Padumukkhepa Chapter, the Twenty-Seventh
[261. Ākāsukkhipiya1]
Taking two water-born flowers,2
I approached the Bull Among Men,
Siddhattha, gold-colored [Buddha],
traveling around the bazaar. (1) [2540]
I placed one flower down at the
two feet of the Best of Buddhas.
And taking the other3 flower
I threw [it] up into the sky. (2) [2541]
In the ninety-four aeons since
I offered that flower [to him],
I’ve come to know no bad rebirth:
that’s the fruit of giving flowers. (3) [2542]
In the thirty-second aeon
ago lived one lord of the earth
known as Antalikkhacchara,4
a wheel-turning king with great strength. (4) [2543]
The four analytical modes,
and these eight deliverances;
six special knowledges mastered:
[I have] done what the Buddha taught! (5) [2544]
Thus indeed Venerable Ākāsukkhipiya Thera spoke these verses.
The legend of Ākāsukkhipiya Thera is finished.
“Sky-Scatterer” or “Thrown Up Into the Sky”. The name of each Chapter usually corresponds to the proper name of the subject of the first apadāna in it. The same is only partly true here. While the chapter name, paduma-ukkhepa (“Pink Lotus Thrown Upward”), alludes both linguistically and descriptively to the name of the Thera, it is not, in fact, his proper name.↩
jalajagge duve gayhā. This follows the cty, which explains: jale udake jāte agge uppalādayo dve pupphe gahetvā (“taking two flowers such as lotus, the best ones, born in the water”)↩
lit., “and one”↩
“Atmosphere-Wanderer”↩