POPULAR EXPOSITION IN PROSE AND VERSE OF THE VIMALAKIRTI SUTRA
An Annotated Translation of Stein Manuscript Number 4571
by
STEPHAN MARCUS SALZBERG
B.A., The University of Rochester, 1974
A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF
THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF ARTS
in
THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES
Department of Asian Studies
We accept this thesis as conforming
to the required standard
THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA
September 1983
|cj Stephan Marcus Salzberg, 1983 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission.
Department of ryg^ .y^j{^du The University of British Columbia 1956 Main Mall Vancouver, Canada V6T 1Y3 Date ?\ \^-£~Mt~ /ifr^ ABSTRACT This thesis consists of an annotated translation, with introduction, of a text recovered from Tun-huang, Stein manuscript number 4571. The text, dating from about 945 A.D., is of the genre called chianq-chinq-wen, texts used at religious gatherings, held twice yearly and lasting at least a week, at which lectures on a given Buddhist sutra were delivered for the benefit of a lay congregation. The text translated herein is one such lecture, covering the opening passages of the Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra (Wei-mo-chieh so-shuo ching), one of the more influential sutras in the history of Chinese Buddhism. The text partakes of the tripartate cyclical form characteristic of the genre: a chanted sutra portion, followed by a prose explanation or exposition, then by a relatively lengthy sung verse recapitulation which, in its final line, introduces the next sutra portion. The aim of the lecture lies less in scholarly explanation than in the fostering and reinforcement of certain religious attitudes through the narration and embellishment of the sutra passages. The translation, the first into any language, to the writer's knowledge, of a text in this genre, is accompanied by notes detailing, inter alia, discrepancies between the manuscript and the only printed edition of the text. The introduction describes the development and social context of the genre as well as the ceremonial setting of the lectures and their mode of performance. Various special features of the translated text are also discussed including the sources used and methods of adaptatio TABLE OF CONTENTS Title Page i Abstract r. ii Table of Contents iii List of Abbreviations v Acknowledgement vi INTRODUCTION I. The Tun-huang Legacy 1 II. Background: Form, Function and Setting of the Chiang-ching-wen 5 III. An Exposition in Prose and Verse of the Vimalaklrti Sutra: Descriptive Information, Analysis and Synopsis 13 IV. Texts, Dating, Method and Aims of Translation 25 Notes to the Introduction 28 TRANSLATION AND NOTES SECTION I. Thus 32 Notes 40 SECTION IIA. "I" 47 Notes 51 SECTION IIB. Ananda: "I heard" 55 Notes 65 SECTION III. At one time they all arrived 78 Notes 85 iii SECTION IVA. The Bodhisattvas 90 Notes 98 SECTION IVB. The Bodhisattvas: Great Physician Kings ... 105 Notes 115 SECTION V. Textual Notes 123 SECTION VI. The Buddha: Overspreading the entirety of the vast multitude 125 Notes 134 SECTION VII. Vimalakirti and the five hundred sons of the elders 1 39 Notes 152 Bibliography 159 Appendix 163 iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Bussho: Ono Genmyo, Bussho kaisetsu daij iten. 1 974 rpt. of 1964-67 rev. ed. Chang: Chang Hsiang, Shih-tz ' u-ch 'u yii-tz 'u hui-shih. 1954, 1975. Chiang: Chiang Li-hung, Tun-huang pien-wen tzu-i t'ung- shih. 1959, 1975. Daikanwa: Morohashi Tetsuji, Daikanwa j iten. Dayal: H. Dayal, The Bodhisattva Doctrine in Buddhist Sanskrit Literature. 1932. Hsu, pu cheng: Hsu Chen-o, "Tun-huang pien-wen chi chiao-chi pu- cheng." 1958. tsai pu: "Tun-huang pien-wen chi chiao-chi tsai- pu." 1958. Hurvitz: Leon Hurvitz, trans., Scripture of the Lotus Blossom of the Fine Dharma, 1976. Iriya index: Iriya Yoshitaka and Matsuo Yoshiki, "Tonko henbunshu kogo goi sakuin." Second draft, 1977. Luk: Charles Luk, trans., The Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra, 1972. Mochizuki: Mochizuki Shinko, Bukkyo daij iten. Rev. ed. 1 954- 71 . MS: Stein manuscript no. 4571, microfilm copy. Oda: Oda Tokun5, Oda bukkyS daij iten. 1 954 rpt. PWC: Wang Chung-min, et al., eds., Tun-huang pien-wen chi, 1961 Taiwan rpt. (References to pg. and line.) T: Taisho shinshu daizokyo. 1924-32 (References to vol., pg. and col.) Ting: Kumarajiva, trans., Wei-mo-chieh suo-shuo ching. 1921 (?) rpt. of Wu-hsien Ting-shih ed. with commentary by Kumarajiva and Seng Chao (entitled Wei-mo-ching chu). Tn: Taisho text number. Waku: Waku Hakuryu, Bukkyo shokubutsu j iten. 1 979. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I wish to express my special gratitude to Professors Iriya Yoshitaka, Kanaoka Shoko and Daniel Overmyer who introduced me to this field of study and guided me with infinite patience. Their broad knowledge and openhearted generosity have been an inspira• tion to me. I have been fortunate enough to have had many fine teachers, too many to thank individually here. This thesis owes much to each of them. Draft translations of the first two sections were read by Professor Leon Hurvitz, who contributed a number of helpful suggestions. I benefitted especially from the valuable comments and advice of Professor Overmyer, who read the entire draft of the thesis. He also tolerated without comment the burdens imposed by my often frenetic working habits, for which many thanks are due. I also thank my wife, Joy Lin Salzberg, who, on top of everything else, typed the first draft of the translation. Marjorie Chan typed and processed succeeding drafts and the present version. Alice Liou contributed the calligraphy. I wish to express my gratitude to the staff of the Asian Studies Library, University of British Columbia, for their constant friendship and support. INTRODUCTION I. The Tun-huang Legacy An accidental discovery by a Taoist monk around the turn of this century focussed worldwide attention on Tun-huang , an oasis settlement in present-day Kansu, located on the ancient Silk Road linking China with Central Asia and ultimately with the West. Once a thriving commercial center marked by its cosmopolitan population and Buddhist religious activity, Tun-huang had passed into relative obscurity from the beginning of the thirteenth century when it fell under Tungut control and did not become a "Chinese" city again until the eighteenth century.1 The discovery by the monk, Wang Yiian-lu iQl]^ , of a secret sealed cave among the hundreds of cave-shrines built over the course of centuries just outside Tun-huang, fallen into decay with the old monk as their de facto custodian, recalled for the world the days of Tun-huang's glory. The removal of a wall revealed a concealed storehouse inside of which were piled perhaps twenty thousand mostly hand-written scrolls, bound pamphlets, scraps of paper, tapestries and banners.2 The materials documented five centuries, from the fifth to the tenth,3 of life in Tun-huang and, more broadly, in China in all its rich variety: intellectual, religious, legal, artistic. News of this rare find of mostly manuscript material in a civilization 1 which, because of its early invention and widespread adoption of printing, took few pains to preserve such material began to spread, eventually reaching Western ears. With the 1907 expedition of the explorer Sir Aurel Stein and the subsequent visits of the French sinologist Paul Pelliot, most of the best material was shipped off to London and Paris respectively. Japanese expeditions and belated efforts by the Ch'ing government, in its death throes, to safeguard what remained of this cultural treasure trove further dispersed the collection, which now has found its way into various hands, public and private, the world over.4 A whole new field of Tun- huang studies was spawned, as broad in its sweep as the range of materials found in Tun-huang, covering the entire spectrum of the four traditional categories of Chinese learning: Confucian classics, history, philosophy and belles lettres. Previously unknown commentaries, variant editions of Buddhist sutras, entirely unknown Taoist writings and various multi-lingual texts opened new vistas for traditional sinology in innumerable areas including textual criticism, Chinese linguistics, Central Asian languages and linguistics, religious philosophy and history. Ephemera of all sorts, the written records of daily life which had been preserved nowhere else, account books, contracts, children's primers, even calligraphy practice sheets have provided invaluable raw material for scholars in many disciplines. 2 The treasures of the visual arts yielded forth from and contained within the caves; murals, silk paintings, and statuary have enriched and furthered our knowledge immensely. Of signal importance among the written materials which came out of Tun-huang was the unprecedented finding of numerous scroll written in the colloquial language of the time, some of them representing notes and prompt books to be used in oral performances on both Buddhist and secular themes. The profound implications of these texts for linguistics, religious history and literary history were realized very early on, and although hampered by the dispersion of the scrolls, incomplete cataloging and difficulties of access, the scholarly efforts by pioneer Chinese scholars resulted in the identification, dissemination and study of these texts which came eventually to be known generally, if imprecisely in many cases as pien-wen .5 This thesis is concerned with one genre among the several sometimes grouped together as pien-wen, a genre now commonly referred to as chiang-ching-wen ^' n°tes and prompt-books for lectures, religious performances really, based upon and interpreting abstruse Buddhist canonical books, sutras, for a congregation of mostly lay people, involving chanting, spoken exposition, and sung poetry. Related to the genre's social and religious background and setting as well as mode of performance, about which much is known, these chiang-ching-wen are marked by distinct formal characteristics. These will be discussed in the introduction. The heart of this thesis is an extensively annotated translation of one chiang-ching-wen text. 4 II. Background: Form, Function and Setting of the Chiang-ching- wen Any religion which is growing and developing is at once turning inward and outward. The liturgical arts and techniques developed for the purposes of devotion and meditation may serve splendidly when employed and adopted to the goal of "teaching and transforming" the common people, propagating the faith. So it was with Buddhism in China. One of the most forceful currents in the development of Buddhism in China was its popularization and the concurrent adaptation of forms suited to and sprung forth from Chinese soil. Buddhism in its popular form was a Salvationist faith and it was propagated and reinforced by the activities of priests and monks, both high and low, well-fixed and intinerant. Among the most widespread and effective of those activities were meetings, conclaves or revivals lasting for days, at which day by day in a mood both festive and solemn the story and teachings of a given sutra were chanted, narrated, expounded and embellished for a congregation of lay folk who could probably neither read nor understand the sutra themselves. These "popular lectures" reached their height as an institution from the mid- T'ang through the Five Dynasties period, extending geographically from the capital to the furthest of the outlying regions and with congregations ranging from the highest, including emperors, to the lowest.7 They were a culmination of centuries of evangelical work by Buddhist clergy, a consolidation in a fixed structure of 5 the methods developed by them, performed in a fixed ceremonial setting provided by well-organized lay Buddhist organizations. From after the Han dynasty, there emerged a certain class of Buddhist clergy, sometimes itinerant, whose mission and talents lay in guiding people through song (ch'ang-tao-g^, i^. ). They were also called "explicators of dharma" (shuo-f a ).8 Their medium was the spoken word in three forms: lecture, chant and song. Some of those took two distinct devotional arts, the chanting of sutra (chuan-tu jjgjp-^ ) and the singing of hymns of praise (tsan-pai "^H" \r J[ or fan-pai ^;t^ ) and put them to inspirational, evangelical use. Others lectured, giving oral expositions on various sutras. Through the Six Dynasties period the format of these lectures solidified. They appear to have been held for Buddhist adepts, and well-educated lay people and functioned primarily as formal educational experiences in which the intelligence and verbal talents of student and teacher alike were tested and honed. The principal lecturer was called the fa-shih , dharma- master or teacher (also called fa-chu , dharma-host, or chiang-chu t£_ , lecture host), assisted by a younger monk, usually a disciple called the tu-chiang , who served as a cantor. The tu-chiang would chant a portion of the sutra, after which the fa-shih would lecture, expounding the meaning of the text. 6 The institution of such lectures as well as their conduct and format were not unique to Buddhism in China. They seem to have derived in part from Confucian practice, particularly the division of duties and even the name tu-chiang. Taoist lectures were common from the Six Dynasties period through ;. the T'ang.9 The tu-chiang in the Buddhist lectures however, as a disciple, also had the role of interposing questions, called nan "difficulties". The assembled listeners, the seated "guests", pin ^ , could also interpose such questions. The. master's answers were called t'ung . Frequently, these lectures became pitched verbal battles as intellects clashed. They could become quite elaborate and appear to have achieved formal regulation and order just before the T'angJ0 Larger meetings would have, in addition to the two principals, three more functionaries, a wei-na , responsible for protocol and the smooth conducting of the lectures, a hsiang-huo , in charge of incense, and a singer of hymns of praise, fan-pai cffi Besides an indication of the scale of the proceedings, these functionaries foreshadow the combined formal features of the chiang-ching-wen. Despite the liturgical trappings, as exemplified particularly by the latter two functionaries, these lectures seem to be akin to high-powered seminars, fulfilling chiefly educational and training functions. It was the creative genius 7 of ch'ang-tao preachers, probably from the mid to late T'ang, which combined the form of these lectures with prayer and devotion in lengthy conclaves of a seasonal nature serving an essentially congregational, evangelical function. The ch'ang-tao preachers whose stock in trade had been the chanting of sutra, the singing of hymns of praise and the telling of parables and inspirational stories drawn from the sutras and elsewhere, began to adopt and adapt the more prestigious and elite form of the popular lecture, transforming their own preaching methods into a fixed, sustained form based upon a single sutra, achieving through its communication to a lay audience their constant goal, the propagation of the faith. The records of their efforts, preserved in the Tun-huang caves, reveal a tripartite formal structure which allowed full, and at times virtuoso expression of the entire gamut of their skills. The chiang-ching-wen which we have represent segments of the main body of the lecture-performances. They proceed in the following repeated pattern. First a short section of the sutra is quoted. This was probably chanted by the tu-chiang. Next the fa-shih would launch into a prose restatement, embellishment on or explanation of the passage just chanted. This section frequently featured the use of rhythmically patterned parallel phrases in a style called p' ien-ou-wen ^ ^ which, in the hands of these preachers could be "turned ... into a lively and 8 effective ornament of style ... especially in their long and remarkably inventive descriptions." At times, one observer notes, "the prose sections do not differ essentially from poetry."11 Next came a long verse section which was sung. This consisted of rhymed stanzas generally composed of eight lines of uniform length, for the most part of seven syllables although examples of five syllable lines are not infrequent and a rhythmic variation wherein the first line of a heptasyllabic stanza has six syllables also occurs. This section was sung in a style called yin v^- which was distinct from the style of sutra- chanting, ch'ang wjj , both having evolved from distinct antecedents, tsan-pai and chuan-tu respectively. The emphasis and purpose of both were also distinct. Ch'ang emphasized sound above all whereas yin valued rhythmic narration. The content of the sung section generally parallels and reinforces that of the preceding prose section. With the final stanza, the rhyme changes to comport with the formulaic phrase, characteristic of this genre and indicative of its form and mode of performance, with which each of these sung sections ends. The final couplet of each section presages the subject of the next section and ends with a request that the tu -chi ang chant or a declaration that the preacher shall chant out the next passage of the sutra: ch'ang-chiang-lai .12 The cycle then repeats 9 itself over the next and succeeding sections. This highly regulated form of religious and oral performance became possible in the ceremonial context of biannual conclaves for the exposition of sutras sponsored by lay Buddhist patronage associations called she jfcfc . 3 Descended from the i-i ^ or i- hui -j^ of the Six Dynasties period, large associations of up to two to three hundred people, the she were generally temple- centered support organizations of a more modest scale, averaging, it seems, about thirty members. As temples generally lost upper class support they turned to the common people. The popular lecture revival meetings were staged twice yearly by the lay support organizations in the spring, coinciding with the New Year, and in the fall. They were large-scale undertakings which underlined the popular base of support for the temple and provided a focus for popular activity. Naba Toshisada speculates that the meetings lasted, at the least, seven days, with some running ten or fourteen, even twenty-one or twenty-eight days, depending on the finances of the sponsoring organizations.^ The meetings formally began with what have been termed "seat-settling texts" ya-tso-wen $f' versifi-ed introductions which were probably chanted and in turn punctuated by congregational chanting of the Buddha's name. These gave a synoptic overview of the sutra to be the subject of the meeting.15 Their formulaic closing introduces the chanting of 1 0 the sutra's title. Thereupon the performance cycle described above commenced. Thus the chiang-ching-wen represent a distinctive genre, possessing a formal consistency tied to their function, the communication of sutra to lay common people, their mode of performance and the nature of their ceremonial setting. They are the formal antecedent of true pien-wen, formally similar narrations of tales both Buddhist and secular, drawn from sutra, Confucian classics, popular legends or local history performed by clergy or by professional entertainers. These pien-wen were not tied to the progressive exposition of a particular text, chanted section by section and their performance was not confined to temples in a particular ceremonial context. They probably allowed their performers more latitude and flexibility, being completed at a single sitting. Thus chiang-ching-wen, as the earliest of prosimetric spoken and sung texts, stand also as the direct forbears of the broad range of oral-performance genres which literally exploded with the rise of urban centers, the growth of trade and the revitalization of Chinese economic activity in the Sung. The later forms of oral performance, among them the p'ing-hua Jp-^ and chu-kung-tiao •f^1^'^ t and especially the popular religious texts, the pao-chuan j|l r a±l based on the alternation of spoken and sung prose and verse passages derive ultimately from 11 the chiang-ching-wen. In pointed contrast to the earlier scholastic educational lectures on sutra, these chiang-ching-wen are directed at the common lay people and lie on the borders of exegesis, entertainment and edification. They reflect the constant tension in liturgical arts, evident from the time of the earliest ch'anq- tao chanters, between the sensual delights of the medium itself and the underlying religious message to be communicated. Their creators, intinerant preachers for the most part, wrote in styles ranging from coarse, even vulgar, through didactic, hackneyed, strikingly original, wildly colloquial, comical, maudlin and solemn to elegant, sometimes all in the course of a single text. They were concerned with fostering and reinforcing certain beliefs and pious attitudes and aimed less at explicating difficult philosophical ideas than at narrating and embroidering events and characters in the sutra. Their appeal was finally to the emotional imagination of their audience which they hoped to influence and guide through their own creative powers. By the late T'ang, the chiang-ching-wen was a mature and stable genre, the creators and refiners of which had developed an inventory of form and technique utilizing the colloquial language in advanced, sophisticated ways that would influence the development of popular literature up until the present. 1 2 III. An Exposition in Prose and Verse of the Vimalakirti Sutra: Descriptive information, analysis and synopsis The text translated for this thesis, number 4571 of the Stein collection housed in the British Museum (thus referred to as S.4571, hereafter simply MS), exemplifies many of the features and tensions described above. MS actually consists of nine torn fragments and was described in the 1957 catalogue of the Stein collection as follows: Nine frags., not consecutive, of a composition by a Chinese monk, with numerous quotations from sutras and gathas. Bold ms., in parts slightly cursive, in two or more hands. Frag, no.3 contains quotations from sutras on the subject of filial piety.^7 The fragments, which were discontinuous, had been in fact numbered out of order. MS is a chiang-ching-wen covering the opening passages of the Vimalakirti sutra, the Wei-mo-chieh-ching • MS was restored to its original order, edited apparently somewhat hurriedly, by Wang Ch'ing-shu j£_ included with five other texts covering different sections of the same sutra in the 1 957 anthology PWC, pp. 51 7-645.1 8 The Vima lakl rt i sutra on which this text is based is a sparkling account of the dialogues between Vimalakirti, a formidable lay master of the city of Vaisali, and several of the Buddha Sakyamuni s disciples dispatched to inquire after Vimalakirti's health after he apparently takes ill. The dialogues are a setting for discourses on a breathtaking array of 1 3 topics: the body, sickness, the Self, purity, truth, suchness, and emptiness. The sutra points to a liberation at once beyond but still intimately connected to this world, the path and career of the Bodhisattva, freed from duality and differentiation, possessed of no goals but committed to the compassionate salvation and liberation of all beings. With its brilliant use of contradiction and irony and its exhiliarating flow of ideas, the sutra became a favorite of the elite from the time of its introduction to China in the late Han. It exercised a profound influence on philosophers, men of letters and even royalty, and was a common subject of the educational sutra expositions described previously.19 The translation of the sutra by 20 Kumarajiva in 406, which is used in all of the Tun-huang texts, is recognized as a stylistic masterpiece. It quickly replaced the numerous earlier translations and overshadowed even the translation by the famed Hsiian-tsang ^ completed in 650.21 Its appeal and influence, though, was not restricted to any one sect or social class. The character of Vimalakirti and, at least the power, if not the content of the sutra began to permeate the popular consciousness from early on. Iconographic representations of Vimalakirti are mentioned from the fourth century. A believer was said to have been cured of his illness in 618 after having had forty copies of the sutra made. Chanting of the sutra was also said to effect miraculous cures and the 14 expulsion of demons. There is evidence of the accretion of popular legends and apocryphal stories surrounding Vimalakirti, including, in typical Chinese fashion, the attribution of a family to him.22 The popularization of Vimalakirti seems however to be distinct from the transmission and understanding of the sutra text itself. MS thus focusses an intriguing question: how were difficult abstract texts interpreted and communicated to congregations of common lay believers? The answer, judging from MS at least, appears to be that the text became a structure and a medium whereby commonly held beliefs and pious attitudes were propogated and reinforced. The embellished narrations and dramatizations drew attention to themselves and the themes they emphasize, notably among them, filial piety. The meaning of the sutra itself was subordinate to the creative evocation of splendor, pity, humor, compassion, awe and sadness which, while entertaining the congregation, shaped the religious feelings of the pious men and women gathered, underlining the communal ritual experience of the conclave. Several overall aspects of MS deserve discussion in this context. A reader is first struck by the sheer volume of exposition relative to text. The actual sutra text taken up in MS occupies less than two columns of one page in the Taisho edition of the Tripitaka.23 MS runs to forty-three pages in PWC 1 5 and includes some perhaps lengthy lacunae. This phenomenon is common to the genre and indicates a nascent independence from the sutra text itself. The sutra serves to inspire explanations, narratives and dramatizations which have independent inherent interest. Secondly, the variety of sources drawn upon by the writerfs] of MS is noteworthy. They include standard exegetical works (although no commentaries on the Vimalakirti sutra itself appears to have been used), other popular expositions of sutras and what is probably a part of the oral tradition which had grown up around the sutra. The question of sources is bound up with the next aspect of MS, the problems of approach, mode of adaptation of materials and goals which are evidenced therein. As it stands MS appears to be a patchwork text. Its prose style in places achieves a graceful use of the colloquial in well-constructed, tautly-developed passages while elsewhere it is a stale, opaque and note-like treatment. Only parts of the text would have been performed orally in its present state. Many features of the text, especially its disparate style and certain aspects of its organization, seem to indicate an attempt by one or several preachers to put together an integral text partially from pre• existing materials, both scholastic and popular, combined with the penning of new prose and verse sections. One can however only speculate as to how the text was put together and how it 1 6 came to be torn apart. What is important though is the diversity of styles and modes of adaptation which MS displays, for it vividly reflects the tension between the constraint of the sutra, its wording and organization, and the preachers' mandate to satisfy the desire of the congregation to be delighted and moved. The sutra was a holy text, bound in its canonized form and chanted out in portions solemnly throughout the course of the conclave. The preachers could not edit or rearrange to any great degree the text of the sutra itself. But what shows most clearly in MS is the ability of the preachers to dance over, around and through the holy text. This tension is even more apparent in MS because it treats the very opening of the sutra. If, as noted above, the art of the chiang-ching-wen lies in narration rather than in explanation, this circumstance is a source of real difficulty for the preacher because, in the formulaic passages which open every sutra, in dramatic terms, nothing happens! At the start of each and every sutra we hear the resounding "thus have I heard" and learn that the Buddha was in such and such a place together with multitudinous beings of all types possessing attributes recited to us. The entirety of MS does not, in terms of the sutra's progress at least, advance us beyond this preamble stage. Kanaoka Shokb has suggested that since the opening section is common to all sutras, the preachers probably had well-worn 1 7 techniques in their repertoire which they routinely employed at the beginning popular lecture conclaves and that this section is thus not the place to find distinctive popular materials.24 This MS, at least, suggests otherwise. It seems to be precisely the opening passages of the sutra which pose the greatest challenge for the preachers. Having finished the congregational chanting included in the ya-tso-wen introduction and having chanted out the sutra's title, the last thing that a preacher would want to do would be to launch into a standard, well-known and remembered treatment of the beginning of all sutras. The congregation's rapt attention would be quickly dissipated. The preacher gains attention not through the inherent authority of sutra itself but through his own ability to entertain while instructing. The first two sections of MS evidence this difficulty in the awkward scrambling of their prose and some of the verse as the preacher tries to adopt his powers of exegesis, themselves not so well developed, to the demands of the occasion. The first section exhorts the congregation to give rise to a mind of receptive faith indispensable for hearing and truly understanding the words of Buddha. The preacher is leading, in a popular congregational context, an act of ritual spiritual preparation. The second section initially attempts a philosophical exegesis of the notion of Self, expounding its essential emptiness while trying to reconcile the sutra's use of the word 18 "I". The argument is frequently ill-organized and poorly expressed, not only because MS is torn in the middle of it. Still the section is noteworthy in that the argument is advanced in the form of challenge