the bodhisattva's six pāramitās in preparation for seeing the mind and perceiving the nature.
