What the chapter says
The chapter opens as Akṣayamati Bodhisattva asks the Buddha why Avalokiteśvara bears that name. The Buddha teaches that when suffering beings hear the bodhisattva's name and call on it single-heartedly, he at once perceives their voices. The chapter goes on to describe the many forms the bodhisattva takes to help beings.
Do not confuse it with Buddha Speaks the Universal Gate Chapter Sūtra in the Linh Sơn canon: that is a different text of the Chinese canon, not the Lotus Sūtra chapter.
The parts of the chapter
The chapter has three parts. The prose part holds Akṣayamati's question and the Buddha's answer, listing the forms the bodhisattva takes to teach each listener: a Buddha, a pratyekabuddha, a śrāvaka, King Brahmā, Śakra and many more. The verse part begins The World-Honoured One, complete in every wondrous mark. At the end Dharaṇiṃdhara Bodhisattva rises to praise the merit of hearing the chapter.
The chapter runs to about two thousand three hundred words; chanted slowly it takes about twenty minutes.
Reading and chanting at home
The scroll 7 page shows chapters 24 to 28; the Universal Gate is the second, right after the chapter on Gadgadasvara. To chant, press Chant and pick a scrolling speed; leave the chanting mode when chapter 25 ends. The library holds the Vietnamese translation only, with no transliteration or recording yet.
Akṣayamati's necklace and the name Giver of Fearlessness
In the words of the sūtra, because Avalokiteśvara brings calm and freedom from fear to beings in danger and dread, in this Sahā world he is called the Giver of Fearlessness. Hearing this, the bodhisattva Akṣayamati takes off a precious necklace and offers it, but Avalokiteśvara declines. Only when the Buddha tells him to accept it out of compassion for Akṣayamati and the four assemblies does he take it, dividing it in two: one half offered to the Buddha Śākyamuni, the other to the stupa of the Buddha Prabhūtaratna.
That detail ties the chapter to the whole Lotus Sūtra: Prabhūtaratna's stupa rose from the earth in chapter 11 and is still present here. Akṣayamati then asks again in verse, the Buddha answers in verse, and the chapter closes with the praise of the bodhisattva Dharaṇiṃdhara; the sūtra records that when the Buddha taught this chapter, eighty-four thousand beings in the assembly set their minds on supreme awakening. Read within the whole sūtra, the chapter shows Avalokiteśvara not only as someone to pray to but as an example of listening and relieving suffering.