and response, wen-ta R^]^- , a carry-over from and stylized adaptation of the nan-t'ung ^ of the scholastic lectures and a device characteristic of standard written exegetical works as well. It is quite likely that the challenge was spoken by the tu-chiang and that the wen-ta device served partly to liven the proceedings without subjecting the fa- shih to any real challenge. The second part of the section abandons philosophy to focus on the personage of Ananda, suggesting the outlines of a familiar and perhaps favorite story for the congregation while reinforcing the fidelity, truth and holiness of the sutra to be chanted. The sung section achieves a ritual identification of the Buddha's sutra, Ananda's recounting of it at the first assembly and the very sermon meeting at which the congregation is present that day. To be in the presence of sutra, the preacher sings, is to be in the presence of the Buddha. The atmosphere of the meeting is hallowed. The third section of the text intensifies the anticipation of the congregation as it describes the gathering "at one time" of the multitude of beings of all sorts all thirsting for the moment of enlightenment which they sense will come. The vivid 1 9 immediacy of the description conveyed in fluid, well-wrought prose, coupled with the ritual identification already achieved, must have served well the preacher's purpose, to galvanize the congregation. However, organizational difficulties born of the preacher's chafing at the bit of the sutra's pace and order of presentation become apparent in this section. The question presaging the next section in the sung portion's final line, "At what place [did] the Buddha speak?", has been answered already at the beginning of this section. In addition, descriptions of the various sorts of beings and monks present in Amra park are placed in this third section of the lecture, although they appear in the sutra after the description, praise and enumeration of the bodhisattvas, the subject of the lecture's fourth section. The preacher has begun to rearrange the sutra to fit his own sense of organization. The first part of the bodhisattva section applies a different method of adapting a crucial part of the sutra, but a part which stubbornly resists narration or dramatization, the thirty-nine phrases of the sutra which praise the - bodhisattvas. MS gives a series of embellished paraphrases of the first thirty- two of these.25 My guess is that each phrase of the sutra was chanted by the tu-chiang followed immediately by the fa-shih's responsive paraphrase in a kind of counterpoint. The thirty- third and thirty-fourth phrases of the sutra are reserved for the 20 second part of this section, and after thirty-two the spell of the sutra seems to be broken. The earlier pattern does not reassert itself and phrases thirty-five through thirty-nine do not figure in MS. A playful description of the bodhisattvas' supernatural powers and a glowing description of their appearance round out the prose section. The sung section skillfully resumes the salient points and images of the prose section. The second part of the fourth section provides more fertile ground for the preacher. Isolating the sutra phrases which compare the bodhisattvas to great Physician Kings, the preacher utilizes a passage from the fifth chapter of the Vimalakirti sutra (see section IVB, n.5 below) to inspire an evocative treatment of the relationship between parents and children, drawing partly on materials used in popular lectures on a (probably apocryphal) sutra (see ibid., n.11). This approach communicates the essence of the bodhisattvas in terms which engage the emotions and thoughts of the congregation in reflecting upon something they know so well: the pains and pleasures of bearing and raising children. The prose section is unfortunately discontinuous and concludes with a more abstract philosophical approach. The sung section includes some sharp- eyed and sharp-tongued observations on the habits of wayward children and wayward Buddhists (themselves children of the bodhisattvas). These were met most likely by both laughter and, 21 in some cases, stings of self-recognition. The fifth section brings into sharp focus the preacher's organizational problems. This section, following the lecture's bodhisattva section, reverts to the order of presentation of the sutra and treats the various classes of beings present at Amra park gathering to hear the Buddha, material already presented at length in the third section. I think this section may have been a pre-extant one which became superfluous or difficult to work into the structure the preacher had chosen with his own arrangement of the sutra in sections three and four. Nonetheless, the section may have been copied over and inserted here, its proper place according to the sutra's order, with its disposition to be decided later. I have omitted the translation of this section, but have included textual notes for the convenience of interested readers. A noteworthy feature of this section is the phrasing of its final sung line, pien ch'ing ch'ang chianq-lai ^j^^- ' an explicit indication that the popular lectures were conducted by at least two people. The beginning of the sixth section's prose portion again describes the various classes of beings gathered as does its sung portion. This section, which would have followed the fourth's emotional and witty treatment family life serves to return the forum to the spectacle of the dharma assembly in Amra park with 22 its intent anticipation. It briefly treats of the portentous light released from between the Buddha's eyebrows, a feature conspicuous in other sutras but absent from the Vimalakirti sutra. Above all, this section is concerned with the Buddha in the midst of, but overshadowing the vast assembly. The seventh and final section of the text is to my mind the jewel of the text. It displays the creative mastery of the preachers at its height. Just at the point of maximum tension and anticipation, having covered less than one-half of the first chapter of the sutra, the preacher suddenly introduces the protagonist of the sutra, Vimalakirti himself, who does not appear in the sutra until its second chapter. Not only does the preacher thus throw off the constraint of the sutra's structure, he proceeds to narrate, in a moving ballad style, events not even mentioned in the sutra. Vimalakirti's conversion' of the five hundred sons of elders so that they could hear the Buddha and gain enlightenment, their invitation to Vimalakirti, the details of his sudden illness and their parting derive probably from oral tradition surrounding the sutra. Indeed Kumarajiva in his 2 introductory remarks on the sutra 6 in effect outlines the story which is so beautifully embellished and dramatized in this section. Vimalakirti's relationship to the five hundred, his dispatch of them to hear the Buddha, and his manifestation of illness, which prevented him from going along with them, are said 23 to be the motivating factor, the causation (yu ^E? ) which catalyzes the entire sutra. It is interesting to note that the scholastic-style challenge and response, noted earlier, appears even in this section. The stylistic feature of short gatha inserted into the prose portion, again seen in earlier sections, is here transformed into what appears to be a ballad form, sung stanzas introduced by short prose statement. The touching story is advanced through this gatha-ballad form, long sung portions and elegantly phrased prose portions. The occasional excesses may be excused for this is the chiang-ching-wen at the height of its achievement, the harbinger and seedling of China's varied tradition of oral performance. 24 IV. Texts, Dating, Method and Aims of Translation The basic text used for this translation was the one published in PWC, pp.51 7-560, edited by Wang Ch'ing-shu i^^L • A copy of the microfilm made by the British Museum in 1 954 for the Toyo Bunko was used in comparing the manuscript, S.4571 , to the PWC edition. PWC, although the best available edition for Tun-huang colloquial literature contains large numbers of errors, misreadings and omissions and, as Victor Mair notes, any serious study of the literature requires comparison with the original manuscripts.27 This is particularly true in the case of S.4571 , for the PWC edition of this piece, in contrast to the other Vimalakirti sermon-pieces which follow it, is the first published edition of the text. In addition, the editing seems to have been rushed. There are many mistranscriptions and omissions compounding the problems of phonetic loans and scribal errors in MS. I have noted my corrections of the PWC text, based on MS readings, as well as other aspects of MS in the footnotes after each section of the translation. I hope that others will further improve my effort. Victor Mair's comment on S.4571, based on personal inspection, in his 1981 inventory is as follows: Sutra lecture text on the Vimalakirti sutra (lacks title). Enormously long, actually consists of six separate scrolls ... Soft, fibrous, whitish paper. Mediocre to fairly good hand, hurried; a bit messy; ellipses; some corrections in same and other hands; highlighting.28 25 As noted earlier, the text is in nine discontinuous fragments which, in conjunction with tears at the top and bottom of the paper as well as obliterated characters, results in fairly frequent ellipses and accounts for some of the obscure passages.29 Such passages must remain obscure, particularly in the light of the single manuscript source. Other obscurities reflected and noted in the translation may be attributable to my own deficiencies, linguistic and otherwise, particularly in the field of Buddhism. I trust that readers, teachers and colleagues, will help to correct such errors. The sections of the translation have been set out on the basis of their content and place in the overall structure of the piece. That is to say, they represent natural divisions which I have presented separately and added titles to. The reader should bear in mind in reading that the text is of a patch-work nature, part prompt book, part notebook, and that certain of the text's interest lies in that fact. Lo Tsung-t'ao in his voluminous set of studies on colloquial Tun-huang literature based upon Buddhist sutras30, has attempted to date the chiang-ching-wen based on the Vimalakirti sutra. Based upon shared formal stylistic and linguistic characteristics, Lo believes that five of the six pieces derive from the same text by a single author. On the basis of linguistic and referential evidence in several of the pieces and 26 a colophon at the end of one (P.2292; the colophon is reproduced at PWC, p.618), Lo concludes that the integral text was written during the period 944-947 A.D.31 There is no reason to dispute Lo's conclusion. Most of the dated materials in Mair's inventory fall between the years 900-970 A.D. It is probably fair to say that S.4571, to the extent that it represents a finished text ready for performance, is an accurate record of a lecture of the Five Dynasties period. I have borne this fact in mind and have tried to reflect it in the translation. My aim has been to translate as literally and as closely as possible, to convey the form and the language of the text. I have also tried to capture its spirit in communicating its creative energy in a way that does justice to the genre, one so important both in the history of China's religion and its literature. 27 Notes to the Introduction 1 . For a concise summary of the geography and history of Tun-huang, see Kanaoka Shoko, Tonko no bungaku (Tokyo: Daizo shuppan, 1971), pp.3-23. The history of Buddhism at Tun-huang is treated in exhaustive detail by Tsukamoto Zenryu, "Tonko bukkySshi gaisetsu", in Seiiki bunka kenkyu, v.1 (Kyoto: Hozokan, 1958), pp.39-78. A general discussion in English may be found in Cheung, Hung-nin Samuel, The Language of the Tun-huang "Pien-wen", (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1974), pp.1-16. 2. The figure is an estimate based on the discussion in Kanaoka (1971), pp.35-38. Victor Mair estimates 42,000 in his "Lay Students and the Making of Written Vernacular Narrative: An Inventory of Tun-huang Manuscripts", Chinoperl Papers, no.10, (1981), pp.95-96. 3. See Arthur Waley, Ballads and Stories from Tun-huang (London: Allen and Unwin, 1960), p.236. 4. Kanaoka (1971) gives a detailed accounting of the disposition of the materials, organized by location, pp.46- 66, including a complete listing of extant catalogues. 5. For a discussion of those early efforts and the problems of nomenclature and categorization, see Cheng Chen-to, Chung- kuo su -wen -h siieh shih (1 93 8, Hong Kong repr., n.d .), v.1 , pp.181 -190. Victor Mair defines pien-wen, as distinct from similar colloquial genres, to be "written descendants of oral narrative performed by popular entertainers [dealing] with secular or religious subjects", see (1981), p.5. The imprecise usage of the term to refer to all types of colloquial literature from Tun-huang, reinforced in part, as Mair notes, by the inclusions of diverse genres written in the colloquial language in the two volume anthology Tun- huang pien-wen chi (Peking: Jen-min wen-hsiieh, 1 957) (hereafter PWC), is an extreme example of the difficulties scholars have had establishing genre categories in this field. Ibid., pp.5-6. An insightful summary and discussion of this problem appears in V. Hrdlickova, "Some Questions Connected with Tun-huang Pien-wen", Archiv Orientalia, v.30 (1 962 ), pp.21 1 -230. 28 6. Only one known text, Pelliot no. 3808, PWC pp.41 1 -425, actually bears this designation. See Kanaoka (1971), p.102. and Mair (1981), p.36. The name has been applied by scholars to other texts in the genre. See, for example, Hsiang Ta, "T'ang-tai su-chiang k'ao", in T'ang-tai Ch'ang- an y_u hsi-yu wen-ming (Peking: San-lien shu-tien, 1 957), p.306. Extant specimens of Chiang-ching-wen have been edited and published in Part V of PWC, pp.41 1 -700. Mair defines them as "records of or notes for religious lectures for laymen (su-chiang)", Mair (1981), p. 5. 7. The documentary evidence from T'ang and later sources is quoted and discussed in Hsiang Ta, pp.297-301. 8. The account which follows is drawn, unless otherwise noted, from Sun K'ai-ti, "T'ang-tai su-chiang kui-fan yu ch'i pen chih t'i-tsai", in Su-chiang shuo-hua yu pai-hua hsiao-shuo (Peking: Tso-chia, 1956), pp.42-98. 9. See Sun, pp.76-77 and 79-81. 10. Sawada Mizuho, "ShodS bungaku no seisei", in Bukkyo to chugoku bungaku (Tokyo: Kokusho, 1 975 ), p. 19. 11. Both quotations are from Hrdlickova (1962), pp.225-26. 12. Sun, p.84, expresses doubt that the fa-shih after delivering the prose portion also sang the long sung portions. His view seems to point to three major performers corresponding to each of the performance's three formal divisions. Sawada takes the more flexible and, I think, more accurate view that the number of performers varied, depending on circumstances, especially finances, and at times there may have been only one performer. See Sawada, p.40. 13. See Naba Toshisada, "Zokko to henbun", in Todai shakai bunka shi kenkyu (Tokyo: Sobunsha, 1 974), pp.395-458, esp. pp.403ff, on which my summary is based. 14. Ibid.., pp.402-403. 15. The rendering "seat-settling text" is Mair's (1981), p.6. On the ya-tso-wen see Sun, pp.91 ff. and Hrdlickova, pp.227- 228. Examples of ya-tso-wen are collected in PWC, Part VII, pp.823-843. 16. For a discussion of these later genre and their relation to the chiang-ching-wen, see Sawada, pp.53-66. 29 17. Lionel Giles, Descriptive Catalog of the Chinese Manuscripts from Tun-huang in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1 957), p.185. 18. For a description of all of these texts as well as the history of the prior editing and publication of some of them, see Kanaoka Shoko, "Iwayuru 'Yuimakitsukyo kokyobun' ni tsuite" in Nishi Giyu, ed., Daijo bosatsudo no kenkyu (Kyoto: Heirakuji shoten, 1 968), pp.489-490. S.4571 was edited for the first time for inclusion in PWC. 19. Sawada, p.23. P. Demieville, "Vimalakirti en Chine", appended to Etienne Lamotte, L'Enseignement de Vimalakirti (Louvain: Institut Orientaliste, 1 962), pp.438-455, gives an account of Vimalakirti's reception in China. There is a fine, short study of the text's historical, social and religious significance in China by Ch'en Yin-k'o, "Tun-huang pen Wei- mo-chieh-ching Wen-shu-shih-li wen-chi p'in yen-yi pa", Li- shih yii-yen yen-chiu suo chi-kan 2:1 (1 930), repr. in Wang Chung-min, Tun-huang ku-chi hsu-lu (Peking: Shang wu, 1 958), pp.366-371 . I have relied on these last two for my brief remarks here. 20. See PWC, p.560, n.1. 21. Lamotte, pp.2-14, gives a list and study of all the Chinese translations of the text. 22. Demieville, pp.447-449. Ch'en Yin-k'o, pp.369-370 discusses the evidence of such apocrypha. 23. Taisho daizokyo, no.475, v.14, p.537. 24. Kanaoka, "iwayuru", p.498. 25. For an extended discussion of the form and content of the bodhisattva section, see Kanaoka, "Iwayuru", pp.500-506. 26. Wei-mo-ching-chu (Shanghai: Yi-hsiieh shu-chii, n.d.), p.1a. 27. Mair (1981), p.7. 28. Mair (1981), p.60. 29. For the convenience of interested readers a chart of the correspondence between MS fragments, as numbered in the microfilm edition, and the PWC text is set out in the 30 appendix. Tun-huang chianq-ching pien-wen yen-chiu (Taipei: Wen-shih- che ch'u-pan she, 1972). Ibid., pp. 1 063-1071 . One of the texts, P.2122, PWC 589- 591, appears to be part of a ya-tso-wen. See Mair (1981), p. 9. 31 SECTION I Thus When we discuss the word 'thus' being put at the beginning of the sutra to express faith,1 if we follow Tz'u-en's interpretation of faith,2 there are ten types of principles involved. However, since I do not presume to talk at length on this subject, I shall mention only five. Number one: According to the Treatise on Acclaiming the Holy Teaching's3 interpretation of faith, it is the embryo of the seven types of saintly riches.4 We may list these seven as: faith, discipline, attentiveness, equanimity, wisdom, conscience and shame.5 Faith is one of these riches. Furthermore it is the one called the remover of doubts. Once we are able to develop faith, we get rid of our unsettled, doubting minds and realize that right beside us are riches [by which we can] leave this world [of suffering], [and also] know that within the scriptures lies the path to Buddhahood. If we next rid ourselves of laziness, then we shall advance in our (spiritual) refinement. It's the same as going into the sea. It is exactly like seeking jewels.6 If we could go into the seas, we would surely meet with gold and silver. If we can listen to the words of scripture, then we will certainly obtain the sacred fruit.7 The seven precious jewels of this world only remove the poverty of the 32 present moment. The seven sagely riches within the self can rescue us from the perilous road to come. And since the awakening of faith is different from the selection [of the intelligence], therefore the scripture is saying, "I urge you to become aware and understand."^ Number two: In the Treatise on Mere Consciousness we read: "Faith is like a crystal jewel which can clarify muddied waters."9 Let's say we have a pond of fresh water, still and pure to the very bottom. To look at it, it's no different from a mirror. Its luster is just like that of glass. It is clear and pure of itself, how should it contain any impurity? Suddenly [this tranquility is shattered] by a mud loach which is dumped into the pond; [its] entire body impure, all around it a foul stench.10 The clear water that filled the pond is clouded, muddied; this spring [once] purified to its depths is foul- smelling and filthy. We have no idea what steps to take to restore the water's essence11 to its original state. We do not know what cause would make the pond's water clear and pure again. Fortunately there is a single radiant jewel, the gleaming purity of whose accumulated light is without blemish. If we but place this jewel into the pond, the water will of itself be purified [again]. The turmoil.within us is like the muddied water and the mind of faith is that radiant jewel. If our believing minds are steadfast and firm, our inner turmoil will clear away by 33 itself J2 Number three: In the Abhidharma Treatise it says (explaining 'faith'): "Faith can pull the living beings free of the mire of birth and death."13 The meaning is this: The correct teachings serve as the Buddha's hand1^, faith is the hand of the living creatures. If these two hands can touch each other, then certainly we will leave the mire of birth and death.15 We will cast away forever the Triple Realm16; neither shall we dwell within the Four Births17. [Our faith] will change delusion into wisdom; it will transform laziness into sustained diligence. Using the scale of our own believing minds, we will be able to recognize the good and evil of others. Therefore the treatise says: "[Faith] can pull the living beings free of the mire of life and death."18 Number four: A treatise says: "Faith is like a man afloat upon a vast dark sea who avails himself of his own hand to propel his boat."19 So this is like someone who casts himself upon the vast seas and wishes to float upon its boundless waves. If he does not work the boat pole it will be difficult to make his boat go. If he does not raise the oar how then shall he move forward?20 He must rely on his own hands, only then can he do something.21 If he has no hands he will sink and drown in the vast, dark ocean; but if he himself has hands he is sure to reach the other shore. [The reason that] the mind of faith comes first 34 in the sutra [is that] [the state of] birth and death is [like] a river. If the mind of faith is not firm and steadfast in our consciousness when will we ever be free of the river of birth and death?22 And now in fact we are urged at the sutra's start to develop the mind of faith, and so listen to the teachings of the Thus Come One. This is something we must practice and maintain. Number Five: The Hua-yen Sutra interprets faith [in this way]: If a man has hands he may pick out and take precious jewels as he pleases. But should he be without hands, he shall get nothing at all.23 And now as we are about to consider the teachings of this sutra. we must develop the mind of faith. When the mind of faith arises, then are knowledge and wisdom born; when the mind of faith vanishes, then do ignorance and delusion flourish. Listening to the sutra's teachings is like coming upon a mountain (filled) with the seven jewels. If we can produce the mind of faith (within ourselves) we shall be able to clearly recognize the principles of the Single Vehicle. But should the mind of faith not arise, it is as though we are without both hands and feet. So that even should we reach the mountain of jewels we would be empty handed, obtaining nothing. So now [the reasons that] this word 'thus' is placed at the very beginning of the sutra are, first of all, because it is the expression used at the First Council24 and, secondly, it seeks to urge people to give rise to faith. 35 In each of the five principles [established at the beginning of sutra] there are words to instruct us.25 By them [we know for certain that the sutra's] words are not false; they are all words spoken by the Thus Come One. If we can cultivate the mind of faith and hold firmly to it Then certainly our action-store shall never stray or miss When evil deeds have long been done, we're crushed and swept away When good conditions have yet to come we sink, bent out of shape If our doings at all times are based on views and perceptions deep Then all of our acts shall be to merit closely linked28 The sutras thus make known to all, uplifting words of praise The myriad things, they all arise from the mind's perception A mind of faith is of the highest in explaining merit's fruits Among the seven saintly riches it ranks as number one So do not vainly seal your fate with constant reckless acts You must weigh everything you do with wise consideration2^ Cut yourself off from immoral views, desist from [evil] acts30 Do not let the sutra's words give rise to waywardness^! The sutras thus make known to all, uplifting words of praise The myriad things, they all arise from the mind's perception The mind of faith can be compared to a j ewel of crystal pure32 The muddy waters can, in fact, be caused to be transformed When we make the flowing source be deep and clear once more33 Then we finally understand the jewel's great merit-strength We must at every moment have single-minded diligence And not let everything be done with idle negligence Wisdom lies within an inch of deluded ignorance The myriad things they all arise from the mind's perception Living beings' inner turmoil wraps and binds them tight So long we have been wading through the mire of birth and 36 death If we could but develop the heart and mind of faith34 The Thus Come One would lead us forth and guide us to deliverance Then could we experience a liberation-body And cast away our form-body, its hollow, phantom substance The Thus Come One thus tells us all, uplifting words of praise The myriad things they all arise from the mind's perception If a man floats on the sea and wants to go by boat And would see ten thousand miles of waves as being a mere foot If he has hands why then he can avoid this danger's peril Should he have none, he'll surely sink and drowning he will perish We can grasp the oar and row right by our side We can take the pole and work it back and forth^ Just as we who strive to learn raise up minds of faith The myriad things they all arise from the mind's perception If a man can make his way to a mountain filled with jewels And seeking a hundred kinds of precious things, searches all about If he's got hands, only then can he go and pluck them out With no hands, he returns with nothing and in the end he gains no profit The sutra's words are deep and subtle, their reason past surpassing The Bodhi which is unsurpassed emerges from their midst It only needs that those who seek should plant the root of faith The myriad things they all arise from the mind's perception And when we listen we should listen with care And strive to have the sutra's words cause...[?]36 In our sense realms37 We should work hard to know just what we are Do not let our thoughts and acts become selfish, mean and low Evil conditions should be removed from our intentions' midst Of goodly works, there's none comes near the grounds of suffering38 And for these reasons the Thus Come One has spoken forth this sutra 37 To teach us all to peacefully conduct our mind's perception The sutra's words will lead us to goodly spiritual refinement But the seeker must develop in his mind sincere determination-^ So that rubbing and wiping the jewel of our thought we make it spotlessly clean And rinsing and polishing the mirror of our mind till by itself it's clear With compassionate actions we strive to advance Our slothful acts turn round and change In everything cause faith to grow and with it understanding Entirely cut ourselves free of all doubting feelings4^ When with a mind of faith we can harken to true scripture Then wisdom in our mind stirs round and comes alive within us Within our minds do not allow grasping and attachment In our minds strive to sever ties to all that's unenlightened For when the mind can understand, it understands all things And when our thought it is refined, it's so in everything And if a mind of faith is firm, achieved in every thought Then within the Bodhi mind we'll spontaneously grow A deviant mind must not appear wildly expressed41 Deviant views should straightaway be overturned and changed Thoughts of doing evil acts incessantly cut off And lewd considerations should be halted from the start Wrong-headed ignorance is mostly what foolish people practice How can something false and bent lead to the actions of the wise? If we can remove false flattery and always guard against it Then within the Bodhi mind we'll spontaneously grow Let not the mind's own turmoil bind you round for long Don't let avarice and anger lead to altercations Let not the root of faith be caught in the snare of love's attachment Let not a confused disposition increase its ignorant emotions42 Seek not splendor nor high position in this (our mortal) world 38 And do not look among mere men for benefit and fame Do not adopt the hundred types of ignorant perceptions Then within the Bodhi mind you'll spontaneously grow When listening to sutra we have but to let our faith unfold43 We intensely fear that those who seek will give rise to unfounded doubts When one is lost one is cut off from Bodhi1s admonitions Awakened to the truth we're free of birth and death's wheel, its turning So covet not nor be attached to those things prized by humankind We should seek instead the wealth by which we leave this world And so we have explained for you the sutra's first word 'thus' Now we'll undertake to chant the next two words: "I heard" 39 Notes to Section I This translation begins with the words |^-*r at the bottom of 517.9. 517.10. 'thus'. Literally the two words -£a Jj^_ . 517.10. Z> $c-^% % • The character jfo seems to be crossed out in MS. Taking 2J as -tb , a common substitution which will not be noted henceforth. 517.10. Ig. . This refers to Kui Chi (632-632 A.D.), disciple of Hsuan Tsang , founder of the Fa- hsiang sect =fc ~$\ ^ , and author and translator of numerous treatises and commentaries. Called Tz'u-en because of his long association with the temple of the same name. The bulk of this first section is based on the discus• sion of faith found in several of Kui Chi's commentaries, appearing for example in Kui Chi's commentary on the A-mi- t'o (Amita) Sutra, A-mi-1'o-chinq t'ung-tsan-shu c.1 p5j ^sjif Tn- 1751- The apposite passages are to be found in T.37.331b-332a. As is noted in detail below, the preacher has employed selective adaptation and embellishment of Kui Chi's commentary in fashioning this section. 517.10. |P, -$§j "IBJ} . In full, the Hsien-yang sheng-chiao lun iH."^ r^t^T ' in 20 c-' author unknown, translated by Hsiian Tsang. One of the so-called eleven treatises of the Fa-hsiang sect. See Bussho v.3 p.1 82-84. Tn.1 602. T.31.480. This is the fifth of Kui Chi's ten explanations of faith, cf.T.37.33 c. The quotation from the Hsien-yang lun in Kui Chi's commentary consists, in fact, of only a list of the Seven Saintly Riches. 