Děngmù pútísà suǒ wèn sānmèi jīng 等目菩薩所問三昧經
The Sūtra on the Samādhi Concerning Which Bodhisattva Equal-Eye Inquired (alternative title: 普賢菩薩定意 Pǔxián pútísà dìngyì, “Samantabhadra’s Concentrated Will”) by 竺法護 Zhú Fǎhù (譯)
About the work
This 3-fascicle proto-Avataṃsaka text by 竺法護 Zhú Fǎhù corresponds, on the Taishō apparatus’s authority, to chapter 27 of the [[KR6e0010|80-fascicle Huáyán]] — the Shí dìng pǐn 十定品, “Ten samādhis” chapter, which expounds the ten types of meditative absorption attained by the daśabhūmi-stage bodhisattva. The alternative title Pǔ-xián pútísà dìng-yì foregrounds the role of Samantabhadra in this material; Děngmù 等目 (“Equal-Eye”) is the bodhisattva-questioner who, in the present text, addresses the questions to the Buddha.
The opening reads: “Thus have I heard. At one time the World-Honoured One was traveling in the Fǎ-jìng dào-chǎng 法靜道場 (‘Dharma-quiet bodhi-maṇḍa’) in the realm of Magadha. He had only just attained Buddhahood; the radiance was glittering and bright; he proclaimed the storehouse of the True Teaching, expounded the wisdom of the Tathāgata…”
Prefaces
No formal preface; the title-line preserves variant attribution lines, in standard reading “西晉月氏國三藏竺法護譯” — “translated by the Yuèzhī-state Tripiṭaka Zhú Fǎhù of the Western Jìn.” A sub-heading after the title preserves the alternative title 「(一名普賢菩薩定意)」 (“alternatively known as Samantabhadra’s Concentrated Will”).
Abstract
The translation belongs to 竺法護 Zhú Fǎhù’s broad project of bringing Avataṃsaka-tradition materials into Chinese; the bracket adopted here (266 – 313 CE) reflects the conventional period of his translation activity at Cháng’ān and Luòyáng. The text is one of the most extensive of the proto-Avataṃsaka translations — at 3 fascicles, longer than the other Shízhù-related materials.
The doctrinal substance is the Ten Samādhis of the bodhisattva: the meditative absorptions corresponding to each of the daśabhūmi-stages. Samantabhadra is the principal speaker (so the alternative title), and the structure of the sūtra parallels the cosmological framework of the larger Avataṃsaka: a single Buddha-assembly addressed by named bodhisattvas, each of whom develops a distinctive doctrinal-meditative theme. Together with the contemporaneous [[KR6e0033|Jiàn bèi yīqiè zhì dé jīng]] / Daśabhūmika and the [[KR6e0031|Pútísà shízhù xíng dào pǐn]], the present text documents Zhú Fǎhù’s systematic Chinese exposition of the Avataṃsaka materials.
The fact that the text corresponds only to the (later-numbered) chapter 27 of the 80-fascicle Huáyán — rather than to a substantial section of the older 60-fascicle text — is in itself textually significant: the Shí dìng pǐn is one of the chapters added in the new (Khotanese / 100,000-verse) recension translated by Śikṣānanda, and its appearance as an independent text in the Western Jìn shows that this material was already circulating in Chinese translation centuries before being formally incorporated into the complete Avataṃsaka compilation.
The Taishō text (T0288) is established on the standard apparatus.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language translation located.
- Nattier, Jan. A Guide to the Earliest Chinese Buddhist Translations. Tokyo: IRIAB Soka University, 2008.
- Hamar, Imre. “The History of the Buddhāvataṃsaka-sūtra,” in Reflecting Mirrors (2007).
- Boucher, Daniel. Bodhisattvas of the Forest and the Formation of the Mahāyāna. Honolulu: UHP, 2008 — methodology for Zhú Fǎhù translations.
Other points of interest
- Děngmù 等目 (“Equal-Eye”) is the Chinese rendering of Sanskrit Samantanetra (Skt. sama-anta-netra, “all-around eye”), one of the bodhisattva-names in the Avataṃsaka corpus; the Chinese rendering preserves the visual / contemplative associations of the Sanskrit.
Links
- CBETA T10n0288
- Kanseki DB
- Dazangthings date evidence (245, 300) — Sakaino 1935 — Sakaino Kōyō 境野黄洋. Shina Bukkyō seishi 支那佛教精史. Tokyo: Sakaino Kōyō Hakushi Ikō Kankōkai, 1935, p. 135.