517.11. fcjffia . Following T.37.331 c, emending to TCjJfti . A scribal error resulting from the similarity of the characters ^ and_^, , the latter an abbreviation for used through MS. 517.11. MS reads in accord with T.37.331 c: ^%^^^%.- PWC transcription and punctuation are incorrect here. PWC punctuation is highly arbitrary throughout and frequently contrary to a passage's sense. So as not to swell these notes unnecessarily however, I will note only crucial instances. These seven riches appear in various formulations in 40 different texts, see Oda 731b. Interestingly the order and names of the seven given by Seng Chao in his commentary to the Wei-mo-chieh ching, Fo-tao p'in i^j^-po (Ting, p.68b) are the same as in Kui Chi's list. Equanimity is literally 'casting away'. 517.12-13. The simile becomes clearer when compared to the wording of the 'first draft' in 517.3: "If a worldly merchant goes into the sea seeking jewels, we may compare it to a seeker of religious truth who looks for jewels in the midst of True dharma." X. ;x_ ^ zfe . ^ , ^ A* % & 5fc jf • This ocean simile is commonly met with. Kui Chi, in another commentary to the Amita sutra, A-mi-t'o-ching tz'u- en'shu pgf Zj$ ffc % M, Sftt , 1c, Tn.1757, T.37.313c, discussing the word 'thus' > cites the Ta-chih-tu-lun M- ^ as follows: "Tne Buddha's teachings are a vast sea. Faith enables us to enter it." A&j j£ j^~Jg£ - \% A.- (See T25.63a) 517.13. Emending punctuation to: £-4.%^ . These are parallel to the eight characters immediately above. Thus mispunctuating, PWC mistakenly transcribes MS One is tempted to render as "to listen with understanding". This however is the first of countless instances in this text where is parallel to^, "to be able to", "to know how to". See Chang, p.129. 518.1. rfl? seems to be either a phonetic loan, or a superfluous character. Taking J^- as. The contrast (j£ ) is, I think, between knowledge gained through faith's intuition, born of hearing, and that gained through cognitive selection, born of thought, as seen for instance in the Hsien-yang lun, c.15, ch'eng-k'u-p'in n.5, Jfp!. ^7 ^j&fr , r T. 31 .553a. At&m&lfy ...^-^.-^ 518.1. £ff£L> (^) . I think this paraphrases the perceived force of the words -bt\zjk_ , rather than representing an actual quote from sutra. This is the eighth of Kui Chi's ten explanations of faith. T.37.331 C. He cites the Ch'eng-wei-shih *|| , fully the Ch'eng-wei-shih-lun ^ , Tn.1 585, a treatise in 10c, tr. by Hsiian Tsang, to which Kui Chi himself added two exegetical works Tn.1 830 & 1831. see Bussho 103c. 518.1. \% 7f y$L MS reads 5^-. Should be 41 following T.37.331 c. see also 519.7. 10. 518.2. & %JL*& MS has 11. 518.3. aK_Jft . Earlier, ^tfi , MS has . 12. 518.5. 4% (Gs Sg^f % . MS has )% ®£ . MS corrects transposition with this marginal notation: V . Such a mark was written and then crossed out between and %i . ^ is a phonetic loan for J2£ , also found in 518.10. See Hsu, Tsai- pu p.1 18. 'Inner turmoil' renders , Skt. klesa, 'anguish1. Luk, p.147, glosses as, "trouble, anxiety, worry, distress, perplexity, and whatever causes them." 13. This is the seventh of Kui Chi's ten T37.331 c. Here is introduced the hand metaphor which our preacher uses in his next three explanations of faith. Kui Chi explains that faith is the conquering hand which opens the gate of the faculties; it receives the hand of the teachings. It is worthwhile to quote his words in their entirety here for we shall refer to them below: ^ flUR^f^ £. % . Jgsfc^-tfe. . 518.5. Ur^^ . MS has^il-c • This is the A-pi-ta-mo chu-she lun pt»[ ^ >]JL. ^ ^jj- , 30c, tr. by Hstian Tsang. Tn.1558. ' 518.5-6. ... •^s>T[1^.^t,^C . MS clearly does not have -£ff , usually written as-5l • I believe this character to be ^ , making this structure parallel to that of 517.10-11, with the character superfluous. 14. 518.6. JL-J^^e^^ . MS has % . 15. Our preacher is paraphrasing Kui Chi's words here. See note 1 5 above. 16. 518.6. 5-^- . The three realms of desire, form and formlessness^, , , ^ , which, taken together, characterize all the worlds through which mortal beings pass in the cycle of birth and death. See Oda 607b. 17. 518.7. % . The four modes by which the beings of the three realms are born: birth by egg, embryo, moisture and 42 transformation^ , , -)j|v , . see Mochizuki v.2, p.1 842. This couplet is saying, then, that faith will free living beings of the cycle of birth and death. 18. 518.8. MS has #L %.4 • Emended to match earlier citation in 518.6. 19. The preacher here continues the hand metaphor. However this "quote" does not appear among Kui Chi's ten explanations. Judging from the fact that the preacher's succeeding example is drawn, though not without error, from Kui Chi and that the "treatise" cited here is not named, it would appear that the preacher has made this one up. 518.8. -jfyt >s. X. -y% -J% • Emended to A. , following 517.8. 20. 518.9. 7^$%^ ... 3^- ^ ... These parallel lines suffer from faulty transcription and injudicious editing. PWC ed. seems to want to read these as compound verbs with literal meanings of 'stir and rest' and 'raise and shake', meaning, one supposes, 'to take action', or 'to get flapping'. In fact these two are verb + object. Hsu's suspicion, Tsai-pu p.118, formed without the benefit of comparison with MS, that ^ is an error for^ , is borne out by MS^ , the signific, of course, being incorrect. MS clearly does read ^ , but^if- is intended. Signifies are commonly confused in MS, especially and . Daikanwa 1 4992 has;jdji, modern pronunciation chao, as meaning boatpole, rudder, or oar, the same as^| . These readings are further borne out by 520.1 , in the verse recapitulation. 21. 518.9. 7$L seems to mean 'acts' or 'to take action', having a neutral connotation despite the presence of the word^-fe , 'charity, giving' in a Buddhist context. See 51 9.1, 51 9.5, 520.1 3 for other instances, also note 32 below. 22. 518.10. £ &j + O i\ . Taking the obliterated character as Jj^. . See 540.2, 540.7, interalia, for other instances. , meaning 'when?', is a word analogous to j/~ 'how much?' See notes at 540.2. 23. This, the last of our preacher's five, also employs the vivid and accessible hand metaphor and derives from the seventh of Kui Chi's ten explanation, as did our preacher's third example, n.14 above. The attribution to the Hua-yen sutra 4£-]|J£$£ should be to the Chih-tu lun • The 43 quotation, as well, is paraphrased. 24. 518.4. . i.e. The phrase which the Buddha stipulated Ananda use when he repeated the sutras so they might be remembered after the Buddha's parinirvana. On this, see section three of this translation. 25. 518.14. There should be a complete stop after A~. In his other commentary on the Amita sutra, A-mi-t'o- ching shu, %k ?fc , Tn.1 757, Kui Chi speaks of the traditional five-fold structure of sutras: 1. faith^^^ , 2. testimony 1^-^- , 3. causation ^c^g_^- (that situation, thought or question which prompts the sutra), 4. main - teaching j£ , and 5. concluding hommage . The first, faith, is in turn divided into five elements without which sutra is impossible and which are established at the outset of every sutra: 1. faith j^ 2. hearing feU 3. time 4% 4. host (the Buddha) 5. place -JSL . (T37.313c) Our preacher is, in 518.14, I believe, referring to these five elements ( jjz. 4, t $L ), each of which serves a particular function. Indeed, Kui Chi indicates the function of the first two large divisions of sutra in language reminiscent of our preacher's. They prove that the sutra is not false: ^ W ^ ^ ^ & % ^ I think the preacher was familiar with Kui Chi's discussion (a slightly different, though not apposite, five- part sutra structure is discussed as well in the A-mi-t'o- ching t'ung-tsan-shu, T.37.331 a-b, a work the preacher clearly made use of) and is here trying to communicate its sense. To reflect that, I emend the following line to: wC This ends the prose portion of this section. Seven- syllable line, double quatrain verses which incorporates its content, while reinforcing and embellishing, follow. 26. 518.15. • Accumulated actions, karma. Not standard Buddhist terminology as far as I know. See 540.7 for another instance. 27. 518.16. The particle J$- appears to be a causative, parallel to~$£_. In 520.1 4 and 16 it parallels and /Ir• respectively . On this usage see Chang, p.398. is not taken in its strict technical sense. I take it to mean good conditions or circumstances which result from good actions and thoughts. 44 28. 519.1. r-fr 'deep' in the sense of not reckless, unconsidered or not serious, i.e. always considered in the light of spiritual cultivation, as indicated in 519.4. 29. 51 9.4. • MS has jf }|J . 30. 519.5. . Normally a neutral term (see n.23 above), must be taken in this context as evil acts. 31. 519.5. Literally 'take the sutra's words'. The sense of this line resembles that of 526.3. 32. 519.7. y|<. . MS has *K - 33. 519.8. -^:J^.*3jf . MS also has 7^ , emending here to 7% . Alternatively, the couplet, in its unemended form, could be taken to suggest that the muddier the water, the greater the merit of the clarifying jewel. 34. 519.12. MS torn here. ^ % appears to be as in 518.12. I follow Hsu, tsai pu, p.1 18, reading ^-Kiz. IfiL 35. 520.1. The context is clear, even though the exact wording is not easily intelligible. As in 518.9 and 554.6&10 nautical terminology is problematical, normally means to rub or grind. is the same as^ , to pole a boat.^^"^^. and ^ "fl^T must be taken as noun compounds. The final verb is an accurate transcription of MS. Daikanwa 12640 gives, among other meanings, 'to sweep away' or 'to strike'. 36. 520.7. MS has-^f. Chiang, p.208, includes this in his list of unintelligible expressions. Translation here guessing by context and analogy to such idioms as 3ff • 37 . 520.8. MS has if^p ffl • See also, interalia, 527.2 38. 520.9. On H- see 518.16; n.29 above. This line reverses the pairing of 518.16. ^.^M- , M. • % JL (Jt)tj; - MS has ^j. * "^'^ 39. 520.11. This line is preceded by the marginal annotation p'ing , indicating a change of rhyme and a change to 'level' tone rhyme words from 'deflected' ones, ts'e . The style of sung recitation may also have changed here. In the second quatrain of this p'ing section a new 'refrain line' appears. This p'ing section resembles subsequent long sung verse 45 sections in the text in its rhyme scheme, wherein the last syllable of the first seven-syllable line in each double quatrain also partakes of the rhyme. The rhyme of the previous ts'e section is unsettled and awkward. All the words in rhyming portions are in the 'entering tone', ju sheng , ending in final -t, or -k except forin 519.7. I suspect that the p'ing section with its homilies and advice, applicable to any popular lecture on sutra, existed in finished form already and was copied into the preacher's draft. The previous section, marked by a preponderately larger number of loan, miswritten, or unintelligible characters, would seem to be the preacher's pained attempt to versify the preceding prose discussion, drawn from Kui Chi and itself apparently so grueling for the preacher to compose, and, as such, reflects that discussion's unpolished state. This is a clear indication that our preacher was trying to piece together a lecture from disparate sources, among which were written transcriptions of or prompt books for other popular lectures. Ml -5C £ &| • MS has it . This may be a filler syllable. Phonetic loan for is unlikely since it appears in this line as well. MS has ^t^$$ 40. 520.14. The final character of the line is totally absent due to a rip in bottom of MS. Hsu, tsai p_u, p.1 18 rules out quite rightly on the basis of rhyme. He suggests f^f probably on the basis of similar form, in addition to proper rhyme. I follow Hsu here, though it must remain conjectural. 41. 521.3. Taking to be J[ . Alternatively, unemended, the sense could be 'do not wildly set out standards'. The phrase is puzzling. 42. 521 .8. vfi does not appear to be a standard Buddhist term. 43. 521.11. Here the rhyme changes once again, signalling the end of this long sung verse section with the standard "we will chant out" >^ 3Ji . 46 SECTION IIA II j II The sutra says: "I heard". This chant is divided into two sections.1 First, a challenge and response on the meaning of "I" and then an explanation of the two words "I heard" together. Challenge: Among the various teachings, all utterly refute 'clinging to the self'.2 why then does the word "I" appear right at the start of the sutra? Response:3 The Treatise on Transcendent Knowledge4 states that there are five types of impurity,5 all of which shatter the idea of clinging to the self. Number one: The seed is impure.6 Internally there are the burning passions [occasioned by] various past actions; externally these are planted in the body left to us by our parents.^ The Treatise says: This body's seed is impure It emerges not from some fine and valued thing It is not born of untouched purity But comes forth only from the path of filth^ Number two: The place it occupies is impure:9 in the mother's belly. The Treatise says: This body is unclean in this way It does not bloom forth from the flowers 47 It is not borne into life by the fragrant campaka flower Nor does it emerge from a mountain of j eweIs'^ Number three: Its inherent nature is impure.11 This is because the four elements are always changing and re-forming and because [the body] transforms its sustenance [into impurity]12 Earth, water, fire, wind, these elements Can change to form impurity13 [Even if] one tilted the oceans emptying them to wash this body One could not make it fragrant and clean Number four: Its outer form is impure.14 The Nine Apertures are constantly discharging [impurities]. The Treatise say s: Every type of impure thing Fills this body to the brim Discharging always without cease Like a leaky sack heaped up with things^ ^ Number five: Its ending is impure. In the end it reverts to ruin and decay. The Treatise says: Reflect upon the Truth and contemplate this body It will revert, without fail, to the place of Death Try as you might to keep it from returning It turns its back on kindness like a small child^ The idea is: You serve it for a hundred years, how could (it?) know the meaning of kindness and the warmth of long life, but coming to recognize the Three Steps and1^ ... shame is 48 concentrated [?], reciprocate kindness and requite virtue. A gatha of the Treatise says ... the warm breath is no longer expected [?]18 ... In the end, the maggots suck at it 19 When our outward trappings are vibrant and thriving We chase every where after splendor and ... We take delight only in the happiness before our eyes How could we know of the hateful things that follow our demise They accompany the lifeless body to a desolate mountain Both eyes gnawed out by dark birds of prey20 Think hard upon this sort of body What is there about it which should make us want to greedily hold on to it? Challenge: If this is what the body is like, how can there be a self, an "i"?21 Response: There are six types of self: One: The falsely calculated self Two: The simultaneously-engendered self22 Three: The prideful self Four: The seeming self of the Five Aggregates23 Five: The self manifested in the worldly course. (This is the "I" which people from the western lands speak of when they meet each other [?]) Six: The self of the Eight Non-hindrances24 That which Ananda speaks of now [in the sutra] is the fourth, the seeming self of the Five Aggregates, and the fifth, the self manifested in the worldly course. This means that he conforms to the [ways of this] world in teaching and converting, and addresses himself to common people saying "i". He thereby follows the worldly course. [Challenge:]25 why does the saintly Ananda not conform to the teachings and say "there is no self"? Response: Were he to say "there is no self", he is afraid that the living being would then give rise to minds struck with fear. That is to say, since common people hold to the body and believe in the self, because of that he goes along with them. Everyone holds within them notions of their own superiority... If he said there is no self ...2^ ... [If there is] no self27, then for whose benefit is this spiritual cultivation? He is afraid that the living beings will give rise to a mind which turns back [from the path to enlightenment], therefore he addresses28 the living beings saying the word "i".29 50 Notes to Section IIA 1. 521.15. §f%*$L_ . Emending to . See 555.5 for the same mistranscription. 2. 521.15. $-\i$L . Skt. Atma-graha. Oda 229a. 3. 521.16. MS also has ?tf\ . This is an error for . 4. 521 .16. %_i!nfi . Fully, Ta-chih-tu lun ^W*^" , an abridgement and translation by Kumaraj iva j\M$J*j^ jtfe. \-\ i in 100c, of the Maha-prajna paramitopadesa by Nagarj una-^l^-j^J" jl «£ . Tn. 1509. 5. The source of the following passage is Ta-chih-tu lun, c.19, shih ch'u-p'in chung no. 37 ffi ^ Si. *f , T. 25 . 1 98c-1 99a, where these five types are presented in qatha preceded by brief prose explanations. Discrepancies between MS, PWC and T are noted below. I follow T only where MS is unintelligible. 6. This is the second of five in T. 7. This passage is not entirely clear. In its wording, it seems to be a garbled and abbreviated version of the explanation preceding the first qatha in T. Its sense could be based on the explanation preceding the second. I read 52 2.1 as a verb. 8. T. reads:^|||^ '&$Ui<&£ 9. T.198c - 199a has 'It's place of birth is impure' %. Tf. . 10. T. reads (variant noted: JJfJ ) 522.6. j%_ $ . The campaka plant. See Waku p.70-71. A flowering plant of the magnolia family whose fragrance can be smelled several Li away. 1 1 . 522.7. |j Ogjt ^ >f • Following T. 25.1 99a t\ - 12. 522.7. This line appears to have been garbled first by the copyist, then by the editor. MS has: ^ ^ n£ ^ PWC omits the second . The notation V indicates transposition. I emend and read as follows: wfc. ^ (^]^Ti\ • The first clause 51 paraphrases the first two lines of the gatha which follows. The second seems to be derived from a passage immediately following the last of the five gatha in T. 25.1 99b. J^^^ 13. T. has 1 4. 522.1 0. T. has 1^%^%^. 15. 522. 1 1 . (MS^). T. has ft 522.1 2. T. has ^ , noting as variant. 16. 522. 1 4-15. T. has %$LVt±\ ^~'^%^^% j$ &f & fsLll ^ I follow T. readings underlined. 17. 522. 1 6. ~S~ . Perhaps teaching, practice and realization, the three succeeding steps, each dependent on the preceding one, which lead to enlightenment ^•J -J^ , • See Oda p.659. There appear to be four, not six characters missing after 51 • They are probably apportioned two up and two down, making a prose rhythm of 6+6, 4+4. 18. This is the torn end of MS fragment no.7. What seems to be a paraphrase and explanation of the final gatha is, unfortunately, unintelligible. The line of gatha in 523.1. appears to be the third, not the second, of four. I cannot as yet identify it. 19. 523.4. This is the jaggedly torn beginning of MS fragment no.9, which appears to be the end of the Five Impurities section. PWC does not accurately reflect the spacing in MS of the lost lines in 523.2-3. However that is a moot point since those lines are beyond reconstruction. 523.4. fc^j 20 . 523.7. may be found in Chiang's list of unintelligibles, but not in any dictionary. It sense, however, is clear in context. 21 . The logical conclusion drawn from the Five Impurities section and subsequent discussion in the Ta-chih-tu lun is precisely that there is no 'I' in this body.(T.199b. 3J "5^ ) • (-)ur preacher's task is however to explain why the sutra's beginning prominently displays an "1"-^,. He tries to explain that there are all sorts of 'selves', is less than satisfied with his effort and abandons the argument for the time being. 52 22. 523.9. , \& % $K . Neither appear to be standard Buddhist term. /|_£L corresponds to Skt. sahagata or sahaj a. 23. T&^r -5- j& . means pride or conceited self- reliance. The five aggregates, ^^.if^.^ ff^ > are rendered by Luk as form, feeling, ideation, reaction and consciousness (p.144). These five are the constituent elements, literally 'heaps', which taken together are mistaken for a 'self'. See Dayal p.69-75 for an enlightening discussion. 24. -k^l^K • ^- (/V) # i^i . This first is anything but a standard term. The intriguing remark offered as an explanation is unintelligible. MS seems to lack one, not two characters above. The second is emended on the basis of MS, which is correct. These are the eight 'non- hindrances' or 'self-masteries' attained by the Tathagata. See Oda p. 1 40 9 ( /V < % pa ^\ ) . The preacher seems to have returned to Kui Chi's A-mi- t'o-ching t'ung-tsan-shu (Tn.1758), in attempting to draft this section. At T.332a-b immediately following the ten types of faith noted in the previous section, Kui Chi launches into a discussion of why Ananda uses the word -J^ in recalling the Buddha's words. The argument is too long and complicated to reproduce here, but one passage is crucial to an understanding of what the preacher attempts here and is /IMf • t| * A % ft t\ ^ . (underlining added) The preacher has adopted three of Kui Chi's notions of self and, willy-nilly it appears, added three others. The argument, based as it is on Kui Chi's, is intimately bound up with the 'person' of Ananda, who appears now, prematurely, in the preacher's exposition. For that reason, and the obvious discomfort and inappropriateness the preacher feels in such deep philosophical waters, this particular section is, I believe, jettisoned and we are left with the remnants on either side of the fragmentary divide. 25. The word is missing from MS, but clearly belongs there. 26. 523.12. This is the ripped end of MS fragment no.9. 27. 523.13. The ripped beginning of MS fragment no.8. MS clearly shows the character above the first-f^ . The argument is pretty much continuous with that at the end of 53 the last fragment. 28. 523.1 3. . MS has . See 523.1 1 . &C?£\ FL^k. . In both instances however it is conceivable that is meant, in the sense of 'hearing (and responding to) the living beings'. 29. The argument from the bottom of 524.10 to here is again adapted from Kui Chi. T.37.332b reads immediately after the passage cited in n.24 above: ^* U 1% &r ^ • This argument appears in a redrafted form after the next section on ^ , which itself pivots on Ananda. In 524.15- 524.16 we find a clear and, from the standpoint of exposition, properly placed although not entirely well- worded statement of this problem and its resolution which manages to avoid the purely philosophical mire in which at first our preacher seemed to be trapped. 54 SECTION IIB Ananda: "I heard" Nextl, a combined explanation of [the phrase] "I heard." These two words, "I heard", are spoken by Ananda (by which he means), 'I have heard such a teaching at the Buddha's side'. This is why he says, "I heard". Challenge: Ananda was born on the night that Buddha attained the Way2 and only at the age of twenty did he come to serve as the Buddha's attendant3, [thus] he never heard the teachings [which the Buddha preached] before that time. Why then does he say, "I heard"?4 Response: (First of all)5 according to [accounts] in the monastic codes of the various schools6, the Buddha repeated [those teachings] for him. Challenge: Why did he repeat them? Response:7 The Sutra of Requiting Mercy8 states that [when] the Buddha had Ananda become his personal attendant, Ananda approached the Buddha and entreated [Him to grant] three wishes: 1) I do not wish to wear old clothes. 2) I will not be warned against separate invitations [from personal benefactors] 3) That you will repeat for me your teachings of the last twenty-five years. There is another interpretation which says that when Ananda 55 received the Buddha's prophecy [of future enlightenment as a Buddha]9, he spontaneously understood [all of the Buddha's teachings]. The Lotus Sutra10 says: The World-Honored One is one most rare He causes me to recall the past Countless Buddha teachings As though they were heard this day Beyond this I cannot explain at length. Based upon all [the reasons] that we have just chanted, the words of sutra say "Thus have I heard."11 The words 'I heard' which appear in the sutra are words spoken by Ananda. This is because when Kasyapa12 gathered the Council together13, to speak the sublime dharma within the Pippala cave14 and rang bells and other things upon the summit of Mount Sumeru15, on that day Ananda ascended to the [dharma] seat and manifested a body which had the thirty-two marks.16 The assembled holy ones looked up and seeing that he had an appearance marked by the eighty well-formed physical adornments17, all wondered at this strangeness; all of them gave rise to minds that doubt. [But] when Ananda at last chanted out the words "I heard", the Arhats' mistaken views were totally 1 ft dispelled.•° Beyond this, what reason lies behind Ananda's declaring "I heard"? The idea is that the entirety of the sutras and the monastic codes19, no matter if they are of the Greater or the 56 Lesser Vehicles2*}, all of them [Ananda] personally heard and apprehended in days long past at the Buddha's side.21 Whether22 in the land of Vaisali, or in the City of the King's Dwelling, or at the time when [the Buddha] grandly elucidated the principle of the Three Vehicles upon the Mount of the Eagle or when he discussed at length the Four Noble Truths in the Jeta woods23; and after that, whether in spacious fields or in mountain forests, [whenever the Buddha spoke his] golden words, each and every phrase Ananda personally heard; and [whenever the Buddha uttered] jewelled gatha, Ananda listened to and retained each and every line. [So that] among the teachings of the Tripitaka, there is none which he did not thoroughly understand; once he heard something24, he never forgot it. And now25 when he transmits [the dharma] to the last ages thus benefitting the living beings, because he personally heard [the dharma] in the Buddha's presence, therefore he chants the words "I heard." Challenge: Ananda declares "I heard" as he recounts the entirety of the sutras, but, in fact, it did not happen that way. In fact Ananda was born only when the World-Honored One first achieved True Consciousness26 and only after reaching the age of twenty did he come to serve the Buddha as his disciple27, how then could he have heard the teachings [preached] before then? These words "Thus have I heard" [which Ananda (and we also)] now 57 declare, are they not errors in the scripture? Response: Now, according to the monastic codes of the various schools, the Buddha repeated [those teachings] for him. Further challenge: Why did he repeat them? Response: The Sutra of Requiting Mercy28 says that Buddha [looked?]29 among the virtuous and wise in his all-encompassing mirror and saw that Ananda's karmic roots were already ripe and that he was fit to serve the World-Honored One as his personal attendant. The Buddha then frequented the royal parks and went often to the mansions of the kings. Setting forth the words of expedient means, he opened up the path which beckons to transformation. He discussed for them (him?) the Three Realms and explained for them the Four Forms of Births. He caused them to understand the non-durability of phantom substance and had them speak of the fleetingness of splendor's bloom. When Ananda at that time heard the Buddha's words, he straightaway developed a mind to listen clearly30/ and having understood, he turned to the Buddha and relied upon him.31 , entreating three wishes of the World-Honored One: 1) I do not wish to wear the Buddha's old clothes 2) That you shall not admonish me for accepting alms from personal benefactors. 3) That you preach again for me those teachings32 yOU have expounded over the last twenty years. Ananda informed [the Buddha of these wishes] and the Buddha, 58 evincing his compassion, [granted them]. Thereupon, Ananda, seeking the proper time, decided to leave behind his worldly ties and realized the fruit of srota-apanna.33 And those teachings which Buddha had preached for twenty years before that, the Buddha preached them again to Ananda. [Which is why] now at the beginning of the Sutra, he [and we] presume to chant these two words "I heard."34 Further challenge: The entirety of the scriptures all utterly refute clinging to the self. How then can Ananda utter the word "I"? Response: Fearing that, were he to speak of the non• existence of the self, the living creatures would then engender a mind which turns back in defeat [from the struggle toward enlightenment], he follows the worldly course as an expedient and, since his intention is to promote our spiritual advancement, even though35 he himself has already eliminated clinging to the self, he invokes this word "I" as an expedient means. Although the scriptures do say the words "I heard", in the realm of the holy there is no notion of self whatsoever. I have discussed but a little, explaining sketchily. I am not prepared to discuss this at length. [Suffice it to say that] if, when you listen, you straightaway cause a mind of faith to arise, then you who hear shall soon be born into awareness and understanding.J 59 ts'e chant) Ananda was about to undertake the spread of Buddha's words To transmit among the Arhats the Buddha's fair renown In ancient days esteemed by all as the one who'd heard the most Now as well people all agree his mind is sharp and quick When the Council met within the cave [to gather Buddha's teachings] Whether they were high or low they spoke up to praise him37 Yet when suddenly Ananda displayed the thirty-two fine marks It caused all of those assembled there to engender disbelief But as soon as they heard him suddenly chant these two words: "I heard" The buzzing undertone was stopped, the multitude was stilled38 The eminent monks who filled the cave for the first time believed and knew The entire gathering of Arhats all were suddenly enlightened Now we too bind together the words of scripture true Every word has come from the Thus Come One's Golden Mouth Now today we explicate and make them clear for you3^ Thus causing humankind to sweep away disbelieving thoughts40 He had thoroughly penetrated the countless holy scriptures So that those who heard him all could recall with yearning [the Master whom they loved]41 For in days past he was always there, in the Dharma assembly's midst He personally listened and understood in the Buddha's presence The Buddha's teachings penetrated far to [all those in] the Three Vehicles and the Five Natures And caused [those in] the Eight Difficult Conditions and 42 the Four Births to depart from suffering The teachings handed down for later ages are not false43 They cause humankind to sweep away disbelieving thoughts The Revered One, Sakyamuni, Master of the Compassionate Vow Would expound the dharma, and every time Ananda would receive his words44 Caused was he with reverent mind to always listen and retain So that all could be transmitted to the present Final Age 60 Among the Voice Hearer's number he alone spoke of "I" Among the gathered multitude he was longest at Buddha's command45 Today within the scripture it says the words "I heard" Causing all of us to be without disbelieving thoughts The Buddha's majestic presence caused him to realize and to know He never let the words of scripture lead to dislike or to love46 He listened well, both body and mind were in the dharma's midst He never once, forgetting, lost a single word or phrase47 For the longest time in all he did he showed single-minded diligence Never [allowing his mind] to beget distractions everywhere48 Today we explicate and make things clear for you Causing all of us to sweep away disbelieving thoughts (p'ing chant)4^ In those days Sakyamuni, the Grand World-Honored One Would in the dharma assembly expound the word of sutra And each time would be call the name of Ananda Entrusting to him the words he spoke in each and every place: "I wish to pass my teachings down unto the Final Age So you must remember faithfully and not be slow of mind Today we bind together the teachings of the Thus Come One That is why within the sutra it says these words "I heard". ...how could his understanding be worthy5"! ... He allowed the Buddha to enter extinction because of the demon Po-hsiin52 In his ignorance discuss53 Since he himself had many false distorted thoughts He therefore spoke up and asked the World-Honored One54 Today we bind together the teachings of those days The ancient holy teachings we do now relate Ananda did receive the words of the Thus Come One That is why within the sutra it say these words "I heard" 61 Everywhere the Thus Come One spread the dharma gate Ananda, among Buddha's entourage55, was the most attentively respectful Because his wisdom surpassed the understanding of other men Since his clear intelligence stood out from the multitude His perceptions and self-knowledge had no imperfections or bad points How then in his sentient realm could he not respond to [the Buddha's] profound grace-^ Today we bind together the teachings of the Three Vehicles That is why the sutra speaks these two words "I heard" Our treasured Master Sakyamuni His towering golden body" His face round like the glowing sun His coiled tresses like dark clouds30 Vast beyond matching Lofty beyond compare^ When upon the Eagle's Peak He Himself the dharma spoke Each and every word I heard60 At the time of the assembly in Amra park They followed the Buddha, the World-Honored One The wise and the worthy appeared in great numbers With the high and mighty, the descendants of kings Each and every one cast away his triple palace All of them abandoned the six defilements62 When at Vaisali, He Himself the dharma spoke Each and every word I heard When he grandly praised things of the Western Realms The manifestation of Amita, the Master of Transformation64 Where golden tethers mark out the roads in gold And in bejewelled halls, the precious incense billows up in clouds65 Causing living beings to give rise to reverence and respect And humankind to set upon a diligent resolve When in Jeta Park He Himself the dharma spoke Each and every word I heard00 Always together with the ever-following multitude Passing through so many lands He would at times discuss the Four Noble Truths At other times extol the Three Vehicles 62 He taught and transformed the living things And had them cast away their hollow, phantom selves When in the Deer Park He Himself the dharma spoke Each and every word I heard67 The sakra, lords among the gods, all came and asked of Him68 To open and extend the grounds for the six virtues that lead beyond And when they all, their minds together as one, reached enlightenment They offered to the Buddha jewels and things most rare (He said) Wealth and greatness both are like candles in the wind (He told them) The blooms in all their splendor are as cloud's in the lightning's midst Whe n in the Palace of the Gods He Himself the dharma spoke Each and every word I heard^ And further was he set upon by a throng of asura Who all came to seek from him numerous benefits for themselves He, at peace within their midst70, made them bending and compliant He removed their restlessness and excised their avarice and anger He had then undertake the conduct of compassion And cease raising up the armies of contention When upon Mount Sumeru He Himself the dharma spoke Each and every word I heard When the dragon throng came to ask Him to tell them all about the power of the Vow The sound of pipes in song swirled round and round Flower petals rained down in showers of profusion The earth it shook and mountains and rivers moved The wind it blow; the plants were as in spring When in the Dragon's Palace He Himself the dharma spoke Each and every word I heard In his compassion he pitied the living things Shut up in the circuits of hell72 Where mountains of knives are dark like mirrors And sword-trees gleam like silver The furnace-ash then stopped its smoky spewing upward 63 The cauldron's liquid ceased as well its churning and its bubbling When in the Offices of Darkness73, He Himself the dharma spoke Each and every word I heard All that is spoken in the sutras None is mistaken or put there on a whim74 "I heard", the Arhat chants "Thus did the Buddha Himself reveal" Listen, understand; remove your burning inner turmoil Harken to the scripture; extinguish false, unfounded doubts Having thus explained "I heard" The next part we'll chant out 64 Notes to Section IIB 523.13. literally: 'after that', 'later'. This story appears in Ta chih-tu lun c.3 T.25.84a. The Buddha Gautama's father, after hearing of his son's enlightenment, is told by a messenger that a boy has been born to his younger brother. He suggests the name Ananda 'happiness', for this cousin of the Buddha, whose birth occurred on such an auspicious, happy day. Accounts of Ananda being chosen as the Buddha's personal attendant may be found in Chung A-han Ching c.8 shih-che- ching ^ , \\ $?l T.1 .472 a-c. and in Ta-pan n'ieh-p'an ching c.40 T.12.601a-b. Both versions differ slightly from one another, and, in important respects, differ from the version recounted and alluded to in MS. These differences will be discussed below. 523 .1 5. . PWC ed., p.561 note 6, suggests that ^ is a superfluous character, indicating a less than careful reading of the text. MS clearly has an<3 this is without doubt a question. The two characters have been transposed, common enough in this MS. Hsu, p_u cheng, p.39, notes this as well. 523.1 5. —--^Ifc The character — seems to indicate the writer's notion, subsequently dropped, to enumerate several responses. 523.15. It is interesting to note the writer's care in omitting^ both here and in the rewriting of this argument, 524.10. It is precisely the veracity of the sutras which is being challenged. How can they be called to testify in their own defense? In 524.5 however the sutras are mentioned, their veracity affirmed. 523 .1 5. tfi. MS reads-^J- . The character appears to be superfluous, see 524.11 rewriting. 523.1 6. This refers to the Ta-fang-bien fo-pao-en chinq ;<_ -% '\1%> \gv , a work attributed to an unknown late Han translator, Tn.156, a seven chuan version of which begins on T.3.124, see Bussho, 10.131. The 'three wishes' appear in c.6 of that text, T.155c-156d. in a form similar but not identical to MS version. An extended discussion of the various versions appears below in n.28. Here I will only note a discrepancy in the third wish where 'twenty-five years' is mentioned. Oda p.26.a also has 'twenty-five yearsBy most accounts Ananda came to serve at age twenty, and served the Buddha for twenty-five years. Compare 524.14 which gives "twenty". 9. 52 4.1 .• 3Jf"jA |£ t£» The two words 'receive' ^ and 'confer' being homophones, are frequently used for one another. Strictly speaking, should be used here, with the literal meaning, "attained the Buddha's conferral of prophecy". 10. The Buddha's bestowal of prophecy upon Ananda appears in the Miao-fa-lien-hua ching (Lotus Sutra), shou hslieh wu-hsiieh jen chi rVin no.9, ^^^3§^%L&.' T.9.29b-30a. (MS should read 52L-jp\$§f ) . The lines which follow are the first half of a gatha spoken by Ananda when, after bestowal of the prophecy, he instantly recalls the teachings of incalculable past Buddhas and understands them thoroughly with no hindrance. See Hurvitz p. 170-1 71. 1 1 . 524.2. I read with a partial stop after ff^^ . This marks the end of the preacher's first attempt to explain the phrase "I heard". The arguments and points are selected, fleshed out, rearranged, and rephrased in the passage which follows. 12. 524.3. The two characters represented by Q D in PWC are actually two characters deliberately obliterated in MS. The two which straddle them on either side are + -u^T (not ) , the transliteration of the name of the Buddha's disciple Kasyapa. 13. 524.3. The story of the First Council, one thousand people selected by Kasyapa, immediately after the Buddha's entry into nirvana, to gather the Buddha's true teachings in systematic form so they would not perish and could be transmitted for the sake of all future living beings, appears in Ta chih-tu lun c.2. T.25.66b ff. and receives fuller treatment in a work devoted to tracing the transmission of the dharma, Fu fo-fa yin-yuan chuan c.1 \^ itf? & SO Tn.2058, T.50.297ff, in 6c, tr. by Chi-chia- yeh and others in 472 A.D., see Bussho, 9.212. Both represent different narrative traditions and one or the other contains all elements of the tradition alluded to here and in the verse section which follows. 1 4. 524.3. jp- •^-.$|| ^ • Skt. Pippaliguha. A cave located near 66 the city of King's Dwelling ( J£_ Ra j agrha) which most accounts take to be the site of the First Council. Pippali is a kind of evergreen tree under which the Buddha achieved enlightenment, see Waku p.10. The tree is also associated with Kasyapa, whose nickname is pippali, since, according to some accounts, his parents prayed to the spirits of the pippai tree for his birth. See Oda p.1466a. 15. 524.3-4. According to the Ta-chih-tu lun, c.2, Kasyapa becomes aware that the Buddha has entered nirvana and that many of the arhats have followed after him. Fearing that the true dharma will be lost, he ascends Mt. Sumeru and, striking bells and other things, (see below) he proclaims a gatha enjoining all of the Buddha's disciples to repay the Buddha's kindness and not to enter nirvana. The sound and his voice carry through the infinite worlds and all assemble for what becomes the First Council. 524.3. t^-$fe_-%i£_ • Ta-chih-tu lun, T. 25.67c gives, with variants, 33g.fj£ Ching-lu yi-hsiang $g jfljfi , T.53.65a in its account based on the former source givesN <£L )• 1 emend on the basis of these readings. according to Daikanwa 2008.9, transliterates the Skt. ghant;a, and according to a Sung dynasty work Shih-shih yao- lan ft; ^ ^ cited there, refers to any number of objects made of wood, stone, or metal which are struck to summon an assembly. 16. 524.4. ^ M. . This seat is referred to in other accounts as the ^ /]£ , or W^^r^^L • Emending on that basis. See for instance Fu fo-tsang yin-yuan chuan T.50.300a. . The thirty-two marks of a Buddha or one destined for Buddhahood. See Luk, p.155, for a list of them. Also Hurvitz, p.50. 1 7 . 524 . 4. /V-f 3&$£. . Usually called the Eight Kinds of the Good /K.-Y or, iffi jfy these are the eighty fine features of a Buddha or Bodhisattva. See Mochizuki 5.4212 A ff. The mention of these and of the thirty-two marks above indicate that Ananda had achieved enlightenment. By all accounts, Ananda was the only one of the one thousand gathered who had not yet exhausted his outflow and attained arhatship. But having served the Buddha for twenty-five years as his personal attendant, he had "heard the most" j£ fiQ. He is rebuked by Kasyapa for his sins, made to confess them and banished from the assembly until he achieves 67 enlightenment. This he strives for mightily but cannot achieve. However, exhausted from his efforts, he is suddenly enlightened just before his head rests upon his pillow. He returns to the assembly, in a celebrated episode, through the keyhole and proceeds to recount all of the Buddha's teachings, the sutras. His retelling is so accurate (even of those which he had not personally heard, which the Ta chih-tu lun account has explained by Ananda saying he heard of the Buddha's first teachings, T.25.69b, while the Fu fo-tsang yin-yuan chuan has him speak the resounding words, "thus have I heard", from the outset, ignoring the objection which arises in the "challenge" of 523.14 and 524.8) that the others marvel at it, in FFT T.50.300a-b, proclaiming tearful gathas in memory of their master, now gone, and in TCTL, rising high into space upon hearing the Buddha's words recounted so faithfully. 18. Again, they were puzzled and filled with doubts when Ananda ascended to the master's dharma-seat and evinced the signs of enlightenment. All this was resolved when they heard the words "I heard". Kui Chi (Tz'u-en) JJJL C}%%L ) in his A-mi-t'o ching t'ung-tsan-shu (cited in the first section) has an interesting interpretation. He notes that Ananda was said to have shown the physical marks of a true Buddha upon ascending and returned to his original form upon descending. This led, he says, the arhats to have three suspicions ' that the Buddha had returned from Nirvana to preach again, or that another Buddha had come from somewhere else, or that Ananda had become a Buddha. The words "Thus have I heard", indicating that these are the teachings Ananda heard personally from the Buddha ( #£4N^M# M. f Pfl )/ dispel those suspicions. See T.37.3321. It is quite likely that our preacher made use of these passages by Kui Chi to formulate this section as well. 524.5. "ffcfTift %L ' Tne use of preceding a direct object occurs throughout the text and is especially prominent in this section. See instances in 525.1. 19. 524.5. $Q ' 20. 524.5-6. ^^J^.^^J>^ . The words are extremely colloquial. The is of course the same as the modern Mandarin interrogative. Such wording is typical of this rewritten section, whose language is more gracefully colloquial than the preceding 'rough draft' and seems better suited for verbatim recitation to an audience. 68 21 - The three parts of the tripitaka are variously attributed to compilers at the First Council. The Ta-chih-tu lun has Ananda compiling both the sutras and the discourses, (T.25.69c; Ching-lu yi-hsiang T.53 .65a concurs) and Upali yJ^L^. the codes. Fo-fa-tsang yin-yuan chuan differs, attributing the discourses to Kasyapa (T.50.300b). 22. 524.6. ^^ir . MS has ^ as seen in 524.7. as well. 23. 524.6-7. The Mount of the Eagle sermon is a reference to the Lotus Sutra. The reference to Jeta woods is a mistake by the writer who means the Deer Park ^ where Buddha first preached the doctrine of the Four Noble Truths after his enlightenment. See verse section, 527.4-528.3 below and the notes to that section. The prose exposition from 524.3-524.8 (up to the 'challenge') follows the order and reflects the content of the verse section which follows. This material is totally absent from the earlier draft (523.14-524.2). I think it quite possible that the preacher was using what may have been a pre-existent verse section (i.e. 525.3-529.7) as an outline for this material that has been incorporated into this rewritten prose exposition. 24. 524.7-8. ~~ (J|) 3[ • Lit. 'once [it] passed through his organ of hearing ..." 25 . 524.8. The words ^-K'J , "now", assume the time frame of the First Council where Ananda proclaimed the riveting words, "Thus have I heard", and they also serve to reinforce the ritual identification with the First Council as the preacher(s) conduct the same kind of transmission of true scripture for the congregation. This ritual identification is stressed in the verse section which follows. 26. See note 2 above. 27. 524.9. % -3- . One would expect 1^"^ as in 523.1 5 above. This text shows in the lines that follow, an identification of the time that Ananda first left home to follow the Buddha with the time when he came to serve the Buddha as his personal attendant. Extant traditional accounts have these as separate occasions. See the next note, on Pao-en ching. 28. 524.1 1 . -fll^Zt . The account of Ananda's conversion and subsequent service as the Buddha's attendant are not, except for the story of the 'three wishes', in the present seven c. version of this sutra. There was a sutra, now 69 lost, of the same name in the two c. (Bussho 10.131d) which appears in the Sul> period catalog Chung-ching lu ( ^ |& as a 'false sutra' (T. 55.1 271 ). While the contents of that sutra cannot be known, if the writer of the present text is in fact correctly paraphrasing its contents, it involves, at least in part, the retelling of a version of the Ananda legend. My suspicion is that parts of the 'false sutra1 have been incorporated into the present 7c. version, especially in c.5 and 6 where the style and sense become choppy and discontinuous. The 'wishes' or Ananda's 'terms of employment' appear in the present version of the sutra, c.6 (T.3. 144c), and there are actually four of them, although they are not enumerated as such. They are brought forward as one response to a question whose thrust is identical with that of our preacher's: how can Ananda say "I heard" when in fact he didn't hear the first twenty years of Buddha's teachings? The first two wishes match the traditional accounts (see n.3 above and T.1.472c, T.12.601b) at least insofar as they concern Ananda's clothing and food (MS rendering of the second wish is totally different in meaning from Pao-en- ching's (PEC) however). The third wish in PEC, though garbled, has to do with the timing of Ananda's audiences with the Buddha and generally matches the traditional versions. MS skips this wish and gives, as does PEC for the fourth and final wish, the request that Buddha repeat all the prior teachings. PEC's version arose in response to an extremely this- wordly and logical objection, which our preacher also addresses. The answer is also quite this-wordly and logical. The preacher here abandons the alternative explanation found earlier, (524.1), spontaneous understand• ing of all past Buddha dharmas and forgoes the expedient, which PEC mentions, as does Ta chih-tu lun, n.17 above, that Ananda heard those teachings from other disciples. This latter would distract from the focus on Ananda1s person, while the spontaneous understanding argument was probably dropped as being unnecessarily metaphysical. The account which follows differs vastly from the extant versions, where Ananda's entry into the Buddha's service is totally distinct from his conversion, (which occurs in the Buddha's home village of Anupiya with six others). See Mi-sha-sai-pu ho-hsi wu-f en-lu ^ %u ygjjf^ jg_ T. 22 .1 6c-1 7b) . His entry into service involves Maudgalyayana (Mu-lien) £j iH, as a go-between. Our preacher's version is streamlined to focus on Ananda, and is most likely a sort of shorthand reference to a legend well known to the audience, but lost to us now. 70 The description of Buddha's visits to the palaces of the mighty, seeking their conversion resembles the last sections of MS and is reminiscent of the well-known story of Nanda's conversion, also the subject of popularization, PWC p.395-404. Such descriptions are probably a formulaic aspect of popular tales about disciples who came from high social standing. 29. MS also has ^ which seem to be an error, perhaps for^j;. Alternatively, a verb meaning to look or examine may have been intended. 30. 524.1 3. f.% Vrf . PWC transcribes MS accurately enough here (524.13). The character is unintelligible, but the suggested emendations are of little help. I emend provisionally to "l*^-^^. • 31. 524.13. jfo. is usually rendered "to take refuge in the Buddha". See Mochizuki, p.495. 32. 524.1 4. MS has^£. 33. 524.1 4. ^ ^Oda, p.1005, defines as the first in the four steps of the sravaka 'voice-hearer' vehicle. Usually translated as "preliminary current" -ffi^. 34. 524. 15. *^ Hsu, pu cheng, p.39, suspects that the context requires . ^ is clear in MS and fits the context. 524.15. Here the writer in the next phrase uses the term nan instead of the usual wenp^ . 35 . 524.1 6 . I read 3^ UgL ^ ^ SJt*^" % . The sense of the passage requires an adversative which has been omitted. I would insert^ before (^.T^^-i^. 36. 525.1. The original is expressed in the third person. The writer, fearing perhaps that his listeners may not follow or be convinced by his exposition, enjoins them to simply plant the roots of faith, that from which all else grows. The preacher's comments here are similar to his protestations in 517.10. These seem not to be formal, humble utterances. Rather they seem to reflect the preacher's real exasperation and sense of his own deficiencies in the realm of textual exegesis. 37 . 525.5. **f) WM- The use of here and elsewhere appears to mark a transitive verb rather than reflexivity. 71 38. 525.7. -^faii • Taking as jfc . 39. 525.10. ^.^l/s^ . ^v/ is used here as a preposition meaning 'for'. For occurrences with a variety of verbs where marks the indirect object, see Chang, p.303-305. 40. 525. 10. ii^PL . The initial & seems to be in error. I have followed 525.14, taking this as ^ and rendering 'thus1. 41. See Fu fo-tsang yin-yuan chuan, T50.300a-b. Since Ananda recalls the sutras with such vivid precision, the arhats, upon hearing him, all recall the Buddha and rise into the air, chanting tearful laments over all that is of this world which flourishes, declines and is gone: The Thus Come One grandly masterful and bold Whose achievements and virtues surpass the Triple Realm Is yet just like the wind of impermanence Buoyed up, flowing on and abiding not. fa vh 4 Kasyapa then asks if what Ananda has said is accurate. They answer, "No different from what the World-Honored One spoke." ?%i$>rr%-^$$i%up, $l-yrr-$& (T.50.300b.) 42. 525.13. This stanza is problematical because of its shifting elliptical subject. In the preceding couplet I take Ananda as the subject. However I think that here the subject is the Buddha's teachings. The Three Vehicles 5- are the three conveyances or paths to enlightenment as, respectively, arhat, pratyeka buddha, or bodhisattva. For a brief discussion of this doctrine and its place in Mahayana see Hurvitz, xviii-xx. Also Oda 638.2. 3z.should read Jz- >f£ . The Five Natures schematicize all living beings' varying innate potential for enlightenment in a set of categories and sub-categories. Of. Oda 531.1. The Eight Difficult Conditions are those in which a living being has difficulty coming to know the Buddha- dharma. See Oda 1412.2. Luk, p.144, gives seven of these, omitting the first, those who are reborn in the hellish purgatories ^3t£. 43. 525.14. This line also defies an easy reading. in 524.9 has the r7JT> 7f> ffi- sense of 'facts' or 'circumstances'. I f ke it here as 'things' or, in context, 'teachings', a noun 72 modified by the preceding four characters. The phrase might however mean that the teachings were in fact transmitted 'without a doubt' to the later ages. For graphic instances of ^ as 'false' see Sou-shen chi tft^lft' PWC 874 -7-8- Also tne compound jj& in 518.14 and 524.10. Kui Chi's A-mi-t'o ching shu, Tn. 1757, T37.313b-c, explaining why Buddha had Ananda repeat the A- mi-t'o sutra has a phrase strikingly similar in wording and sense to 524.1 4: fe£ % ^ j$ ^If ^ ^ %L • 44. 525. 15. Following PWC emendation to"f%. 45. 526.1 . '^j ^ . An inversion of the usual compound ^\f*5^7. The word means to order or charge, entrust with a task, fij^ ^j, Skt. Sravaka, translated into Chinese as 'voice- hearer', is one who harkens to the voice of the Buddha, that is, a disciple. See Oda 792b. 46. 526.3. . MS has . This means he listened dispassionately. This resembles the admonition given the congregation in 519.6. 47. 526.4. % is, of course, 7c.- • The two graphs are constantly interchanged in MS. 48. 526.5. 1$fic. is a compound neither glossed nor noted anywhere I have looked. In context I've taken it as 'distractions', lit. as 'pointings and dependencies', i.e. he paid full attention to the tasks or things at hand, without a thought of things indicated by (^jjj) or based upon them. This explanation is provisional. Perhaps 'stopping' (-> _LL ) and leaning' is meant. 49. An identical shift from ts'e to p'ing with a parallel shift in the diction of the refrain >1f v*/. ^ j^f occurs in the next section's verse as well (530.5-533.4). 50. 526.9 IS! ^ is a compound, used frequently in this MS, meaning laggardly or sluggish. See Chiang, p.122 and Daikanwa 4693.46. 526.10. is frequently met with in these texts; it simply means 'today1. 51. 525.11. This line marks the torn, jagged end of MS fragment no.8. The next line begins, also jaggedly, fragment no.5. The rhyme and refrain are the same on both sides of the tear. Judging from the contents of 526.12-13, one or more stanzas recalling events in Ananda's service to Buddha 73 leading up to the Buddha's nirvana and the Council have been lost. 52. 525.1 2. -T^I] judging from the dictionaries, is a faulty- transliteration of Skt. Papima or Papiyas, meaning 'evil one' or 'murderer'. It is a common epithet for Mara. See Oda 1396.3. The reference here is perphaps to the episode found in the Ch' ang a-han ching, 2 , yu-hsing ching -J^ |5i?f ^ ^Ltt^t (T. 1 .1 5a-1 6b) when Buddha is left alone with Ananda, outside of Vaisali, having dispersed all his other followers due to an impending famine. The Buddha takes gravely ill but indicates to Ananda three times that, should Ananda wish it, the Buddha could remain in this world for a kalpa or more. Ananda, his mind beclouded by demons, does not respond and leaves the Buddha without imploring him to stay longer on this earth. The demon, po-hsun then argues with the Buddha, who finally indicates he will enter extinction in three month's time. This is one of the sins for which Kasyapa rebukes Ananda at the time of the Council. Ananda answers that demons clouded his mind. See Ta chih-tu-lun 2, T.25.67a-b. 53. 526.12. MS torn here. 54. 526.1 3 . 1=)^$? . The character which PWC transcribes as is unclear in MS, looking something like . I have taken it, provisionally, as & . I read #ij as^ij . Without a clear context one cannot be sure, but this may be a reference to the story that when Buddha was about to enter nirvana he personally told Ananda, in response to his question, that all sutras should begin with the words "Thus have I heard." See Ta-chih-tu-lun, 2, T.25.66b-67a. 55. 525. 1 6. Taking-^ as j|* . 56. By perpetuating Buddha's teachings for the sake of all future living beings. 526.2. ljJj|- £j . MS has ®f see 520.8 above. 57. 527.3. The verse changes to five-syllable lines here, with a new refrain line. re^ers to something which is considered valuable, or treasured. It comes to be a common expression of leave- taking among monks, its sense being "take care of yourself" see Daikanwa.2 09 20.98. 74 height of normal men, who in India were said to be eight ch'ih (10 ch'ih = 1 chang). This expression becomes synonymous with "sculpture of the Buddha", which were often larger than life. See Daikanwa, 11.48. 58 . 527.5. $£-4f . MS has -J-^-Mx . latter perhaps •!&• Tresses wound upon the head in the shape of a conch shell. See Oda 1778.1 . 59 . 527 .6. • MS has . 60. 527.7. This is most likely a reference to the Lotus Sutra. The next three stanzas also refer to particular sutras. The "I" of the refrain is of course Ananda. 61 . 527.9. J|kS seems an error for (3^-), perhaps picked up by copyist from 527.12. _|^-^ , lit. 'elder', usually renders Skt. grhapati, 'master of a household', see Luk, p.5 n.2. However it is frequently used to mean those with power or position and is explicitly explained as such in 553.4. 62. 527.10. I cannot find a special term, either literary or Buddhist. It seems to indicate the vast luxury and richness of their worldly possessions, though perhaps it is understood as something like the Triple Realm 2. . ^ , lit. 'the six [types of] dust1. See Oda 1 838.2. 63. This is a reference to the very sutra being expounded, the Vimalakirti sutra. 64. 527.12. ^ ~% ^ That is to say, of the Western Paradise 2L • e master of teaching and transformation (conversion), the Buddha. See Oda 392.1. See also 544.14 where this term parallels . 65. 527.1 3. lU, J&. - A shorthand description of splendid places or pure lands. The Pao-en-ching , c.1, for example, uses the phrase, 'Pure gold is made into tethers to make boundaries beside the roads' wC 4L1£'J in descriptions of Buddha-lands of the four directions. T.3.124c, 125b, 126a, 126c. Bejewelled and precious render the same word . 66. 527.15. Refers to the Amita sutra. 67. 527.3. This refers, I believe, to the first sutra that the 75 Buddha preached after his enlightenment. Seeking those ready to grasp his teachings, from under the bodhi tree he uses his ' deva vision1 to locate five ascetics who aided him during his long struggle toward enlightenment. He travels to join them in the Deer Park where he preaches the Four Noble Truths for them, thus converting them. See Fo- pen-hsing-chi ching ^^-^%^§: Tn- 190' c-33 and c.34, Chuan miao-f a-lun p' in a & b f||-#y- ^f^a k 1^ T- 3 • 807c- 811c. The Four Noble Truths are expounded in T.3.811 b&c. The Buddha stresses that he realized these truths in the midst of dharma, and did not hear them from someone else, which is interesting to note in light of the discussion concerning "I heard" here. Ml $${%kr%% ~A * % ®k 528.1 . \2J-gt\S ( \r3-%^). The Four Noble Truths are the existence of suffering 2jjr , the multiplication of suffering suffering's extinctions/^ and the way thereto \|[_. See Oda 723.3, Dayal 156-164. 68. 528.4. On the sakra and asura below, see the next section. 69. Whether this and the stanzas which follow are references to particular sutras I do not know. They represent, however, a broad sweep through the cosmos indicating not only the utmost power and penetration of the Buddha and his teachings but also stressing Ananda's devotion and constant attentive presence. They anticipate the next section as well by mentioning some of the eight classes of beings • The "six virtues that lead beyond" are the six paramitas, properly the six perfections. The Chinese translators understood the term to mean crossing or transcendence. I have tried to convey both senses. See Dayal, p.165-269 for an extended and enlightening discussion. 528.6. The expressions in parentheses correspond to and which are examples of ch' en tzu ^^Jj£ , extrametrical 'filler' words. 70. 528.9. -^ii. i^- . Takeri as a description of the Buddha's disposition and, by extension, the means of subduing them. See 533.11 for a similar, more explicit passage. (note: MS reads j|. ^izJ^- at 533. 1 1 , as is noted below). 71. 528 .1 2 . *f<. . MS has^L^<. usage here is similar to that of 525.5. 72. 528.16 . Taking |^ as i^fj . Or, unemended, as circling aimlessly in the hells. 76 73. 529.3. ^ fr\ The purgatories. 74. 529.4. Here the rhyme shifts to one ending in -ai, characteristic of the end of every verse section in this genre, which always end with the formulaic ch'ang-chiang-lai m £ • . Jt'J'^i ' T*le first ^s a variant form of 77 SECTION III At one time they all arrived The sutra says "at one time".1 To say "one time" singles out and distinguishes [that time] from other times, therefore [the sutra] says "at one time". There is another interpretation which says that speaker and listeners meet each other2 and that there is no before and no after beyond that; the breath and the peck occur at the same moment.3 Therefore [the sutra] says: "at one time". The sutra says: "at one time". Then our Buddha was within the city of Vaisali in the Amra park and was about to further the gate of expedient means, about to open forth his Compassionate Vow. Because he [wished] to rescue those born of the four Births [from] their burning anguish and he sorely pitied the sentient beings of the Three Realms, he would expound the dharma and ferry over (save) in vast numbers those who, by their karma, were ready,4 bestowing benefit without consideration of high or low. On that day the earth rocked in six convulsions, the heavens rained down the four flowers. All the holy ones and worthies from the ten directions arrived and the eight kinds of dragons and spirit beings all came. Then humans and devas were gleaming brightly, the assembled holy ones all abuzz. Clothing in colors bold and fresh were 78 spread, billowed in mid-air. Upon the ground the seven types of precious jewels lay arranged. Sakra gods and Brahma Kings lifted a jade lectern before the Master's seat. Dragon Kings and yaksas held precious banners on all four sides of the World-Honored One. Each and every one had taken leave of their Heaven-realms, and at one time all had arrived at Amra park. Conch-shaped cymbals struck in crashing, clashing sounds; music played, a resounding cacophony of strains. And further were the asura and all the rest playing the sweeping tones, the tingling echo of their p'i-p'as. And the Kinnara Kings, pounding out the driving bellowing beat of their northern drums.6 The gandharva piped sublime strains among the clouds and the Garuda Kings set flute refrains moving through the sky. They all had come to hear the dharma; every one of them wished to culminate their long-prepared causation. They circled round the deep gold form and made obeisance to the visage of pure gold.8 All lit camphor incense and burned fragrant sandalwood.9 Respectful reverent ones were there, a million times ten thousand more; a thousand, ten, a million fold voiced cries of exaltation. At any time they all arrived at the Amra park assembly. Casting their eyes upon the Great Holiness rarely met, they waited for the Thus Come One to expound the dharma. And even beyond this were so many arhats and holy men beyond number all come to the gathering's midst, all approaching the 79 dharma assembly. Their spirits calm, refreshed and bright, in their bearing and appearance each of a singular splendor. Holding their 'five-mended' begging bowls they seek the alms of transformation in this land.1° Leaning upon their six-ringed staves,11 they roam freely through other realms. Their three holy garments 12 set them apart and beyond; they blend with cloud 1 3 vapors which trail behind them. [Replete in] the Five Virtues they are beyond compare; meeting all with kindly reverence, they stand, waiting in unencumbered simplicity.14 Their bodies have parted decisively from impure stain; these were the bodies of 1 5 appearance only. When they took their enlightened actions, these were actions which had taken leave of the dust of defilement. They had realized the Three Clarities,16 and perfected the Eight Liberating Meditations.17 Thereby they had taken leave of the saha world and were not submerged, buried in birth and death. At the start of the Buddha assembly, when the speaking of sutra was about to begin, with no before and no after they rushed to the gathering; all in a single moment they headed for the assembly. Like a hen close upon its egg: breath and peck at the same instant.18 Therefore the sutra says "at one time." The dragons and devas upon that day their bearing awe- inspiring Drawn up in ranks19, with all their powers they truly are appealing The sakras hurry in a rush to put on their bejewelled 80 vestments Immortal youths do one and all depart the palace precincts Knowing from afar our Buddha would expound true sutra Each radiates their feelings so sincere and comes to pay obeisance All dispersing flowers fine in the middle of the sky At one time they all arrived at the Amra park assembly And there as well the Brahma Kings Their appearance lofty, greatly self-possessed All of them had left behind their wondrous bejewelled palaces Each one gone for just a while to the saha realm All holding fruits and flowers which display a mighty glow All endowed with spirit-power20 that have no block or hindrance Apprehending Buddha soon would speak a Mahayana sutra At one time they all arrived at the Amra park assembly. The asura, ones of a special sort Overturning oceans, shifting mountains, their merit-strength is great Living high atop Sumeru, their merit-fortune21 powerful Propping up the sun and moon their overwhelming powers vast22 They could in their intentions show a reverence most pure23 But in their mind-fields they raise up jealousy's disturbance24 Sensing from afar that day, dharma's meaning would unfold At one time they all arrived at the Amra park assembly. The gandharva too turned to the Buddha's way and in him found their refuge Their songs and music long remain as the mind's delight Always in the Buddha's presence they would play the pentatone To hear it is exactly like attaining true samadhi.25 Upon the p'i-p'a's strings were sounds of swallows in the spring And sticks upon the northern drums beat out rhythms of shattered jade Sensing from afar that day dharma's meaning would unfold At one time they all arrived at the Amra park assembly 81 Gathered devas, men as well, farther than the eye can see Each holding up a canopy toward the open sky The hundred jewels upon their hats attract a mist in hues well-boding Upon their clothing six jewels bright, a halo-swirl of colored light26 All setting out things strange and rare betokening27 their reverence All offering28 incense and flowers, expressing sincere deference Apprehending from afar that day [the Buddha] would soon speak sutra At one time they all arrived at the Amra park assembly By the hundreds, thousands, sakras, Brahmans, holy ones and worthies All of them29 their bearing so grand and dignified With one aspiration they cultivate their deeds and cut off the Four Flows30 The ensnaring net is severed as they cast away the Triple Realm Living in the mountains' midst, dwelling inside caves At times31 they sit in dhyana, at times chant songs of praise Knowing Buddha soon would speak a Mahayana sutra. At one time they all arrived at the Amra park assembly So long cultivating their causation and upholding prohibitions With poignant suffering they refined themselves32 but their minds did not turn back They have vowed to leave the cage of anguish33f the river of birth and death The wisdom34 they've so far attained is truly like the ocean They can hold the five-mend alms bowl and enter royal cities And can wield the six-ringed staff, [going] beyond [to] other realms35 Knowing Buddha soon would speak a Mahayana sutra At one time they all arrived at the Amra park assembly (p'ing)36 On that day the Thus Come One was about the speak the sutra Many holy ones and worthies knew of this beforehandJ 82 Rushing about up in the heavens to leave behind their pleasure and glee In vast numbers within the clouds they straighten their jewelled garments The sakra gods, their spirits deep, proud of their arrayed regalia The Brahma Kings their actions proper [?]38 show off their majestic bearing High and low they all arrived at the Amra park assembly Therefore does the sutra say "at one time" Dragons and spirits without limit spread throughout the four directions They played a hundred thousand kinds of music filling up the sky39 Because of the speed with which they rushed to meet the holy ones and worthies One could only see heavenly dragons fly to the spot40 Within the clouds one only saw people crowded, overflowing41 [So dense were they] the sunlight's glare was not seen in the sky In an instant42 they all arrived at the Amra park assembly Therefore does the sutra say "at one time" Arhats bustled, rushed about to reflect a changed appearance They dropped the darning needle and the down that would patch their heavenly43 clothes In that split second were afraid that the journey would be long Suddenly suspected that their rush there might be late So upon their bodies strips of clouds were put to use as cloaks On their faces two44 puffs of snow served them as eyebrows With their superhuman powers all arrived at Amra park Therefore does the sutra say "at one time" A hundred thousand gathered holy ones abustle and abuzz Every one both body and mind showed reverent resolve As fast as thought they all did come crowding round the jewelled seat All of them desiring to pay the Gold Immortal hommage Within the clouds one only saw flowers of the heavens descend Inside the clouds one could only scent the fragrance of camphor smoke 83 In but the time a finger snaps At one time they all arrived before the Dharma King Be they sacred or mundane, in motion from afar All toward Amra park to the dharma assembly's ranks With all their hearts they all wished to be moistened by dharma rain In every thought they hoped only to be shaken by spring thunder Respectful, reverent each and all cried out, "this is most rare" Palms joined in fervent anticipation, they sang out praise, "most fine!" On that day at one time all headed for that gathering At what place46 the Buddha spoke, next we will chant out.47 84 Notes to Section III 529.8. • MS has^vfg7 |sfr, following, should read 2. 529.8. . MS has^^Q . 3. 529.8-9. V$ (x^) »|c l£] ^ . This refers to the sound of a chick breathing inside its shell, ready to hatch, occurring simultaneously with the sound of the mother hen pecking upon the shell to release the chick. See Daikanwa 2816.3, Oda 1088.1 . The simile is to the moment, all conditions being ripe, when a seeker of knowledge, aided by a teacher, suddenly experiences enlightenment. 4. 529. 1 1 . 3^1 J$L_~fy . In other words those whose karmic conditions were ripe; inclined by past action, thought and intention to enlightenment. See Oda 100.1. 5. 529.1 3-1 4. -2- . ••• Ful1 stoP should come after . See Hsii, p_u cheng, p. 39. 529.1 4. . . Taking both as compounds the first element of which is verbal ("^J in the sense of $J^Jfy~ ), the second adverbial.]^ , Daikanwa 43973, the sound of wind, and jfe^, 44726, meaning jumbled or unsettled. 529.1 4. MS has fJL^Bfl. 529. 1 5. ... -|=F^r . This first, according to Mochizuki, p.1997, seems to correspond to Skt. suvarna, which Monier-Williams gives as "of a good or beautiful color, brilliant in hue, bright, golden, yellow." The origin of the word is unclear, although some commentators take it to mean the purest gold. See Oda 759.3 also. Here it refers to the color and brilliance of the Buddha's body. I have rendered 'deep gold' only to distinguish it from 'pure gold'-^"^ , to which it is parallel here and probably with which, in the minds of both preacher and audience, it was synonymous. 529.1 5. "^"ftmfltfc . MS hasf. has been mistakenly transposed and is not corrected in MS. It is the transliteration of Skt. candana, 1 sandalwood 1. 85 10. 530.1 . j& replacing the original sutra's term v$|^^£_ . Here, however, it is clearly used in the colloquial verbal sense. 1 1 . 530.2. J\ . This is the staff, adorned with six rings, which monks carry, allowing them to wander through any realm. Perhaps the six rings are related to the Six Paths of Existence . See Mu-lien pien-wen, PWC 732.13, where Mu-lien displays the twelve-ringed pewter staff given him by Buddha to open the gate to the hells. These two lines of parallel prose have their match in the verse of this section, 531.15. 12. 530.2. =^ • MS has £ %<_ . This refers to three types of clothing which members of the sangha wear. See Oda 604.3. 13 . 530 .2. 3 jif> • There are several different sets of virtuous conduct called the Five Virtues. Oda, 555.3, gives three, all of which pertain to monastic life, involving confession, care of the sick, and suitability to serve as a master of discipline. 1 4. 530.2. "\*$ . This is an unusual expression, which I suspect may involve a phonetic loan, or erroneous characters. I take ^ as 'simple, unadorned, plain'. , Daikanwa 496, means to stand unmoving for a long while, or to wait perhaps with anticipation. 1 5. 530.3. 5J"T fcfy ^\ • This phrase is somewhat confusing. I interpret j|J|. ^ , action based upon understanding (see Oda 430.2), as the object of the first^j- . 16. 530.3. ^1 . These are the first three of the Six Penetrations • They are knowledge of the transmigratory situation of oneself and others in the present and in the future, and the exhaustion of outflow, that is, the elimination of klesa, anguish. See Oda 665.2. 17. 530.3. /V . Fully the/V^^. Also known as the /\*% These are the eight categories of dhyana meditation by 86 which ties to the impurities of the Triple Realm are severed. See Oda 1413.1. 18. 530.4. rJteSfepff ty|*f ^ ^ Is] &{f- . This is a fuller statement of the phrase in 529.8-9, n.3 above. The simile appears as well in 554. 1 1 with the words ^ fy-jg . 1 9. 530.5. 1$$C.1S£_ . This compound appears also at 532.3 and 559. 1 4 (p£sC )• 20 . 530.1 1 . ^^f. . MS has • 21. 530.14. ^!Hx^ . The benefits acquired from the merit of good acts. Oda 1514.1. 22. 530.1 4. % 0 M . I am uncertain of the compound Jf-^t , however, my rendering tries to fit the context of extraordinary strength and power and one sense of . .^^t^MS has J^-frj? BpX • This is a common mistake in PWC transcription. "g^.^ refers to unfathomable authority and power, see Oda 1856.1. Iriya Yoshitaka ^\^.^ ^ / in his review of Chiang (Chugoku bungaku ho \% ifgj i.^--f^. , v.11, p. 1 79, 1 959) takes the meaning of in this line to be 1 malign'.,..'-s Chiang's gloss of great, extraordinary etc., pp.160-161, seems more appropriate here, although his reference to^-^ as an adjective is puzzling. Instances of at PWC 549. 1 4 and 550.14 reinforce a reading of breathtaking or awesome. 23. 530. 1 5. ^r\^ • I suspect this should read ^^ . 24. 530.1 5. . Should read^ . See emendation in Hsu, tsai-pu, p.118. 25. 531 .2. The pentatone "% refers to the five tones of traditional Chinese music. This couplet displays a "number parallelism" between JL-^J" and S even though the latter is a transliteration of the Skt. samadhi and has no connection to the number three. 26. 531 .6. '^C'TCi^ • Hsu, tsai pu, p.118 emends to ft. I emend to or4^. ' which better fits the context. This image appears to have been a conventional coupled image for this writer. See 550.4. 27 . 531 .7 . • MS has^. 28 . 531.7. ^"fej . MS has ^> ) . 87 29. 531 .9. J§>% . MS has ^ J/l ?). 30 . 531 . 1 0 . 027 -/fa . The four 'flows' which keep the sentient beings in the cycle of unsettled existences. The flows of vision J=J , desire J-j^ , being ^ and ignorance JS£ EJ^J . See Oda 858.3. 31 531.11. >^(lfjr . MS has^-p. 32 531 .13. (Mi- Hs{i' tsai pu, p.1 18 suggests that should read^, presumably accepting PWC emendation to^ . I read as^^ , the most direct emendation and the most logical in this context of the self-refinement of holy men. 33 . 531 . 1 4 . XQ-ftfi^ . Should read as is without emendation. This is the binding cage of klesa ^1 ^• See Oda 1 642.1 . 34 . 531 . 1 4 . J^*^ . MS reads-^^.. 35. See above n.11. 36. 532.1. Here as in previous sections the marginal annotation 3f- marks a shift in the tone of the rhymed syllables and, as noted in the section immediately preceding, a shift to the refrain ^^M^CXL "• 37. 532.1 . -J|L Jjj^ . Following Hsu's emendation (tsai pu, p. 11 8) tcf*^. 38. 532.3. This couplet is problematical. Trying to proceed on the basis of parallel grammar, I provisionally read ^-j" as 3^ (noun + adjective) with the sense 'their actions are reasoned/proper' . It might also be possible to read as hang, 'ranks', with as an abbreviation for"^_. This would violate parallelism, which does not admittedly always prevail in this text. 39. 532.5. Tjjfe ^ . MS reads ^ PJC . Considering the context and rhyme, I take the transposition mark as a mistake. 40 . 532.6. 5N IL Jy-^ftt £'J . In this MS ^tl is crossed out and /fc written in its place. However that seems to be a faulty correction on the part of a copyist or reader, occasioned perhaps by confusion with 5 32.15. I read T 41 . 532.7. . Should readP^J^-. This is an expression 88 frequently met with in PWC and particularly in this text, which means 'filled to the brim', 'crowded, choking, clogging'. Other occurrences in this text include 547.1 and 549.1. See Chiang, p.132. 42. 532.8. . On this usage see Chiang, p.137. 43. 532.9. )&%C • Emended to . 44. 532.1 1 . J> NW£ ^ • Again, I suspect this reads ^ . 45. 532.16. For the same expression, see 544.11. 46 . 533. 4.^^^7^-^11^. MS has T£ . 47. As stands, this would follow the order of the sutra. However, the preacher has already jumbled that order, giving the assembly's location above at 529.10, and basing this section on the spectacle of those present, except for the bodhisattvas. This also marks the end of MS fragment no.5, in which is found the entirety of this section. Section V which presents the same material in the sequence of the sutra, i.e. following the bodhisattvas section, is discontinuous. 89 SECTION IVA The Bodhisattvas s Helping Sakyamuni, they manifest bodily forms. 1 Dwelling in this saha world,2 they transform the various categories of beings. Known and recognized by the multitude in worlds as numerous as the river's sands3, through a billion ten thousands of lands their virtues echo, their names are heard.4 Their wisdom shines, outstanding5; their transcendent powers mighty.^ They make a wall [protecting] the gate of dharma and for the Buddha's sake cause [the dharma] to be protected and preserved. [They speak with] the lion's roar and heaven and earth ring; Q their names are heard afar and the ten directions [shake?]. Matching their efforts to the root receptabilities9 of the 1 0 (creatures of the) Four Births, they act to help them. As for the goodly field of the Three Jewels, they continue 11 it and do not cut it off. Everywhere they cause demons and enemies to bow their heads 1 3 in submission.12 They cause all [heterodox ways to submit]. The light of their minds, clear and pure, is no different from the moon's, [parted forever from] the defilement of worldly entanglements'! 4. Their minds ever secure and serene, they dwell in a state of 90 unhindered liberation. Their concentration of mind is always maintained, enabling their eloquence to be uninterrupted.10 Giving freely, they guide [those of] stingy and greedy views. Holding to discipline, they eliminate those who revile the prohibitions. Practicing forbearance, they remove every trace of craving and anger. In their ever-striving advance they forget laziness completely. In dhyana concentration their mind is one, with no disturbance. The forms seen by deluded and confused people are all eliminated. Their wisdom causes the ten thousand phenomena to be unmoving. They see clearly through the teachings of the unenlightened and ignorant. They cleverly extend expedient means, diligently acting upon their feelings of sympathy and compassion. They skillfully employ"! 7 placidity and harmony, leading forth those [possessed by] love and hate^8 They cause people to follow them on the road to transformation.19 Setting their minds to the task, they turn the wheel which does not turn back.20 91 They can judge the depth of phenomenal manifestations and 21 recognize the karmic strength of the living beings. They receive the sincere respect and adoration of the great multitude. They expound the dharma with fear completely absent from their breasts.22 In their wisdom how could they shrink in fear23 from conditioned phenomena?24 The virtues of merit are always cultivated in their minds.25 Their physical appearance [embodies] their unaltered beauty or ugliness; wherein should their bodily forms partake of adornment?26 The vast distances over which their names are proclaimed are 2 7 like unto the towering vastness of Mt. Sumeru. Their mind of faith does not turn back; strong and firm, it is like the diamond. Their dharma-jewel enriches with life- giving moisture. In the benefit it confers how does it differ 2 8 from sweet dew? Their words are soft and pliant. Of great subtlety, they are correct and true. Entering deeply into conditioned phenomena, they have taken 2 9 leave of all false views. Finding a home in the single path of bodhi, they have cut themselves free of false duality.30 Their exposition of dharma is like the sound of the lion's 92 roar. Their discourses are like the shaking echo of spring thunder.31 In teaching and transforming they consider the relative ability to understand of those who listen and adjust [their efforts] to the depth of their listeners' karmic capacities.32 Gathering the multitude of jewels they skillfully manage the dharma gate. In this they are like pilots who know well the ocean routes. Those precious jewels [which are there], the pilots can succeed in getting them. So it is with the sublime and subtle principles [of dharma]; the bodhisattvas understand them completely and truly.33 They see the comings and goings of the living beings through birth and death, and enter the Evil Paths of Asura [?] and the hellish purgatories.34 The differences among the minds of men who dwell in all of the worlds as numerous as the river's sand, all this they know entirely in a single thought. In the jagged roughness resulting from the billions of instances of inner turmoil, in number vast as the river's dust, they can discern the 3 S most minute differences. Although the gates and windows of the Evil-tending Ways are forever shut [to them] and the road to Bodhi is not far, yet still are their transformed appearances [in this world] beyond exhaustion and their working of wonders of rare measure.36 They can shake up the Yangtze and make it into thickly curdled milk37, 93 in but a moment's time! They can change the great earth into pure gold, all in just an instant! They make 38 mountains of meat with fish and rice to save the starving beings. They can lift up Mt. Sumeru in the palms of their hands39 and suck the great oceans into [the space of] a hair.40 They manifest41 clouds of compassion which spread to cover the Triple Realm. Bestowing their benefits they save the creatures of the Four Births in great numbers. Limitless wisdom is complete in them. They have understood entirely all the majestic bearings of the Buddhas.42 Well do they distinguish the principles of the Three Vehicles. Skillfully do they set out the gate of the Six Deliverances. Their necklaces of jewels click and chime; their headwear glitters, glows. Majestically adorned in purity like the lotus flower which blooms in an azure pool. Gleaming spotless, shining full like the moon placed in a clear night's sky. And with this merit-conduct, all wishing to advance their cultivation, in great number they appeared, thirty-two thousand of them, all in the assembly at Amra Park. To bodhisattvas, a multitude, with their penetrating 43 powers J Gathered there in all thirty two thousand Their majestic glow of so many different types Their auspicious bearing multiplied a hundred thousand times4- • . 44 From their necks and shoulders hang necklaces of jewels Precious stones and gems vie upon their crowns Each and every mind hopes to hear and to receive 94 Upon that day they did arrive at the Amra park All known to the multitude From Manjusri to Universal Excellence45 Their spirit powers refined, replete Merit-virtue full round, complete46 They suck gigantic oceans into a hairbreadth's space And Mt. Sumeru rests securely in their palms Such is the greatness of their merit-strength Upon that day they did arrive at the Amra park Walking [?] every where in this shifting world[?] With ease can make it [?] all of gold47 When meeting the catastrophe of famine They create mountains of rice and fish With understanding cleave the principles of the Three Vehicles They can open up the barriers to the Six Perfections Such is the strength of their merit-acts Upon that day they did arrive at the Amra park. Transforming things they enter each and every gate Their fame spreads far beyond the farthest far-off place They regulate the heterodox ways And subdue the demon enemies into compliance48 They can clarify and purify the mirror of their knowledge The jewel of their minds has take leave of worldly bonds49 Such is the fullness of their merit-acts Upon that day they did arrive at the Amra park Within the Triple Realm nothing grasps or binds them Through the ten directions they go and then return They are like clouds, how can they be obstructed Like the sun, they have no covering hindrance51-1 Shining clear: the moon amidst the waves Stainless, purified: a lotus on the water So numerous their merit-acts complete Upon that day they did arrive at the Amra park51 Causing the intentions of the living beings to follow Their minds of compassion fill the chiliocosm52 Among the many evil manifestations of the common run They can discern the karmic roots of each 95 In discipline and concentration, with each thought advancing Minds which uphold bodhi in every moment of thought Such is the fullness of their merit-strength Upon that day, they did arrive at the Amra park Their knowledge and understanding is of a unique sort53 What they cultivate and hold to is all a single type Their magnificent adornments all aglow with light Their excellent physical marks surpassing men's and gods' Listening to dharma near the golden platform Having passed through the forest of jewels54 Such is the fullness of their merit-acts Upon that day they did arrive at the Amra park Scattering always the sweet dew They can dissipate burning turmoil's searing heat With the strength of the diamond, firm, unyielding They smash to pieces all false views55 Everywhere56 they preach the Middle Way And at all times 57 root out duality Such is the fullness of their merits-acts Upon that day they did arrive at the Amra park Leading on with no excuses born of fear Never taking sides between the great or lowly They defeat the demons with the lion's roar And preach with the roll of thunder and lightning With a thousand powers their merits reach completion In the Three Vehicles, they've total mastery Such is the fullness of the merit-acts Upon that day they did arrive at the Amra park They can rain down all of dharma's treasure If men should seek, they wish to ease the way Long knowing well the dark ocean's byways They have reached the seven treasures' shoals58 Feeling sharp distress for those caught in the hells Intent only on rescuing from woe those in this floating life59 Such is the fullness of their merit-acts Upon that day they did arrive at the Amra park 96 On that day in the Amra park assembly The assembled saints and worthies, high and low Were like flowers gathered in the sky Like brocade 60 All pressing to behold the seat with a thousand precious things adorned With their fingers holding down their seven-jewelled crowns61 Their jewels and gems all ring, a chiming, jingling sound Jade girdles echo forth, their tingling note resounds62 Some holding crystal vessels Some raising amber plates With ivory showing reverent resolve 63 97 Notes to Section IVA 1 . 533.6. This translation starts with £|3 &o £ ^£ 45JL Jj . The torn beginning of this MS fragment no. 1 begins with a note on how much of the sutra is to be covered in this section (533.5. 7$ j£ £L\ •••) However the text is unintelligible and discontinuous until the phrase noted above. I suspect ^L^s should read $Q . Following Hsu, p_u cheng, p. 39, taking as . 2. 533. 6 . ^fi . Emending ^ to ji. . MS reads v^L . 3. 533.6. 7*] -// - This expression indicates an incalculably large number. It is an abbreviated form of 4. This paragraph seems to be the tail end of the preacher's general explanation of bodhisattvas, being a paraphrase and comment on the sutra's: %fe % % ^ ^ - ^ >?r Jfa ffj^ • 5. 533.7. This corresponds to sutra: j^Xg if- "3p£ 6. 533.7. This appears to be the preacher's careless reading of the sCtra's 3$ ^ ^ £ • 7. 533 . 7. Corresponds to sutra: • % & • 8. 533.7-8. Corresponds to sutra: ftjr, ^ ^ s-3/L . ^ r^J -f *3T -j- • The final character is a mistake. I suspect, from context, that a word such as |^or was intended. 9. 533.8. On the term ^ see Oda 497.a. 10. The term is an unusual one. I take it to mean 'acting to extend benefits to others'. See PWC 382.9,11 for other instances. This appears to be the preacher's interpretation of the sutra's •^^/f'vjif t $t ^Z- > although it does not seem quite apposite. 1 1 . 533.8. ^DDifc- The two unintelligible characters appear to be (only the right-side of the first remains in MS), which is confirmed by comparison with sutra: ^'jjf # 1£ • The lacunae in 533.5-1 0 are the result or tears at top and bottom of MS. 98 12. 533.8. Corresponds to sutra MS has a common phonetic loan for^&%. PWC emendation toJg^ is incorrect. 13. Corresponds to sutra Reconstructed on that basis. See also the corresponding line in the verse section following, 535.4, fffj-J. *| y\^_. 14. 533.8-9. These two lines, incomplete at beginning and end, pose problems. Judging from MS there may be five characters missing before iC?^?^. If so, one of them would belong to the clause at hand. *i^^in the next clause should be transposed. It appears correctly in the verse counterpart, 533.5. The term is a shorthand reference to two numerical categories, the five 'covers' j£ and the ten ' bonds' -f\&|t. , for which see Oda 513.3 and 926.3 respectively. Taken together, they are a blanket reference to the causes of anguish. This passage corresponds to the sutra's fcL . ji 1 5. 533. 9. Corresponds to sutra's & ^ & *tk 8% RJL. 1 6. 533.9. -7$ should read . Sutra has simply £z%_*!§.3$jr %i\ ~% ||£fr • The preacher seems to read with a causative relationship between the first and second groups of four characters. 1 7. 533.1 1 . J|r% . MS reads ^| . 18. 533.9-11. The passage from n.16 to here, a list, with appropriate comment, of the six paramitas which are replete in the bodhisattvas, corresponds to the sutra's: ify . #|- 1 9. 533. 1 1 -1 2. & i irfL ftfc "Ik . I suspect i_ should read fa • Corresponds to sutra's £ HtL fttlJ'lR . The sutra preceding line ^ ^ ^£ ^ appears to have been skipped over, purposely or not, by the preacher. 20. 533. 1 2. Sutra has simply ^ . 21 . 533.12. Sutra's corresponding passage: ^ -^s Jj^c % *£• 22. 533. 1 2-1 3. ^ A |L • • - ^ |£ A • • • • I suspect ^ should read or •^•^T^- • The sutra reads: JT ^ ^ • &y%-%. • KumarajIva explains in his commentary that the first clause means that 99 they transcend the multitude. See Ting p.2a. 533.1 3. % |f ^M6&Jc. The character^ is unclear in the microfilm of MS and appears in the margin next to^J? . I read as . PWC emendation here is impossible to sustain. See for example 538.5 ?^ (*f^) ^ , an emendation which is borne out in Fu-mu en-chung chiang-ching-wen . PWC 681.9. This line serves as a comment upon the 'fearlessness' of the line above, while corresponding to the sutra's words noted in n.25. This paragraph corresponds to the sutra's yft VK i'^- 533.13. Condensing the sutra's meaning here. Sutra reads: 533.13-1 4. Sutra reads: & # & i£ $fj|| • 533.14. Passage should be punctuated with a full stop after ^ Efl'J . belongs to the next clause which should have a partial stop after ^ and none after -^j ^ , thus giving two parallel clauses of 4 + 7. Corresponding sutra passage: 5zV ^ ^ -J*?, i& ~& 533.14-15. These two paragraphs reflect the following emended punctuation: Partial stop after ^ , full afterji. jJL . Partial stop after 4& $c , full after ^p, , thus giving four phrases of 4. For another occurrence of j£. S$- see Pwc 553.9. A&^jjLis discussed in Section III n.10. SCitra reads: %. £ $t -*Jr ^ - • ^ 3#L*k , g*T IL * 533.1 5. (^Jr W IE if . MS has]^. This corresponds to sutra's 1§ -Xgs ^- ^ . The succeeding four characters ^ appear to have been skipped over. 553. 1 5. Corresponds to -;§| -A^t.^c , ^ *HJ . % t 533.15-16. These two lines, involving as they do the verb 3^-~§T , may have been prompted by the sutra's next lines "<§f' tL ^fL-"j§r " However since the sutra here refers to the transcendence beyond measure of the bodhisattvas, we might 1 00 best consider these two lines as a comment appended to the preceding lines in MS (n.31), showing, as they do, the bodhisattvas skill in applying expedient means in expounding dharma to teach and transform. These two lines, which incidentally exhibit faulty parallelism, express in a nutshell the central consideration involved in preaching, matching content and style to audience. On the term which appears also in 538.1 4, see Oda 497.1 . 33. 533.16. This passage, extending to the first two characters of 534.2, is unintelligible as punctuated in PWC. Through n.35 below I follow the emended punctuation of Hsu, tsai pu, p. 11 8-11 9 , reproduced below: f f «r ^ # ^ ?1 , 4* il a, - ^*«, -^M if- it-2 ** vfm, m; *j. The lines to n.33 correspond to the sutra's % >£ ^ • The ^wl.'fef • 3 :JL f^r ' T%.-*-*J~ z-^C • metaphor is reminiscent of the discussion in Section I at 517.12-13 (and 517.3) . 34. 534.1 . vf$L . The Evil Paths are usually three in number, £ ^ and refer to the "lower half" of the Six Paths 7; ijf_ , existence in the hells, as a hungry ghost, or as a beast f<£ , %. , ® %- • The inclusion of asura here is an>error. 35. 534.1-2. This and n.34 above correspond to the sutra's 534.1 . ^g, J|£ . Emending to ->5f . 36 . 534.2. These lines paraphrases the sense of the sutra's Vjr ft & P-b] • i i. i|L S|L4£-II ' without bogging down in details. With this, the preacher breaks away from line-by-line treatment of the sutra. What remains of this prose section are some fantastical examples of the bodhisattvas' powers, then, in 534.4-5, a brief passage covering the rest of the sutra's description of the bodhisattvas (f rom j-^fr M\%L to -to* A-~** XL. •) and, in 534.5, a stock description of their appearance. Significantly the sutra's passage is skipped over here. It becomes the thematic focus of the succeeding portion of MS. 101 37. 534.2.$fc . Properly ^^Lg^. This is a beverage made of condensed milk through repeated boiling and skimming. See Daikanwa 39835.12. Judging from a passage in Lu-shan yuan- kung hua j*J| ^ ^ 4- , PWC 178.14-15, this must have been either gelatinous or of a thick liquid consistency. 38 . 534.3. CI ^3 ^ • This character is almost certainly^ in MS. 39 . 534. 3. Mispunctuated in PWC. Following Hsii, p_u cheng, p. 39, this line should read: ^ d\ -f" tf7 is unclear in MS. Hsu's suggestion of-fsj is quite reasonable. 40. 534.3. This image derives from a passage in the sixth portion of the Vimalakirti sutra, pu-ssu-i p'in ^ ^ ga , Ting p.53a, "[the bodhisattva] can also take the waters of the four great oceans and put them into a single pore." 5£_ wC GE7 7^ /]<- X. —' 3-Li • Pore & has become simply hair ^ , just as the phrase at n.39 speaks of the hand, rather than the sutra's "mustard seed" ("he can put Sumeru's towering breadth into a mustard seed." VA. ^ $w y& v& ?K -ft- nt^r' 41 . 534.4. -^CH-^ . Taking as f| . 42. 534.4. . See Oda 1 855.2. 43. 534.7. This begins a section of five-syllable verse in the familiar double quatrain form with refrain. 44. 534.8. t? • • . On jEj* see Chiang, p. 33. I suspect the missing characters are 1^ . 45 . 534.1 1 . ^t" "^jf . Usual translation of Skt. Samantabhadra. In fact this bodhisattva does not figure in the Vimalakirti sutra. However Manjusri 5^ and P'u-hsien are conventionally paired and are probably mentioned here as representative bodhisattvas. See Oda 1517.1 and Mochizuki p.4405-4407, esp. 4406.2. 46. 534.12 . ^ % % gj . I suspect gj should read )fj . 1 02 47. 534.1 5. , -$[ & $ * . f is unclear in MS. MS has no transposition mark between 'jjj^. and z£. The preacher may in fact not be speaking of the saha world, but of a shifting world of flux. On xjf. 's various meanings see Daikanwa 6390.6. Note again that MS at 533.6 above has ^, not the reverse as in PWC transcription. The word transcribed as & looks like this in MS:^ . I am not convinced it is & but am at a loss to suggest alternatives. Translation based on prose parallel in 534.2- 48. 535.4. The emendation to Jfc makes no sense and, what's more, as Hsu, p_u cheng, p. 40, points out, violates the rhyme. See 533.8 and n.12 above. The verbs |j|J ^ and iJt&fy. are parallel in meaning. Uncommon as compounds, they appear to have been formed by splitting the common verb %^ \£i and adding words that mean to soften or make pliant. The latter character means to do so by boiling and is the same as to which Hsu, p_u cheng, p.40, emends, 49. 535.5. /u>N . emending to >e>N£^., parallelling-^!^. 50. 535.8. Following Hsu, p_u cheng, p.40 who suggests ^| (i.e. for the missing character. is frequently used as a synonym for , see Iriya index, 'mo'. 51. 535.10. & CJ • Q . MS has the three characters, replaced by the equivalent of ditto marks. They are, obviously, 5£iJ ^ 52. 535.11. Reading the first clause with a causativ3 e supplied. Compare 533. 1 1 -1 2: ^ 4 (rfa?) t& 4"fli 'lfl • •fcJX . The chillicosm. An abbreviated form of 21 ^f- ^ ^ ^_. See Oda, 643.2. 53. 535.1 5. j§: ^ife . Reading as^ . 54. 536.1 . x^^.l' - MS reads V (^iM^)- This verb compound also appears in 527.16. ^f:$£J"- Daikanwa 7376 .1 76 glosses as a metaphor for the vegetation in the Pure Lands. 542.8 uses as a descriptive metaphor for the bodhisattvas gathered in the assembly. 55. 536.4. The missing character is, without a doubt, , based on context and rhyme. 56 . 536.5. Taking the missing characters to be 7*5i , which occurs parallel to wjj ^ in this text at 519.4 and 526.8. 1 03 57. 536.5. has a strong temporal sense deriving from its basic meaning, 'in every case'. 58. 536.12. This harks back to the 'sea-pilot' metaphor, see 533.1 6. The word-^ , Daikanwa 18784, meaning a sandy island or shoal here, is also written y^p . 59. 536.13. >uv . MS reads ^ ^ . The word does not seem to be a technical Buddhist term. It is used in poetry of the T'ang with a sense of unsettled, shifting or fleeting. See Daikanwa 17487.161. 60. 536.16. MS torn. 61 . 537 .1 . MS consistently writes jjjb as f, but only here does PWC transcribe so. The word ^ is parallel and conveys a sense of urgency, not frequency here. 62. 537.2. Hsii, p_u cheng, p.40, suggests for the last two characters. 545.6, with a different rhyme, reads « 63. 537.4-5. The torn end of MS fragment no.1. 1 04 SECTION IVB The Bodhisattvas: Great Physician Kings Number Two: Parents of this world anxious over the illness of their children.1 (gatha): Among humans, parents' devoted love is of the deepest kind Concerned about their sons and daughters, never slow in their response How can they bear [their children's] illness with its tiring, stooping woes? How can they even speak of sickness and bring calamity upon themselves? When the medicine is not yet found nor a cure achieved The moaning, wailing can't be stopped, its hateful and grave tiding Every thought filled with concern for their child's sake Regretting they can't take their child's disease upon themselves The bodhisattvas feel concern for the beings of the Triple Realm, loving them as if they were their own children.3 Thus the sutra says later4; "it is like a rich man who has but one child, should the child fall ill, so will its parents be ill", etc. The bodhisattvas apply dharma medicine. Thus the Kuan-yin Sutra6 says such things as "... achieve salvation by responding to it with the buddha-body" etc. etc. and "among the illnesses of the beings in the hells, there are illnesses resulting from the Three PoisonsV" and mentions the Five Woes and the Eight Woes.8 In the case of a worldly physician, he can minister to the 1 05 sicknesses of the body. But the dharma medicine of the bodhisattvas can cure9 diseases of both the body and the mind, having us depart forever from birth and death. This is what we mean by cure. When the living beings' illnesses are cured, the 1 0 bodhisattvas' illness is cured as well.'u The sutra says, "They serve as great physician kings, who, skilled at curing the multitudinous afflictions, bestow medicine matched to the illness and cause it to be taken.11 Let us compare this to love and devotion in our world. Nothing surpasses the feeling which relatives hold for one another and the most intimate bond of all is the one which ties parents to their children, born of their own bodies.12 When the child is small they love and protect it, looking upon it like a jewel in their palm; as it grows, the object of 1 3 their loving concern, they cherish it like a family treasure. Cradling and nurturing it, they shrink from no hardship or toil. They swallow the bitter14 and spit out the sweet;' do they ever make excuses that they're tired or fed up with it? Bypassing the dry, they head for the wet; they dread that their children might be uncomfortable even for a moment. When doing the washing they fear that in a moment of absent-minded negligence they might get a sudden shock. When the child nears a river or a well, they are constantly worried about the danger of its drowning. [When it plays at fighting,] sporting with spears or knives, they are 1 06 always concerned that it will receive painful injury. Of the things of this world, children know nothing, but their parents' concerns gradually cause them to receive guidance. As they get older and learn their way around a bit,16 it's best to send them off to learn business or perhaps to practice with the writing brush. Thus should it be with a boy. Girls are a different story. Let them never venture beyond their chamber doors, have them practice at length the art of oil and powder.17 They should become familiar with music knowing clearly the various strains and melodies, or take up sewing, so their needle may be clever and graceful. When boys come of age in their twentieth year and girls in 1 fi their fifteenth, they should take a spouse and be married. Everything follows in due course. And all the way through there 1 9 are worries ... every sort of ... They burn the best incense time and again within the temple20 and grant feasts for the monks, providing for the lay men and women as well,21 but this does not ease their anxious worry. Father each day looks more stooped and drawn, mother each day thinner and more exhausted with worry. But should they at last hear that the sickness has eased, that even some measure of cure has been achieved, then suddenly everyone's sad worry changes. Then father and mother happily rejoice. The bodhisattvas' feelings are exactly the same. With compassion for 1 07 the sentient beings they think of them as though they themselves had given birth to them. Their hearts break for the common creatures. They love them as if they were their own little children. Not wishing to see us drifting aimlessly upon the waves of the Four Births22, long they practice their resolve to scoop us free.23 Lamenting our being caught perpetually in the turning wheel of the Triple Realm, they make a vow to save us. Not yet realizing [the illusory nature of] our ignorant senses, our sense field is endlessly darkened by the six defilements.24 Unable to distinguish the True Principles, we have been contaminated for so long by the filth of the Three Poisons.25 The bodhisattvas are always looking at such creatures as we; they see sickness, nothing else. The saintly ones keep their eyes fixed always upon those of the vulgar course; to them it is just as though we are afflicted with illness26. Therefore they pound out27 the medicine of dharma and apply it according to the 2 8 root causes of our illness. They would have us sever ourselves from craving and anger, and cause us all to work at cultivating and retaining wisdom. Though we should be upon the waves of the Four Currents29f they cause us to feel no concern over the danger of sinking30 therein. Though we be within the wheel of the Six Paths of Existence, they cause us to be cut forever free from the 1 08 road of [endless] comings and goings. When one has abandoned the aggregation of impermanence and attained the five-part dharma-body31, when one has realized bodhi, where there is no further outflow and cast away one's phenomenal form, only then is one called bodhisattva, only then is one proclaimed the Physician King. When at last the afflictions caused by inner turmoil and anguish, as vast in number as the sands of the Ganges, when these at last dissipate and are removed, then shall the Compassionate Vow of the Bodhisattvas be fulfilled.32 Thus the sutra says: "Manifesting themselves,33 they serve as great Physician Kings who, skilled at curing the multitudinous afflictions, bestow medicine matched to the illness and cause it to be taken" (down to) ... "and others like them numbering thirty and two thousands ... 34 When we speak of the bodhisattvas' devoted practice Their merit-seed of happy relinquishment is worthy of our praise In the course of three great kalpas, each one of incalculable length,35 they have relinquished love and hate The strength of their four great compassionate vows36 is beyond compare Loving compassion and, mercy, they abhor flattering falsehood And would save, cure the living beings, who are so thoroughly unsettled Compassion and pity are always present, tying their thoughts to us Just like parents who feel pitying concern over their children's illness 1 09 Those of the unenlightened common run, long cut off from the light Infected long with craving and anger, so hard^7 to pare away, make right Always feeling craving like a leash which tugs them on Constant wayward thoughts arise like needles, just like na i 1 s 3 8 Indolently leaving sullied matter its free rein we debauch on in crazed delusion-1^ Can't wait to let loose ignorance, proud of our headstrong stubbornness40 But the bodhisattvas' mercy and compassion ties their thoughts to us Just like parents who feel pitying concern over their children's illness Those of the unenlightened common run, beguiled by sound and form Vainly caught up in conditioned phenomena^, chase after false appearances In ten thousand different songs they delight in love's emotion In springtimes' realm they go astray from their own true natures Among men, debauched, uncaring, you may delude your [own] mind-field42 But in the hells how shall you deceive the mirror of your karma?43 In their mercy and compassion bodhisattvas offer healing medicine Just like parents who feel pitying concern over their children's illness Always evil bullies44, fighting all the time When they hear about goodly things they don't listen to a word They may decide to mend their ways but that lasts just a minute They can never hold to their intentions for any length of time Buying perfume, it sets them back two or three bright coins Or they 'buy a smile', shelling out seven or eight more silvers45 In their mercy and compassion, bodhisattvas offer healing medicine Just like parents who feel pitying concern over their 11 0 children's illness Wearied by good deeds, they crave the wicked realm When shall they be able in their minds to reflect on their shortcomings?46 With every sort of self-indulgence, they have no sense of shame Should the slightest thing not go the way they want it, they hate such a disaster47 Exorcising their homes with magic rites, they seek high life and splendor They ask charlatans to divine their futures and look for happiness and good fortune In their mercy and compassion bodhisattvas offer healing medicine For the sickness which infects you48, the ill of foolish ignorance l With no regard for great or low and with little or no respect With pride, conceited arrogance darkening [?] past and present49 Studying to be wicked and coarse, of a foul repute [?] They'll have no part of rites or music, the good codes of respect Their ideas are libertine, perverse and ignorant When, pray tell, will they ever be able to wipe clean their action-store? In their mercy and compassion bodhisattvas offer healing medicine For the sickness which infects you, your unyielding obstinance With frenzied ignorant minds sizzling like a skillet Glowing hot, more fuel piled on, light the skies with wild intensity The untamed waves of vain misdeeds roiled muddy through and through The towering peak of craving, reaching heaven, pushing higher If someone asks a favor they can pretend that they are deaf50 But seeking wealth immorally they can be sharp-witted as a saint In their mercy and compassion bodhisattvas offer healing 1 11 medicine For the sickness which infects you, hot-tempered craving's ill If you're poor all means exhausted, don't bemoan your fate! Splendor decays when least we'd think, we're all destined to our lot You look at things, and in your hearts you start to foster evil thoughts You look at others and in your manner you practice parasitic fawning51 When will you cast away the thought and action of a yaksa? _ j—•—i— When will this raksasa-like character and calculation be removed?52 In their mercy and compassion bodhisattvas offer healing medicine For the sickness which infects you, crazed confusion's ill With backs turned to the True Source they hanker for improper paths Of good looks and skills they boast as they gallop to the fore53 In their youth when they are thriving they will say, "How strong I am!" Passing cups, they'll tilt the tumbler and bid each other drink Before the wind, beneath the moon, they'll compose new poetry Among the flowers at water's edge, they'll trade off-color lyrics54 In their mercy and compassion bodhisattvas offer healing medicines To release55 you from your illness, deluded ignorance Senses falsely56 trapped in their surroundings, to an inexpressible degree How could you know a hundred years is but a lightning flash? You, so clever, the full, fine picture of a man Will you bear being handed over, led away by oxhorn-headed demons? The common run shall meet their end, placed in darkness' byway Not realizing their wayward path, it's the deep pit to which they aspire In their mercy and compassion bodhisattvas offer healing 1 1 2 medicine To cause all the sicknesses of living beings to be completely cured p'ing) Everywhere tendering their mercies, not just randomly For they do look upon us as their children, just the same They lift us all and carry us out of the saha world They rescue us, cast totally away the source of painful inner turmoil From our sickly eyes, not open yet, they remove the covering infection57 Our stricken selves seem beyond cure58 they release us from the illness which doth bind us They cause all men to be done at last with birth and with extinction Only through the bodhisattvas' lamenting compassion do we finally gain our rest Painfully this illness59 long does coil round and sink us The saintly ones with pitying concern put in practice their vow profound Adapting means to our karmic roots and circumstance, they persuade and guide us They can give us dharma medicine and wield for us the healing needle Causing us to climb ever upward in bodhi's path The doors and windows to danger and evil are sealed off from our searching (?) 60 When they have caused each, one and all, to fully be enlightened Only then shall their tender mercies cause us to proclaim ourselves as body and mindD With merit-actions such as these they save us from the turning wheel They send forth to all their lamenting compassion62, their sadness-tinged concern A cypress bough within their hands63 they sweep away obstructing turmoil Inside their vase there is sweet dew to wash away calamitous misfortune How could they cease their saving benefits citing toil or 1 1 3 fatigue They do not shrink from painful effort in their comings and their goings Long have they acted for salvation of this saha world They will cause all sickly eyes to decisively be opened Dignified, resplendent, their stature overawes64 All are there in Amra park, in the assembly form ranks They hope only to see the Consciousness Supreme65 as he pours out dharma rain Waiting but for the Great Holiness to set spring thunder quaking The crowns aglitter upon their heads, a cluster of pure gold The threads of their clothes rubbed well [?],66 a mass67 of brocade leaf Layer after layer beyond number, lit by luminous portents Like a forest of jewel trees which has released its blooms6 Sages, saints so vast in number, athrong in Amra park Auspicious colors and glad clouds fill the nine infinities69 The bodhisattvas circled round, thirty thousand strong Voice-hearers (sravaka) milling all around a hundred thousand turns Upon the conches songs are played, the sound is full and clear Cymbals, gongs struck mightily, echo on and on Upon that day the World-Honored One would expound the dharma As to who else came to hear Him there, next we'll chant that out 11 4 Notes on Section IVB MS fragment no.3 begins, jaggedly, at 537.7. This translation starts at 537.10, the second of two gathas in what appears to be an attempt at fashioning an introduction to a prose exposition section on the sutra's "physician king" passage, quoted at 538.3 and repeated in 539.1. This passage, which appears as part of the "bodhisattva section" of the sutra (Ting, p.3a), was passed over by the preacher in Section IVA, as noted there, and receives special treatment here. 537.1 0. . MS has % -z,#Q . 537. 1 2. #f is a rhetorical particle, written in modern Chinese. 7GlL> (7£EJ jlL . This intriguing colloquial expression occurs also in 538.11, where its meaning can be gleaned from context, parallel to >j$, 'haggard, drawn'. Literally the phrase means "exhausted turtle". The turtle image graphically expresses stooped and slow, dragging movements. The modern Taiwanese dialect provides an interesting parallel expression. Wang Yii-te i % , in his Taiwango joyogoi 4g ^ & , p. 300, notes the expression un gu, which he supplies with the characters f^jl ^ , and glosses as 'stooped, hunchbacked'. He also gives the illustrative sentence Giah gag ungu ki, ^ , to walk in a tired fashion with the chin sticking out. 537.1 5. r%[ jc* £ 3- . Emending -£» to . 537. 1 5. ~r- "Z5* . This is not the name of a sutra and should not be underlined. The sutra referred to is this very same one, the Vimalakirti sutra. "fej ~X- is an adverb of position which means 'below' or 'later', 'in a portion to follow1. See Iriya index for other instances. This passage is found in the fifth portion of the sutra, (Wen-shu-shih-li) wen-chi p'in ( sL ^£ l^-fclP T$L V?B , Ting, p.42b and is part of Vimalakirti's explanation of the origin of his illness. The passage continues, "If the child recovers from its illness, the parents also recover. So it is with the bodhisattvas. They love the living beings like [their own] children. If the living beings are ill then the bodhisattvas are ill. When the living beings' illness is cured, the bodhisattvas are also cured." ^- ifc , iC"3^7^ 1 1 5 The idea of the passage, identifying bodhisattvas with concerned, empathetic parents, motivates this section of the lecture. The preacher cites the passage here and pursues with embellishment the analogy to parents and children in what follows, appealing in the most accessible and direct fashion to his audience's experience and emotion. 6. 537.1 6. jjjg, % . Normally this refers to the twenty-fifth chapter of the Lotus Sutra, > tne Kuan-shih- yin p'u-sa p'u-men p' in |jf£ ^ yfe. (KumarajIva tr., Tn.262.25. T.9.56). The "quotations" which follow are at best paraphrases. The terms ~ ^ ft*? , , or /V^ do not appear in the Kuan-yin Sutra. These may have been notes on specific ideas, remembered as deriving from the Kuan-yin Sutra, which the preacher intended to build upon in a planned prose exposition to follow or which may have been expounded in the beginning of this section, now lost. 7. 537.16. 2 ^ . The three poisons of craving, anger and ignorance. , gjt , See Oda 651 .2. 8. 537.1 6-538.1 . Jz$r /V ^ . Two different ways of counting the Eight Woes, which in one formulation consists of: birth, aging, sickness, death, parting with the object of affection, meeting with the object of loathing, seeking without finding and woes arising from the Five Aggregates. The Five Woes count the first four as a single woe. See Oda 672.1 . 9. 538.1. There seems to be a pointed contract between the verb ^ , rendered 'minister to' above, and the resultative compound S^. ^ . 10. 538.1-2. This is a rewording of the quotations from the Vimalakirti sutra abbreviated in 537.15. 11. 538.3. This introduces a section which takes a new or perhaps reworded approach to the same material. It seems to be based upon the same sutra which inspired the Popular Exposition on the Sutra of the Weight of Parents' Devoted Love, Fu-mu en chung ching chiang-ching-wen iC, 5t_ (title given by PWC editors, original unknown) PWC 672-694, hereafter abbreviated as FM. The quotation marks should not include-^ . 1 2. 538.4. A . Literally, "This is the child born of the [mother's] belly.", given as the reason for the intensity of the bond. 1 1 6 13. 538.4-5. These are probably set phrases the congregation was familiar <"with. See Lu-shan Yiian-kung hua iiv ij* JiZ PWC 181.13: iC#l^ & • 1 4. 538.5. vffij^ . Should read ^ . See FM, 681.9, 13 and 682.12. 15. 538.5-6. This language closely parallels the sections of FM devoted to infancy and early childhood. Compare the passages at 681.9-10 and 683.14-15, respectively, both of which quote from the (probably apocryphal) sutra with interesting variants. The prose and verse expositions in FM also reveal slightly different interpretations. 1 6 . 538.7. %t . This seems to be a standard phrase indicating the beginning of mastery of one's environment. $L is best taken as "can go east or west, this way or that." See FM 6 92.3 #|£ f$£ '^t \57 as well as 674.4, and Lu-shan Yiian-kung hua 181.15 ^ ^ (|^) . Perhaps it is going too far to take here in its modern sense of "things", but the usage here does give a clue as to the origins of the word, for a sense of 'the things to the east and west (around) one' can be inferred. An extended meaning of 'this and that' or '(indefinite) things' would be a natural development. 17 . 538.8. %t^f$L. MS actually reads^. There is no need for emendation. As Hsii, p_u cheng, p. 40, points out, the character is used in the sense of powder . 'Oil and powder' means cosmetics. See FM 687.6 -fjCj $$JL • 18. 538.6-9. Having passed through infancy and childhood, adolescence and marriage follow. These lines parallel the sense and language of parts of FM 685.16-687.14, involving not only 'sutra quotations' but snippets from verse and prose exposition as well. It would seem that there were certain stock phrases and orders of presentation which formed set pieces on themes such as raising children. I tend to think that they derived from lectures on the same sutra that FM uses and were inserted into other lectures at what the preachers felt to be appropriate times. The fact that the present text, with the next MS fragment, has woven its way back to the theme of sickness and the response to it, thus following the order of thematic presentation in FM (itself determined by the sutra it deals with) and using language found there as well reinforces my view that the preacher used, if not the FM 1 1 7 which has survived, a text very similar to it in writing this segment. In fact the preacher seems to have turned to such a text for inspiration and been distracted by the wealth of potentially useful material there which he proceeds to adopt for the present lecture. Perhaps realizing he had strayed from his theme, he abandoned the attempt and returned to the concern at hand, sickness. 19. 538.9. This is the end of MS fragment no.3. 20. 538.10. This is the beginning of MS fragment no.2. Translation begins with j|£ ^ 7v-^%T • There are at least twelve characters missing between ^ and jfa is unclear. 21 . 538.1 0. . Taking in the sense of % . 22. 538.1 2. Jgfc. |L % ^ ^ . MS has %. . Reminiscent of the image evoked in 536.1 3 by % , -jft^'-jfy. means to be unsettled, drifting. 23. 538.1 2. . PWC accurately transcribes MS. Both should be written with the 'hand' radical, i^fr Daikanwa 12679 means to scoop up from water, as does^j^,, Daikanwa 1 2593. 24. 538. 1 3. $$• Bifc "3** lHt" 10 . MS has^, indicator of passive. >0Lis parallel to Jfc. below and is an adverb meaning 'always' or 'for a long time'. See Chiang, p.169-170, where he incidentally also emends to in this line. Also Chang, p.153-154. 25. 538.13. The function of in this phrase is not clear. 26. 538. 1 4. $| ^j" . MS has, 27 . 538.1 4. J{£ . The second character would seem to be an error. 28. 538.1 4.^^- . Emending to . 29. 538. 1 5. W T$L .. The four currents which keep the sentient beings incessantly adrift. The currents caused by the delusions of sight |[, , desirej^_ , illusory being 7^ and ignorance.^ ^ . See Oda 858.3. 1 1 8 30. 538 .15 . -iirL>:i%> . These two characters are not identical in MS. Probably is meant for the second. 31 . 538.1 5. 5. -0" 2-7& ^ - The five-part body realized through the achievement of the five merit-virtues ifi °f discipline^, concentration]^ , knowledge , liberation^. and knowledge of one's own true liberation ^f. - See Oda 567.1 . 32. 538.16 . -^fl^ - I suspect the first two characters have been transposed. The preacher, even judging from what remains of this section of prose exposition, has succeeded in fleshing out what seems to have been in his mind. Both sides of the equation bodhisattva: sentient beings = parents: children have been explored, the latter triggered by the quote in 537.15, while the material outlined in "quotes" from the Kuan-yin sutra, representing the causes and the nature of the sentient beings' illness is covered in the later discussion, the essence of which appears in 538.1-2. 33. 539.1 . Wv ^fL^x-M . This phrase has been inadvertently taken from the preceding line of the sutra. 34. 539.1. This is the final phrase in the sutra before the names of some of the bodhisattvas present are listed. 35. 539.3. ^. X. y\% 1#Cj /if #j is an abbreviation of ff7^ , Skt. asamkhya, 'numberless'. The whole expression, in turn, is abbreviating 5. ifcfiil, 'three numberless kalpas ' , the length of a bodhisattva1s cultivation on the path to Buddhahood. See Oda 603.3 and Dayal p. 77-79. 36 . 539 .3 . t# . Said to correspond to the Four Noble Truth, these are the bodhisattvas' vows to save all living beings, sever all anguish, learn every aspect of dharma and achieve the unexcelled way of the Buddha. See Oda 698.2. 37 . 539.6. Hf£ . MS reads consistently for this character. 38. 539.7. ^ ("^:)^~. Emending to , as does Hsu, tsai pu, p.119. 39 . 539.8.^ S ^ 3£ j£ . MS reads and . 'Sullied matter' renders ^ -J^ , that which has outflows, i.e. is sullied by this world. 40. 539.8. Taking ^17 (#/0?$L as 'inflexible, stubborn', like 1 1 9 the compound $bft . 539 .1 0 . . This term appears in the fifth portion of the Vimalakirti sutra, Wen-shu-shih-li wen-chi p' in <~ ff^JLfe^ ^f'\ 4h. & ' where Vimalakirti says that it is the root cause of living beings' illness: . %% ^~^c • (Ting, p.46a). If I understand Kumarajiva's commentary correctly |pL arises when the mind takes an object of cognition and lecoraes enmeshed with it, in turn leading to wayward thoughts and illness. The realm of ^L#|L is the Triple Realm, the worlds of outflows and conditioned phenomena \% . ff £ s. $L\ . I take the expression as a verb + object combination. As a verb J|^L seems to have conveyed even the sense of "impaled upon", as in the Mu-lien pien-wen PWC 726.9: <£^l£[ ^Af^W-M *H ' and 726'11 #~77 d*-% • The expression was, for the congregation, quite a graphic one I believe. See Oda 1432.3. Luk, p.54, simply renders as "clinging". 539.1 2 . A- Pel ,G> ^ • MS reads . Emending 539.12. {J%.)§^L . For another instance of "f^ in the sense of "deceive" see Mu-lien pien-wen, 733.6 ^ "f^ The karmic mirror reflects truly the karma of people before the judges of hell. 539.1 4. • Following Hsii, tsai pu, p.119, who emends to ^ and ^7 . 539. 1 6 . Chiang, p.74, under ^-y/^ , totally misunderstands this line, saying the money is spent to buy incense to burn in offering to Buddha. Nothing could be further than the case in this depiction of the sinner. The sense of ^ is "to purchase fleeting entertainment". The word 7^- accurately transcribes MS. It seems 7^- is meant. Chiang, p.74, emends to3^ , to cast away without heed or to sacrifice. The T' ai-tzu ch ' eng-tao ching ^Sil^ / pWC p.293 . 1 3 and 14, uses ^ in exactly that sense, %$je_ would appear to be a monetary denomination, perhaps a slang expression. 540.2. IfiL-^-^f C^f). MS has | . Emending to . 540.3. % (|IDT% • Following PWC emendation. Perhaps however this is related (an inversion or transposition?) to the expression ^ in 553.1 5, which appears to mean "as 1 20 one likes". 48 . 540.5. -H/fc^ . Taking here and in 540.8 as an error for^. (540.12, 540.16). 49. 540.6. PWC has omitted three lines here, condensing them into one. MS reads: ^5 % & ^£ 6$ C ? ? ) A reading of BJ| in the first line satisfies the requirements of rhyme and is close enough in form, but its meaning is not entirely clear. For a similar phrase, see Mu-lien pien-wen PWC 729.4 ^-^T Hit % ^ - "fl \%3 appears frequently in Buddhist texts and is treated by Chiang on p.121. The second line's ^ -> ^ emendation parallels that of n.43 above. The phrase ^ is a puzzling one, which appears also in FM, 686.10. Chiang, p.112-113, happens to discuss that line (under \% ) and speculates that the expression means "not able to continue the family line." The expression awaits further elucidation. In the last pair of lines, I take the first characters as verbs both taking two objects of two and three characters each. •^L^fcis a condensed version of %L> lU; and , rites and music, traditionally the best means of regulating state and individual. 50. 540.1 1 . $k . Following Hsu, tsai pu, p.119 who emends tof%p, in the sense of^ , "pretend". 51 . 540.1 4. ji: should readier. 52. 540. 1 5. Jfjl ?M raksasa, a kind of evil demon. ~H This rendering is provisional. 53. 541 .1 . Provisional rendering of 5?|( -t v 54. 541.3. The settings of these activities have a romantic, even licentious connotation. here may refer to drinking games, see 557.4. $4<$f|H^^^^. 55. 541 .4. - MS reads ^ • 56. 541 .5. . MS consistently writes . Only here does PWC attempt to transcribe as such. 1 21 57. 541 . 10. ^ - should by parallelism and context be a verb meaning to lift or remove. I take as or-^jL. The character appears also in 544.11 where its meaning is "to block out" or "eclipse". (Note: MS reads B% 0 ). Chiang, p.209, includes this in his list of unelucidated expressions, noting its apparent meaning and its absence from dictionaries. 58. 541 .1 1 . . Reading as^|-. 59. 541.13. On ^ as merely "sickness" see Chiang, p.86-87. 60. 541.15. The expression is puzzling. 61. 541.16. $l . Refers to the self composed of the five skandha or aggregates & . Also called the True Retribution JJL -f1, the true result of past karmic causation, as against the Dependent Retribution Afclfiji , our possessions and surroundings. The line then is saying that when we are all caused to be enlightened we will know the true nature of ourselves. See Oda 873.3 and 1341.3 ( ). 62. 542.1 . . MS reads With this line the rhyme changes to a final '-ai1, signalling the approaching end of this segment. 63. 542.2. % (^)t*? . MS reads f . The tip of a cypress bough ^^/fxL. was used to clean the teeth (thus the Japanese yoj i for 'toothpick'). It is a symbol of purification and cleansing as in the expression ^J^T^TK ' a cypress tip and purified water', used when inviting holy guests. See Oda 1749.2. 64. 542.5. Of this line's seven syllables, six are reduplicatedmanner adjectives. Judging from 548.12-13, should read . 65 . 542.6. |jj • Following Hsu, p_u cheng, p. 40, this should bei^ . See 547.16. 66. 542 .7. fy^iK . MS reads^. Perhaps^; alone is meant. Awaits further elucidation. 67. 542.7. ^ . Appears to be a variant form ofjfe . 68. 542.8. -jtJ&Bihl . MS reads . 69. 542. 9. JL*%. . 122 SECTION V Textual Notes 1 . 542. 1 5. . MS reads. 2. 542.1 6. 4^. • Hsu, tsai pu, p.119, emends to . 1JJL. Comparison with other occurrences, such as at 544.1 2, show this to be clearly not . MS look like"6^ . 3. 543.5. . MS reads . 7j£.. MS reads;^ which fits both rhyme and context. 4. 543.9.^ . Hsii, pu cheng, p.119, suggests @^ . Chiang, p.208, also gives but lists f^-^j as a still unexplained expression. 5. 543.1 0. §| ^» • Hsii, tsai pu, p.119, with probable reference to 545.11, the following section's rhymed description of ^zj^ , suggests || -j|gr_ . That ^£ is plausible is seen by comparison with 544.10 where lightning bolts from the eyes are coupled in description with a river of blood from the mouth. (See note 16 below). Mu-lien pien-wen, at PWC 730.7, describing the demonic inhabitants of the avici hell has the following: C7 52Z. ^ ... ^ • It is thus quite possible that instead of J| in 543.1 0, g^. is meant. 6. 543.1 5. % ?S\ H 1t . Hsii, tsai pu, p.119 suggests1* . MS reads jf. . 7. 543 . 1 6 . ^ f|f . MS reads ^ ^ (1&). 8. 544.1 marks the end of MS fragment 2. 9. With 544.2, MS fragment 4 begins. 10. 544.3. should read ^gL. 1 1 . 544.4. . Unclear in MS, but looks like^jf. 1 2. 544.5. Jj^r . MS writes as j| . HT> MS has ^ ' wnicn is correct. 1 3. 544.6. As Hsii, tsai pu, p.119, points out 'i^ should read 1 23 3&C^|t-2-?^. MS reads ^ . M(Z$)f% - MS readsjfc . PWC reverses ^j? which is correct in MS. 1 4. 544.7. 7^"If • Hsii, tsai pu, p.119, corrects to^ . 15. 544.8. cfjjs if; MS reads 7^ . 1 6. 544.10. & *Sf- jt_ (jU). MS reads . . Hsii, p_u cheng, p. 40 emends correctly to £7 . 17. 544.1 1 . 0 . MS reads 0^ 0 . The meaning from context is to blot out or block the sun. See 541.11 above. Chiang, p.209, places this character among the as yet undecipherables. He emends the following NJ^ to ;A|? . 18. 544. 1 3. $x jf|. . Perhaps this should readj^|. See 552.9. 1 9. 544.1 4.4^1^- . MS has&Jk., used consistently forgyf- . 20. 544. 1 5. 1^ . As Hsii, p_u cheng, p. 40, points out, should read . 21 . 546 .2. 2% |f£ . Should read . See Hsii, p_u cheng, p. 40. 22. 546.7. 3|3itfe£. MS reads^. 23. 546.1 1 .^^5^. MS has>/l. 24. 546.1 3. jfp . MS reads -ffp. 25. 547.12. The word suggests that the person chanting or singing the rhymed section is asking another person to chant the prose section. This is an indication of alternating performers. 1 24 SECTION VI The Buddha: Overspreading the entirety of the vast multitude ...Number twol: "Just as the king of mountains, Mt. Sumeru, towers above the great ocean, so does he settle securely upon the Lion's Throne, upon which are set myriad jewels."2 (gatha): The Buddha's powers are beyond conception, his transformations mighty So far beyond the multitude, his transcendence is complete3 Awe-inspiring, his towering form soars into heaven's purity Lofty, his golden countenance is like the solar radiance In the Three Realms long serving as a beacon torch4 Among those of the Four Births, long ...5 We liken him to Mt. Sumeru, its vast height and breadth So appears the Thus Come One, our great Dharma King. Number three: "Overspreading the entirety of the vast multitude which has come." (gatha):6 With commanding virtue7 awe-inspiring, far beyond the multitude Now at last he shows himself, his form and bearing true Beneath his golden feet, the thousand flower sign Vivid upon his deep-gold chest the mark of Buddha virtue8 His blue eyes like the lotus, clarifying azure pools The white curl twixt his brows like pure gleaming silk^, illumines sky and earth In the holy assemblylO at Amra park, the multitude numerous as the rivers' sands Not a one whose well-formed magnificence was like The World- Honored One' s Thus the sutra says: "Overspreading the entirety of the vast multitude which had come." 1 25 Then did the awe-inspiring sacred host,11 the lofty one honored for his compassion, situate himself among the saints and worthies, place himself in the Amra assembly's midst: The voice- hearers (sravaka), a multitude of, at least, eight thousand strong, their enlightened forms so stately and fine; and bodhisattvas there, thirty-thousand, more, their bearing upright and resplendent. The Brahma Kings offering up flowers and fruits, their palms joined in attentive reverence, and the sakra gods holding canopies and [ ]12, the utmost in respectful sincerity. The ranks of gods, dragons and yaksas think of the Golden Countenance and are transfixed with anticipation, unmoving.13 The asuras and raksasasl4 gaze upon the jade curl [upon the Buddha's brow] and their thoughts are filled with yearning. Beyond that the garuda throng15 plucking strings, the sound resounding clear; the kinnara kings harmonizing [voices?]16, decorous music ringing forth. Flutes and pipes, strings and reeds and conch-shaped cymbals, their sheets of bronze; performing music all at once17; joining voices all intone the dharma chants. And beyond that were the accomplished masters of the Six Harmonies18, seated on the bamboo (covered) path, looking from afar upon the Thus Come One and [the keepers of the Eight Disciplines of Respect]19, settled upon the moss, looking up with 1 26 adoration at the Great Consciousness. Heroic ones of great achievement, by the tens and hundreds of thousands, and those clad in their silk finery, in numbers beyond counting: Their minds with pure intention, happily poised in anticipation; their bodies lithe and supple, stretching forth in expectation far into the distance. This vast multitude filling the assembly, the entire gathering20 Qf gods and men surrounds the World-Honored One turning about him a hundred, a thousand times, there in the Amra park, their numbers filling, swelling beyond limit2"! : Like the multitude of stars that throng around the moon at night; like the myriad peaks that press about Mt. Sumeru. In profusion without match, in dignified splendor [beyond compare]22. The bodhisattvas with their lofty marks of enlightenment, gods and men with magnificent adornments of all sorts. The commanding virtue of the Brahma kings, so difficult to describe23, the sakra gods, their form and bearing completely beyond compare. But placed beside our Buddha's blessed form, his perfect and true countenance, they are as24 the glow of fireflies matched to the solar orb or mounds of dirt piled next to mountain peaks. Truly there's no simile, nor means whereby to measure. One cannot place manifest forms beside the Body beyond all form and thereby measure it.25 For indeed26 the Buddha's light doth triumph and blanket all the others in its radiance. His sacred 1 27 powers alone transcend and suffuse the universe. And now27 in Amra park to chant his sermon, in the dharma assembly to preach, he is like Mt. Sumeru risen high above the thousand peaks, like a vast ocean flooding over ten thousand continents.28 Therefore the dragons and gods look up in expectation, the saint and worthies fix their eyes upon him. All of them sing out: "Most rare!"29; every one exclaims: "How fine!". On this day, thought-beings as numerous as the river's sands30 will bow their heads to him; minds, as many as the grains of dust, will turn to him for succor. They hope only to be shaken mightily by the spring thunder. They all wish to be moistened31 in great numbers by the dharma rain. The sacred mind is not yet fathomed; the holy consciousness impossible to conceive. The sacred face now shows pure joy, the holy countenance buoyant happiness. He releases the [light from] the white-curl sign upon his brow. It spreads glowing east and west. He looses the radiance of his deep gold body. It leaps o'erpassing north and south. Mountains and rivers echo and shake; heaven and earth list and quake. Four types of flowers rain down, filling the sky; the radiance which suffuses the assembly divides into five colors. Far into the distance it glows and shines, vividly coalescing to the furthest reaches. All heaven and earth seem like an embroidered screen 1 28 unfolded32. it is as though red brocade has been spread out over the entire world. The sun and moon appear grandly in this auspicious cast. Rivers, streams are greatly transformed by this favorable portent. The myriad holy ones in Amra park had never before experienced such things and none could fathom the sublime and wondrous powers the Buddha displayed at this time. Therefore the sutra says: "Just as the king of mountains, Mt. Sumeru, towers above the great ocean, so does he settle securely upon the bejewelled Lion's Throne, overspreading the entirety of the vast multitude which had come." The multitude who came to listen in Amra park headed there like clouds So vast in number, the holy and profane, spilling over everywhere33 Bodhisattvas circumambulate, thirty-thousand, more The bhiksu) s circle round as well, a thousand times a thousand All with transcendent powers, their attributes complete Their enlightened forms so stately and fine, beyond comparison Their bearing grandly awesome, all physical marks complete m34 Still how could their well-formed features match our Master Sakyamuni1s? Like Mt. Sumeru standing firmly in the vast dark ocean's midst Around it mounts of gold and jade all gather in audience Rising far up through blue35 skies it pierces towering heights While stretching to touch azure seas, the pillar of the heavens A thousand precious things complete, enveloped36 by cloud and fog Myriad treasures each placed just right, enclosed in well- boding mists 129 But of the ten thousand peaks all clustered there, none can be compared^to Our master Sakyamuni1s well-formed magnificence The Brahma Kings and all the classes of heavenly beings With their commanding glow of favorable virtue still look up for succor A hundred jewels grace their crowns new, all eyes fixed in loving adoration The six gems shine upon their clothes, all speak their agreement[?]38 So lofty they in human form like lotus flowers of gold Figures tall and straight39 lined up like pillars made of j ade Come just to be in Amra park in the Buddha assembly's midst But how could their well-formed features match our Master Sakyamuni's? Devas, humans of all sorts and groups of sakra kings Were also where the Thus Come One would expound the dharma Their clothing glitters shining, designs formed of white40 j ade Their colors rare do gleam afar, threads made of pure gold4^ Their bearing without defect, all with respectful deference42 Their blessed marks fully complete, they all yearn with adoration Arriving there in Amra park in the Buddha assembly's midst Still how could their well-formed features match our Master Sakyamuni's? Filling up the Amra park, the bodhisattvas' number Each one with transcendental powers, showing quiet self- possession43 Through vast kalpas of self-refinement, their propitious intelligence manifest Endless goodly acts performed, their merit universal Defeating demons, expelling factions[?]44, with persistent dedication to their tasks Conveying knowledge, practicing compassion always clear and distinct With their magnificent bearing, every mark complete Still how could their well-formed features match our Master Sakyamuni's? 130 The bhiku monks, the Arhat throng Their air at once refined and simple45f people exclaim their praises Nobles halt their carriage looking on from atop their mounts Evil birds take to the wing and stare down from the sky Snowy eyebrows deep, profound, cover46 knolls of pine Capes of cloud so delicate moisten colored mists With their magnificent bearing, every mark complete Still now could their well-formed features match our Master Sakyamuni s? Celestial dragon gods line up their banners and their drums Eight-armed, triple-headed, their anger is severe With no warning grasp the K'un-lun mountains and shake them to and fro Out of boredom scoop up vast dark oceans, tilt them over, pour them out At times leaping into the assembly's midst Or47 bounding off into the sky All come to Amra park before his Holiness But their majestic light cannot compare to our Master Sakyamuni's Saints and worthies circle about, spirits and demons48 protect him Clasping swords and holding spears, they stand by to support him All because the Thus Come One will preach the dharma sound Just to allow the multitude feel the moisture of sweet dew The Brahma kings, with fruits in hand, offered to the Gold Immortal Sakras, incense 'twixt their fingers, add to the jade-like plume [?]49 All of them toward Amra park assembled in one^O line High and low look up to our Master Sakyamuni and acknowledge his authority The Buddha in merciful compassion vows to tender his protection [?]51 For accumulated kalpa, numberless, he has cultivated the Six Deliverances He fosters peace and harmony, taking leave of love and hate He has us hold to wisdom, make it solid and secure Lofty is his appearance, like the pure white lotus flower Awe-inspiring his form, a pillar of deep gold 1 31 Majestic radiance, ten thousand types but none of them can match him Then is he proclaimed the Three Realm's Master of the Transcendental Powers (P'ing)52 The saints and worthies lined up just so, a hundred thousand stalwartsJJ Circle about54 the Thus Come One, his deep golden radiance They look up to behold55 his luminous mark, their gaze never leaves it Hoping only that the mouth of gold would soon preach its message The multitude in assembly lean forward in expectant adoration The Buddha from between his eyebrows manifests well-boding portent Far and wide in Amra park they all exclaim his praises Then is he proclaimed the Three Realm's King of the Dharma Wheel The Great Consciousness so lofty, clothed in precious flame Set apart upon the Flowered Throne, he draws up the fragrant aroma Dark red lips like fruit, the color of the bimba56 Both eyes like lotuses, his mental and physical discipline like a pervading fragrance57 In days long past all looked in adoration to his commanding presence58 And now the human form he manifests goes beyond all normal 59 measure The colors from the hair between his brows appear both bright and clear Enclosing Amra park in ten thousand kinds of light The towering golden figure is upon the Flower Platform60 About to preach, spread far his words61, revealing dharma's meaning Five streams of light so colorful, emitted from his countenance From 'twixt his brows62 ten thousand beams of glimmering radiance As though one had unrolled red silk, covering earth and 1 32 heaven The world seemed as though covered by piles of fine brocade All about a hundred kinds of wondrous things are seen The thunder which doth shake the spring, its sound quite imminent In Amra park that day, circling round and round In numbers vast, their eyes fixed rapt, intoning praise: "Most fine I" The heavens rained down four types of flowers four, which glittered in the air The earth convulsed six different ways, the echo rumbled forth The saintly minds did not yet know what teaching he would preach Human thoughts cannot conceive it, none can ever guess At that moment, high and low, all did form this thought: Who shall, for the multitude, ask the Thus Come One to speak? In his compassion, Sakyamuni knew the thoughts the sentient beings then embraced And upon the Flowered Throne, expectantly, a joyful look appeared About to match causation and occasion, to pour forth dharma's treasures With pity for the myriad creatures, he would rain forth /TO precious things0-3 And now crimson lips begin to part, red lotus bursting open Gleaming teeth are poised, rows of pure white jade The Great Consciousness, World-Honored One64, at last will speak the dharma Now chanting we will tell you who next came upon the scene 1 33 Notes to Section VI 1. 548.1. This section, like the two preceding it, begins with an introductory set of gathas, corresponding to the following three part division of the sutra passage covered in the section: a. ^^l&J^-f-gf *3Mfc-fc!fl c- 1foZAr-wt%%.*^%L (Ting, p.4a) The first gatha, corresponding to a, is incomplete, appearing at the torn start of MS fragment no.6. This translation begins with the second. 2. 548.1 gives a contracted version of b (n.1 above) which is reconstituted based on the sutra. 3. 548.2. "jf- . Taking provisionally in the sense of tlL'i^T . Perhaps though, related to the compounds ) see Chiang, p.33-34, in which case the sense would be secure and self-possessed. 4. 548.4. J^^U . Emending totffe • 5. 548.4.\ MS torn. 6. 548.6. Beneath the characters ^ in MS the words % 3 (completed copying) are discernible. 7. 548.7. JM,I> . MS reads Should read^ 8. 548.8. ^ >"p appears to refer to the 'thousand-lotus' platform upon which the Buddha Sakyamuni sits. In turn upon each lotus flower are a thousand Sakyamuni Buddhas. See Oda 1 0 39.a ( rp/,^ ) . ^ r£ . One of the thirty-two marks of a Buddha shaped thus: . It is generally interpreted as a sign of virtue. See Oda 1886.b. 9. 548.1 0. • ife^^ . Should read fej - Hsu, p_u cheng, p.40 so indicates. Also following Hsii's emendation to^jjsi . 10. 548.1 0. & ^ . MS reads % . 11. 548.12. From this prose section on, MS is punctuated. 12. 548.1 3.-|*| Accurately transcribes MS. I cannot identify 1 34 this character. 13 . 548.1 3. }i /f*. ^| . Emending to 1 4. 548.1 4. H $f z_ yj" .MS reads 1^ See 529.13. 15. 548.1 4. !^J^1^vfJ£ • The first is superfluous. 1 6. 548. 1 4-15. There seems to be a character skipped after fj§ . The preacher is neither careful nor consistent regarding the identity of the heavenly musicians and the instruments they play. Compare 529.13-15. 17. 548.15. 01 (3k). As pointed out above, MS consistently has for|^jr . PWC's emendation is incorrect, as Hsu, p_u cheng, p.40 points out. 18. 548 .1 5 . j\ -fa h -k . The Six Harmonies, fully *7C fa , are those practiced by monks in the monastic community. See Oda 1845.a and Luk, p.152. 19. 548.16. This phrase, by parallelism, should have four, not three (missing) characters at the start. The first two are certainly/V^^t . The Eight Disciplines of Respect, fully,\. ^jJCifc. , are those stipulated by the Buddha for women who would enter the monastic order. See Oda 1 400c, fa/\^jJC . Thus the expression becomes shorthand for monks and nuns. See 543.14 for this same coupling. 20. 549.1. 4^^%" . The word ^ here literally means "combining to form". In some Tun-huang texts it clearly has the extended sense of "all" or "entire". See Sou-shen chi , PWC 869.7 for two instances of the expression . 21. 549.1 . Another instance of (t$) ) . 22. 549.1 -2. As Hsu, p_u cheng, p.40, points out, two characters have been skipped after ^ . ^ goes with the succeeding phrase and is parallel to ^ A- in the one after that. This restores the parallel rhythm of the prose. The two missing characters have been skipped in MS as well. They are probably something like ^f^T. 23 . 549.2. Emending to tfj . Parallels ?ip in phrase below. 24. 549.3.^ . MS reads'^, perhaps an abbreviation for 1 35 25. 549.3. 3|r . MS has <|% . pi^j. Should read^l/j. 26. 549.4. Taking the sense of the conjunction ^,1^. from context. 27. 549.4. The characters ^I^J appear before is MS. 28. 549.5. \^ THJ . Reading as. 29. 549.5.i£ . MS appears to be . I cannot identify this character. Nor can Chiang. It appears in his list of unexplained expressions, p.209. The word would seem to fit the context. 30. 549.5. \v\ O. Should read . See Hsu, pu cheng, p.40. 31 . 549.6. ^£ • MS has (vfe) • Hsu, p_u cheng, p. 40, also makes this emendation. He suggests as well that -%J>- in the preceding phrase is superfluous. I think rather that one has been left out of this phrase. 32 . 549.8.^ ^ . MS reads tyjfrjk • Hsu, pu cheng, p.40, emends the ^ in 543.9 to . While the context here cannot allow g^>, the sense of "open out, unfold" is clearly called for. 33. 549.1 1 . ^ jJL . The phrase is problematical. In a literal sense, it may mean "difficult to contain properly", however it should perhaps read ij^-jg-p or jfc p^tr • 34. 549.14. -f ^ . There does not appear to be a set of ten excellent physical marks. Provisionally taking ten as a number indicating completeness, as in -j- -A- . 35. 549. 1 6. • Emending to j|- . 36. 550.1. . I have yet to identify this character. Rendering from context. 37. 550.4. -> ^ Should emend to . 38. 550.4.^.^ . The expression is puzzling. The translation is provisional. Compare 525.4. 39. 550.5. ^WJ 'Iwffi - An unusual reduplicated binome, but clear 1 36 from context. 40. 550.8. 3L- . Following Hsii, p_u cheng, p. 40, emending to *Q (parallels-^- ). 41 . 550 .8. ^ "ft . Corrected with a transposition mark in MS. 42. 550.9. ^.S^-^Z . Following Hsii, tsai pu, p.119, taking as 43. 550.1 1 . For-£fj£§> , see 534.8 above and Chiang, p.33. 44. 550.13. PWC accurately transcribes MS^. I am uncertain as to its sense here. 45. 550. 1 4. See Daikanwa 41 973. 1 1 2. /$L^. See Daikanwa 43758.453. 46. 551 . 1 . Taking as . 47 . 551 .5. should read ^ %f . 48. 551 .7. . MS has . 49. 551 .9. Attempting to read as the text stands taking _JL 5iE as "jade flow", perhaps a description of the plume of incense smoke. Alternatively the last character could be a mistake f or , the Jade Pillar being perhaps a reference to the Buddha. 50 551.10. The MS unaccountably has ^ • I follow PWC here. 51. 551.11. MS reads "IjL^. The translation is provisional. 52. The character 3f is written in MS between lines 551.14 and 551.15, indicating, as before, a shift in chanting style. With 551.15, the rhyme also changes. 53. 551 .1 5. §j 3f ^ . MS reads ^ . The sense could be 'a hundred thousand and more1. 54 . 551.1 5. ^v4,^ . MS consistently writes as ^ . 55. 551.16. #L should read ^ . 56. 552.4. ft % 1*1) . Bimba is a fruit, native to India, which when ripe becomes a brilliant red. The hue of Buddha's lips 1 37 is frequently likened to its color. See Waku no.371, p.91- 92. 57 . 552.4.-5^^-^ . The expression is similar to +^-fj- , which likens, the virtue of discipline to a fragrance. Knowledge of such virtue spreads far and wide like a delightful fragrance. See Oda, 160.1. 58. 552.5. Following Hsu, tsai pu, p.119, who takes as j^-. > c2 59. 552 . 5 . • This rendering is uncertain. 60. 552.7. .With this line the rhyme shifts to the final -ai. 61. 552.7. should read$|. 62 . 552.8. 7f i - MS reads I cannot decipher the third character and following PWC, reads as 7} . 63. 552. 1 6. J^fcj7 . This line is obviously corrupt. ^ fits neither the rhyme nor the sense. I follow Hsu, tsai pu, p.119, who suggests 64. 553.2. Mt - MS reads . 1 38 SECTION VII Vimalakirti and the five hundred sons of elders The sutra says'1: "At that time, in the great city of Vaisali, was the son of an elder named Pao-ji (Jewel Accumulation)2 who, together with five hundred sons of elders, all holding canopies decorated with the seven jewels, came to pay his respects at the place of the Buddha." Challenge: These five hundred [sons of] elders are all the offspring of kings and thus should long for the luxurious indulgence and pleasures of kingly palaces. Why have they grown tired of that luxurious splendor and, rejecting it, come to hear the dharma? Response: It is because in the city of Vaisali there is a lay sage3 named Vimalakirti. Originally he was the Golden Millet - Thus Come One4 of the World without Impurity to the East, but, wishing to help the Buddha transform people, he came to reside for a time within the foul boundaries of this saha world. Because just as a country does not have two kings, a world has not two Buddhas, he expediently took the form of an elder and manifested himself as having a wife and children5. In the city of Vaisali, he came into contact with everything and always benefiting living beings in every place, so that within the city 1 39 there were none who had not found refuge in the Buddha. Usually, he would teach and convert within the royal precincts and the King of Vaisali paid him the respect due an elder statesman of the realm. Knowing that our Buddha, the World Honored-One, was going to expound the dharma in Amra Park and wishing to manifest his beneficent intentions, he went into the king's palaces and there succeeded in teaching and converting five hundred royal princes. (Number one: Teaching and converting in the king's palaces:) Knowing Buddha would in Amra Park preach the Right and True6, He went into the royal palaces to convert the progeny of kings Beneath the willows like smoky haze young nobles were in place Before the flowers like brocade the court ladies were arrayed Their painted boats yield blissfully, go where the current takes them Rich white liquor brought out to them, poured to their cups' brim To this place of pleasure-seeking, Vimalakirti straightforth came To teach, convert and have them8 pay obeisance to the World- Honored One Then Pao-chi and the others heard Vimalakirti's words and asked the Lay Sage: "Know you not then, when the World-Honored One will expound the dharma in Amra Park?" The Lay Sage answered: "Make your preparations^ quickly. The time is now!" 1 40 (The Lay Sage dispatches them; gatha) You crave to be in kingly palaces, gratifying every whim In flowery shadow, in willow's shade, keep lady courtiers company Atop the purple-cloud pavilions you set out reeds and strings Before the white jade10 gardens you dance the Wild Mulberry Bough11 A dreamy passion for pipes' songs, you can't stand the press of time Troubled not that it's vanity, illusion, you detest a slowing in stimulation's pace You should now as fast as fire make your haste to go For by my reckoning [Buddha's] preaching will take place right now! Then the Lay Sage, expounding many sorts of teachings, converted these children of kings and had them go to Amra Park to pay homage to the Buddha and listen to the dharma. At that time the five hundred princes, Pao-chi and the others, implored the Lay Sage to go along with them. (Gatha:) Bathed have we in your compassion, you have transformed us worthless fellows With hearts sincere we are moved to thanks, a hundred thousand times Had your persistent guidance of us deluded onesl3 not been touched by urgent concern How could our boats ever be free of the tall and perilous waves We beg to borrow of your time so that you may lead our way We rely entirely on your great strength to serve us as a rudder14 [?] We five hundred brethren do most earnestly implore That the Lay Sage shall come with us and together we'll go hence 1 41 The Lay Sage replied: "From before15 I wanted us to go together, and now I wish to accompany you." (Gatha:) With deep thanks I do accept your offer to have the honor of your company Of themselves your eyes shall clear, both eyes shall be opened16 The road which leads to bodhi can seldom be encountered 1 7 Ships upon the perilous routes rarely gain a rudder [?] Like jade one grinds to form a basket, so intricate and fine Like the hen that nests upon the egg, breaking the shell at the proper time18 Since indeed you do intend to personally hear the dharma It's my desire to go along, together we'll go hence Thereupon the five hundred [sons of] elders each took up a canopy decorated with the seven jewels and, in the company of the Lay Sage, they all went forth from the king's palace. (Gatha:) Vimalakirti accompanied them as they went to pay homage to the Gold Immortal Their jeweled canopies were decorously held, their form and color dazzling White jade skillfully formed in designs of phoenixes and dragons Threads of pure gold can be seen right next to ivory Rose-colored mists dart glowingly, a shimmering radiance The crystalline webs of jewels chime forth, sound and echo j oined Vast crowds fill the streets as people all look on At this timel9 the sons of kings head bound for Amra Park The the five hundred [sons of] elders together with the Lay Sage, went out from the city of Vaisali. And as they went, 1 42 suddenly [Vimalakirti] took gravely ill and there beside the road, they piled up stones to form a small square hut for him. (Gatha:)20 A deep river matches perfectly his commanding stately bearing But suddenly Vimalakirti was taken ill and weakened The window lets through distant winds, his clothing but half covers him Door opened to the autumn moon, he leans sideways on a pillow21 Body twisted by incessant pain, closing both his eyes Breathing shallow, labored, straining tightly both his brows22 The Lay Sage's grievous sickness, whence could such a thing arise? It causes all we brethren to be consumed by doubts Vimalakirti expounded the dharma at length for those progeny of kings, his royal companions, saying: Cast away forever, it does not long abide This fiery mirage23 is not true substantiality Nor shall I speak awhile and all of you should hear This body of mine is but a phantom When all's said and done and death has come, wherein should you seek it? Disease comes and invades this body, who do you think will stop it?24 A single lump of virtue-substance25 constitutes its root A desolate mound heaped up three feet, its only destination The Four Elements' disharmony26 is an everyday occurrence I would not trouble my worthy lords to be so abruptly shocked The Lay Sage said: "You five hundred brethren, go to Amra Park, there to do the Buddha homage and to listen to his teachings. Since I have taken ill, I cannot move even the 1 43 smallest step." And so they took their leave, of which we will chant several gatha. o 7 (Seven stanzas): You sons of kings have no need to painfully deliberate what's best To go right now to Amra Park is the most reasonable course My life is just like the dew which forms upon the grass My body like the frost which gathers on the flowers Cicada sounds again and again pierce my loose-knit screen2 Willow shadows droop wearily opposite my sick bed Bend your fingers, count them, those of days gone by Who among them ever has escaped Impermanence29? And now I greatly wish to pay homage to the King of Emptiness But truly30 sickness binds me and I cry out in pain Lacking strength to set my garments straight, I'm glad of quiet solitude Had I a mind to open my door, I would feel but pained confusion The thousand types of rich silk finery would press hard upon 31 my eyes Ten thousand songs upon the pipes could split my bowels apart Oh, ye brethren hear my words! Who has ever in the past escaped Impermanence? Boast ye not: "I am a brilliant fellow accomplished in my writing Crystal-clear verse in measured cadence, rhymes pure as snow or frost With my masterly brush I have set forth the very forces of 3 ? creation-" In secret probings many times I have plumbed yin and yang The painful resolve at firefly-lit window, to where does it go? Great achievements gained on snowy peaks in what place are they stored?33 Oh ye brethren hear my words! Who has ever in the past escaped Impermanence? 1 44 You should go straightaway to pay homage to the King of Emptiness Your jeweled canopies are magnificently adorned, you need not make them more so34 The sun shines upon the gems most rare, sparkling, glittering The breezes jostle gold and jade, sounds ring out in resonance Upon the nine-tiered roads35 you are a favorable portent Among all the people of the land you make a goodly omen It's best you go to pay respect to the Sacred Host When you return then probably I'll have passed into Impermanence36 Though my body seems to have regained just a bit of health I dare not yet rely on it to go do honor to the Dharma King This square hovel is without the Compassionate Mirror's reflection The Bloom of Consciousness's fragrance is in Amra Park untainted Thin and drawn, the form of towering peaks, enfeeble my pillow all the more Wispy, sad, the smoke of men reaches my sick bed38 Cast your eyes upon me, my form, decrepit, weakens In a twinkling you will see that I'll have passed into Impermanence3 You should straightaway reform your former action-store Don't hanker after "red pavilion" girls, high-priced female entertainers40 If you revere his Compassionate Honor's skill at preaching dharma You'll feel no throb for those attractive ladies' skill in their toilette Cause the pipes and strings to cease beyond the pearl blinds Halt your drinking games4"! among the tortoise-shell banquet mats Heed well and remember, these words I urge upon you now This body shall in but an instant pass into Impermanence42 Taking leave upon this spot is the height of unsettling sadness I cannot accompany you into the Holy Place of Learning43 I fervently want you gentlemen of pure faith from the palaces nine44 1 45 Go first joyfully to do homage to the pure light from his brow Golden staves one after another, dragons, elephants in line Pair upon pair of jewelled canopies, phoenixes proudly arrayed45 I alone at this time simply cannot go In an instant, certainly I shall pass into Impermanence So then Pao-chi and the others all absorbed Vimalakirti1s exhortations; they remembered well the Lay Sage s instructions. Once more they set their appearance in order and again formed into their ranks, [making ready] to head toward Amra Park, there to pay homage to the Buddha. Then Pao-chi and the others, perceiving the urgency of Vimalakirti1s exhortations and seeing how grave the Lay Sage's illness was, listened to his orders and complied with every single one. They paid heed to his instructions and to a man accepted them. Then they arranged in order their jewelled canopies and put straight their golden crowns. With single minds they were about to head for Amra Park, but bound in sadness by their love, they could not bear to part from the square hovel. Pao-chi addressed the Lay Sage, saying: "For a short time we shall part hands47, for but an instant be apart. To bid you, oh Lay Sage, farewell is a thousand, ten thousand woes. To pay homage to the Great Holy One, ahi, if you would have us go, we'll go. These things we wish with all our heart: That the Lay Sage may draw breath well, that things of themselves may harmonize. May a red hearth 1 46 warm our elder's broth; may spirits delicate and fine wash down milord's medicine. For indeed the time is hushed and lonely: the austere, clear wind before your window. The season in its withered decline: beside these walls of piled stone, scattered yellowed leaves48. Cicada cries, a piercing drone, saturate your pillow; the autumn pall which fills your door lies heavy, thickly laden. "Lying face up on your raised bed, weakened, exhausted in this crumbling room.49 The Lay Sage's sickly expression takes a turn for the worse50, your breathing faint and shallow; then our distressed expressions graver still, our moans of woe more urgent. We have been graced by Vimalakirti's tender concern for us, by his profound intention to nourish us with dharma's milk51, who could have known that the Lay Sage would be bound up by sickness which would become in turn the affliction of the progeny of kings? "Our parting, it draws nearer. In anxious indecision52, worry knits our brows. Our parting close upon us now, our eyes behold but you and tears trace down our reddened cheeks. For us, the sky has lost its color; the sun has lost its glow. "Intense in thought, sad worry fills our breasts. Lost in thought sad laments rise in our chests. All of us mix words with tears, all carry sad expressions. "You must maintain your strong determination; do not let 1 47 your illness worsen. We shall go to cast our eyes upon the Great Holiness for a short while, to pay obeisance to his Merciful Honor. Quickly shall we then leave the Amra Park and in but a moment return to look after the Lay Sage." Thereupon they take up53 their jewelled canopies and straightened their golden crowns. Their jade necklaces' gentle ring envelops the area. The jadestones of their girdles clinking together; the sound surrounds the steps.54 Blue gems55 crown them, smoky mists: a single strip of autumn sky. Crystal perched upon their heads, fragrant towers: the half-wheel of a shining moon.56 Carved and polished amber, sculptured coral too. Auspicious winds set in motion57 far-reaching fragrance; well- boding mists rise, coalescing the brilliant colors. Half a thousand jewelled canopies, row on row all borne on high. An entire lands' heroic worthies, in vast profusion, raising their voices together in praise. And as they proceed, go on their way, further and further off, the neighbor girls from ten-thousand households follow behind; songs on pipes fill the streets and lead them forward. Strings and pipes which set the sky abuzz echo58 around the blue sky's clouds; silk finery all about reflects its glow upon the thickly-growing spring greenery59. Transforming the land of Vaisali into the city of paradise: The nine-fold highways dressed up in pavilions, sunshine fixed 1 48 upon them. Ten thousand homes unfold a scene of perpetual spring. Gradually they take their leave of the square hovel, already they've left Vaisali far behind, any moment now they shall reach Amra Park, there to pay full obeisance to the Sacred Master of the Flowered Platform. Everything was just the way the Lay Sage had decided But holding ready jewelled canopies, they all were gripped by indecision As they were about to depart the room, their brows were knit in consternation Edging up to the hovel's entrance, shadows pressed upon them The evening orioles cry out from the trees in concert with their weeping The autumn swallows jabbering in the eaves intensifies their sadness Parting for but a moment's time, but still such sad regrets As they're about to honor Sakyamuni, to face the jewelled platform We hope the Lay Sage will restore his harmony Do not be remiss and let your sickness worsen60 So quickly taken by life's end, impossible to escape Suddenly your body taken by a great shock61 Luckily to warm your broth you have your golden kettle And to heat your medicine have you not your white jade pan? Good and bad are of all sorts; you must pull together and be cured You must not just let things slip away and lose the opportunity Incessantly62 time passes, already fall has deepened The cicadas' sound which pares the earth comes out from evening groves Dewdrops form on evening pines63, a thousand drops of jade Chrysanthemums sway before cold walls, a single golden cluster Clear breezes cold and thin elicit saddened thoughts The yellowed leaves fall in decline and strike the sickly 1 49 heart Oh Lay Sage you must strive to gather your energies Let not death's cast invade this place We value Vimalakirti's feelings for us, the milk of dharma- kindness64 So that from the time you've taken sick, we've given way to sadness Now in this tiny hovel a heroic worthy lies Just as if from autumn skies65 the shining moon has toppled A pall of sadness knits their brows, they are not shortly eased Tearstreaks descend upon their cheeks, traces ever sharper In their thoughts they are about to go to Amra Park Happiness with sadness mixed as on and on they walk Gathering up jewelled canopies, they tidy their appearance Their girdle jade chimes musically, the sound fills all the streets66 Shining mother-of-pearl, its radiance iridescent67 Finely polished amber, its color glimmers twinkling68 Pearl nets with white-cloud hovering over69 The brilliance of jewelled canopies lights the evening sky The pride of an entire land70 in the springtime of their youth Half a thousand princes, in the glow of jade People in vast throngs, their words a tumultuous buzz Clouds piled layer on layer, reflected on blue skies As hands set coral swaying, parrots move about Breezes jostle jade girdles, phoenix pairs are joined71 Such noble ranks as these are indeed rarely met People in the millions all crowd about to look Jewelled canopies are held in hand, the glow a lovely softness72 Golden crowns rest on their heads, their colors merge and glimmer Silk finery which crowds the slopes dressed up in sunsets' glow Songs on pipes fill the earth, sound travelling on favorable breezes Both emperor and common folk are seized with glad anticipation 1 50 All at one time paying homage from afar in the Pure Light's midst Shouting out their praise: "Indeed this is most rare!" Five hundred sons of kings will pay the Precious Platform homage The waves of avarice, attraction, are now by this broken The blooms of the Bodhi tree soon they will come open Saints and worthies sound their praise a thousand, thousand times The common people's songs are raised in 10,000 glad refrains All of them come to Amra Park there to pay the Buddha homage And what obeisance did they make? that next we shall chant out73 1 51 Notes to Section VII 1 . 553.3. MS does not have the words ^ffl/yC. . 2. 553.3. ^fF ^f" . Skt. Ratna-rasi. 3. 553. 5 . & k . 4. 553.5. . Popular legend, it seems, has ascribed this provenance to Vimalakirti. See Oda, 259a and Ch'en Yin-k'o, p.370. 5. 553.6. On Vimalakirti1s "acquisition" of a family in China, see Ch'en Yin-k'o, pp.369-371. 6. 553.9. )£. J$L . This compound is used as an adjective at 533.14 above. 7. 553.1 0. $$.tlff . MS writes consistently asi^f.. 8. 553. 12. §~ . MS reads • 9. 553.1 3. ^tb . MS may read ^fcti. On this expression, also written as ^tb or^^|, see Chiang, p. 59-60. 10 . 553.1 6. PWC mistakenly transcribes MS % jE* as _j. . 1 1 . 553. 16. ^ Cfc&JdL. The name of a dance which achieved great popularity during the T'ang dynasty. See Daikanwa 1426.22. 12. 554.1 . >f£-/CiN iHl . MS reads ^ , which clearly is not *f£-. I suggest , though not with certainty. '^»N ~iM-i a& n uncommon expression. Provisionally I take the phrase to mean literally, "hate that the mind should slow." 13. 554.5. $L • . Hsii, tsai pu, p.119, suggests^. MS reads 4^. Sense can be made of the PWC reading here and I follow it. 14. 554.6. J$^%% . As in Section I, 520.1, I think that it is nautical terminology posing a problem here. The first character ,,,:in MS, looks like^.^ , which I cannot identify. The second 'character :£jjt is a variant form of^. . Although the characters used are unclear, the sea-faring analogy of the previous line, 554.5, and the use of in 554.10 in an obviously nautical connection point to a meaning like 1 52 "rudder", which I have supplied provisionally. Hsii, p_u cheng, p. 40 suggests "go-between" or "intermediary" ^ j^. . Perhaps both here and in 554.1 0 this latter sense, extended to mean "guide", is intended. 1 5. 554.8. -j;t , by its apposition to ^ , has the sense of before. See, for example, the expression fcfc. jft. at 798.9 and 12 and Iriya index for other instances. 16. 554.9. The subject of the second line of the couplet would appear to be the princes. 1 7 . 554 .10 . On^, see n.14 above. 18. 554. 1 1 . J2g ^ffj . Reading this as a verb-object compound paralleling H -fyjj below. Note though that at 558.3-4 and 559.9, a different copyist has written the verbal compound meaning "to cut and grind" as jjfj^ (written tfSJfc'^ in modern colloquial Chinese.) |? ^ifMi-^^kr 1 read |[ as ff 19. 555.1. i>L^- 2-3- • MS reads &|- . 20. 555.2. . MS has F£| as well. If not an error, the character would seem to indicate that this qatha is different from the others, although perhaps only because of the question in its final couplet. -ft st. . Literally a square chang, this is a traditional reference to the tiny room in which a monk dwells. For other instances in the context of narrations of this sutra, see PWC 634.10 and 635.7. 21 . 555.4. ^ ^"-^C. Hsii, tsai pu, p.119, reads as i follow Hsii here. Both lines of this couplet depict first natural phenomena and then the ill Lay Sage. 22. 555.5. I am uncertain of the meaning of ^} and have provisionally translated according to the context and the probable sense of the characters. ^J&.jl.'l? • As Hsu' EH cheng, p. 40, points out, this should read . 23 . 555.8. "^kjfsk . A heat illusion, a mirage. The simile at once bespeaks the body's unreal quality and its role as a creator of the thirst which the deluded try to quench through attachment to worldly things. See Oda, 1748.3. The sense of these five lines parallels that of Vimalakirti's 1 53 discourse on the impermanence of the body in the Fang-pien p' in of the sutra, Ting, p.13b-15a; Luk, p.17-18. 555.1 0. MS clearly reads . %- however is a marginal connection for jd^ (^L). ^^ifff- MS is clearly not , rather It seems that the copyist spotted something amiss in this couplet, although it's not certain he corrected it. I read both questionable characters provisionally as^_ . ^^_is an adverbial phrase meaning "ultimately, in the end", see Chang, p.382. Troubling however is the loss of parallelism resulting from that reading. Perhaps-f^ a (euphemistic?) expression for death, is meant. 555.1 1 . If . I m not certain what exactly this virtue- substance" is. It is not a standard Buddhist term. Something along the lines of an ethical core is clearly meant however. Perhaps this is a popular doctrinal concoction. Chiang, p.209, includes this among the as yet undecipherables. 555.1 2. to 7<- . The f our elements which together compose the body: earth, water, fire and wind. See Oda, 724.2. Also see Vimalakirti's answer to ManjusrI's query about a sick Bodhisattva, Ting, p.45a; Luk, p.53. 555.1 3 . With the words -tl , the copyist of MS has changed. The writing, clearly of a different hand, becomes more careful and deliberate, with a thicker stroke and different shade of ink. 555.1 6 . The character j|J^ would appear to be a variant form of jijj , window. incidentally, is written in this line and elsewhere as 556.1.. Skt. Anitye 556.2. _jft . Hsii, tsai pu, p.119, suggests this should read (fi . 556.4. is puzzling here. I translate provisionally. 556.7. . MS reads £Jt/iK». 556.8. Hsii, tsai pu, p.119, points out that the character X should read i# . The line alludes to two scholars of the ChinJ|p dynasty, Che Yin ^ , who was so poor he had to 1 54 study by the light of the fireflies he had captured, and Sun K'ang fjj^ , who also because of his poverty studied in the evening by the light reflected from the snow. The two are usually alluded to as paired models of scholarly perseverance. 34. 556.1 0. £X ^jl. . Originally meaning to change and restretch the strings of a zither (?$-), the extended sense is to change or improve. Iriya lists eight occurrences in PWC. 35. 556. 1 2. ih f|? should read J[ . See Hsii, tsai pu, p. 11 9. 36. The phrase ^ ^ at 556 .1 3, 557.1 and 557.9 also conveys the sense of "the Self is impermanent". The more immediate sense of "I will have died" is of course also communicated. 37. 556. 1.5. Both and ^ 4 38 . 556 .1 6 . The character seems to be an error, but I have no readily acceptable emendation to suggest. The rhymed binomes which start both lines of the couplet refer to and are suggestive of both the mountains and the smoke and Vimalakirti's physical and psychological state. 39. 557.1 . ^r- • Iriya, index, p. 6, lists occurrence at 91.2, 430.2 and 666.1, with a reading of cen (ts'en) for the first character. Chiang, p.171, glosses the first and last of these occurrences with little apparent relevance to the instant usage. The context here is one of imminence, matching the refrain lines at 556. 1 3 ( jf^-^k. ) ' 557.5 (^$y), and 557.9 ( ) • I have tried to translate here including the sense of the compound as it occurs in 559.9. Neither the present nor this last occurrence is noted in the Iriya index. 40. 557 .2. "Action-store" again renders . <&I ^, lit. "red multistoried structures" refers to the dwellings of girls from well-off families and by extension to rich, well-born girls themselves. See Daikanwa 2743.399. I suspect that rather than ^ , -J?J? a "sing-song girl" is meant in this context. 41 . 557.4. j|L . The rituals of convivial, collegial drinking. See Daikanwa 387.92 where the expression is equated with . 155 42. 557.5. . Chiang, p.79, notes other instances of |R in PWC in the sense he glosses as 'to listen to and obey'^^ j§j $.y . The literal sense seems to be 'even as you look', i.e. in a very short time. Instances at 630.14 and 774.8, noted in Iriya index, bear out this reading, as does the present context (see note 39 above). 43. 557.6. \% , as Hsu, tsai pu, p.119, points out, should read Holy Place of learning renders Xg."t^ , Skt. Bodhimandala, a place where the sacred path to Buddhahood is perfected. 44. 557.7. %> ^% . As noted earlier, the expression most likely means "numerous palaces" and does not represent a specific numerical configuration. 45. 557.8. The dragons, elephants and phoenixes refer to figures and designs attached to or worked upon the staves and canopies. 46. 557.10. Chiang, p.79, in his discussion of (instructions), cites this line, emending "if ( jf ) to % . I follow Chiang, although the fact that ~Q $J£_ is parallel to the following %Z^^ leads one to suspect that a verbal compound was meant. 47 . 557.1 2. MS has the marginal correction i=f for Jj$- in . See PWC 608.3 for the same expression with"^" . 48 . 557.1 4. . The compound's standard meaning is fragrant, see Daikanwa 30728.19. Chiang, p.133, however, noting the •^-^•js at 543.8, which PWC incorrectly emends to , feels that in that occurrence the compound is merely a phonological variant of JJ£*^$~ . The meaning "in profusion" is likely in the context of 557.14. 49. 557.1 5. ^Jt^ . MS reads % . Hsii, tsai pu, p.119, also makes this emendation. 50. 557.1 5. JgjK . The expression is puzzling, but context seems to indicate this reading. 51 . 557.1 5. The emendation to is incorrect. The same editor repeats this mistake at 559.4 and 601.11. The expression, Daikanwa 17290.289, treats dharma as the milk which nourishes the dharma-bodies of those who would cultivate themselves. Hsii, p_u cheng, p. 40, also notes this error. 1 56 52. 557. 16. jfc. iH. . Should read ^ or Compare the corresponding rhymed passage at 558.8. 53. 558.2. \% should read ik. or *|" • 54. 558.3. ]Mr and to a lesser extent are problematical expressions. Compare the use of j!^ in 558.9. is equivalent to . If the first binome is to be taken literally, the fact that the square hovel of piled stone would not have steps leading up to it is not important. The writer's and audience's focus is now upon the spectacle of the princes as they set out. Stately steps are consonant with such a spectacle. 55. 558 .3. . Written a number of ways, this renders the Skt. vaidurya, one of the Seven Jewels -f ^ . 56. 558.3. The lines beginning with "blue gems" pose numerous difficulties. They may be garbled. The writer seems to be attempting an impressionistic sweep in this description and this may account for the misty haze of the prose itself. ^ ^ i Daikanwa 1 7083.1 38, is glossed there as a mist-filled sky. ~^^k' Daikanwa 44518.165 is a tower which emits a fragrance. Both here and at 558.6 ( fl^-^f) MS writes^". 57. 558.4. appears to be in error, perhaps a phonetic error for^ . 58. 558.5. makes no sense in context. Emending to^f , for which perhaps it is a scribal error. 59. 558.6. . MS has |j£ . The word may also mean "buds" here. Autumn and illness have bowed for the time being before the splendors of springtime and youth. 60. 5 58. 1 2. fftttfft $ . MS writes i\L which I take to be$#L and so emend. The final character is unclear due to a water blot. ^ is incorrect based on the rhyme. MS looks something like ^ which provisionally I take as £y . 61 . 558.1 3. ,% $\ should read & $\ . The compound JJ appears at PWC 608.5 and 658.15 apparently in the sense of quick, nimbly intelligent, the gloss it receives at Daikanwa 638336. It would appear from the written variants (see Iriya index: , /^|^ ) and what seem to be different contextual senses to be an alliterative binome with a wide range of meanings. I have translated here 1 57 according to my understanding of the context. 62. 558.1 6 or "what's more. " }$L^tT • 63. 559.1. y%iJ£ . Following PWC suggested emendation to-far. Hsii, tsai pu, p.1 19, points out that the second suggested emendation should read 64. 559.4. 7*3Mfc' . ^« is incorrect. Emending to ^ which comports with the rhyme and 557.16. 65 . 55 9.5. . Emending to^C . 66. 559.8. 3% $/ffl . MS reads^. 67. 559.9. UNJ gr^j • Iriya index lists only this occurrence. Its meaning is unclear. j|l 7J7 , usually Xjj^^ljl , refers to a kind of ocean shell, white with patterns on it, which then polished is considered one of the Seven Jewels. Daikanwa 24226.1. Oda 804.3. 68. 559.9.-^-^. . Translating partly from context. See n.39 above. 69 559.1 0. . The sound of thunder. Taking as^ . 70. 559. 1 1 . -1± 7wL . Daikanwa 368. 50 glosses as bureaucratic officials. Probably dr y,^. is meant. The sense parallels 558.4: _ ^f- . 71 . 559.1 3. jfU^ . Fol lowing Hsii's suggestion that this may be a mistake for ^. It seems, both from the number of lines in this sung portion and from the rhyme, that the copyist has overlooked four lines, half a stanza here. They are absent from MS. This sung portion is noteworthy, incidentally, in that every stanza has a different rhyme. 72. 559. 1 5. . Modernly this would be written as^ . 73. 560.5. This marks the end of MS. 1 58 BIBLIOGRAPHY Chang Hsiang >$L~%-E\ . Shih-tzu-ch ' u yu-tz ' u hui-shih "f^- lilf S f| • 1954. Rpt. 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See Kumarajiva, trans. 1 62 APPENDIX Correspondence of MS to PWC text PWC Page and Line MS Fragment No. a. 517.1 - 523.1 7 b. 523.2 - 523.12 9 c. 523.13 - 526.11 8 d. 526.12 - 533.4 5 e. 533.5 - 537.6 1 f. 537.7 - 538.9 3 g. 538.10 - 544.1 2 h. 544.2 - 547.12 4 i. 547.13 - 560.5 6 1 63