Fó shuō zhuāngyán pútí xīn jīng 佛說莊嚴菩提心經
The Sūtra Spoken by the Buddha on Adorning the Mind of Awakening by 鳩摩羅什 (Kumārajīva, 譯)
About the work
This one-fascicle text by 鳩摩羅什 Kumārajīva is a short Mahāyāna sūtra in the Avataṃsaka-family of materials, treating the doctrine of zhuāngyán pútí xīn 莊嚴菩提心 — “adorning the bodhicitta” — i.e. the cultivation and refinement of the bodhisattva’s foundational aspiration to enlightenment for the sake of all beings.
The opening reads: “Thus have I heard. At one time the Buddha dwelt in Wángshè chéng 王舍城 (Rājagṛha) on Mt. Qíshé jué shān 耆闍崛山 (Gṛdhrakūṭa, the Vulture Peak), with a great assembly of bhikṣus 1200 in number, [together with] 10,000 bodhisattvas — whose names were Zhìguāng 智光 (Wisdom-Light) bodhisattva, Fǎguāng 法光 (Dharma-Light) bodhisattva, Yuèguāng 月光 (Moon-Light) bodhisattva, Rìguāng 日光 (Sun-Light) bodhisattva, Wúbiān 無邊 (Boundless)…”
Prefaces
No formal preface; the title-line attributes the translation to “姚秦三藏鳩摩羅什譯” — “translated by the Tripiṭaka Kumārajīva of the Yáo Qín.”
Abstract
The translation is conventionally datable within the bracket 402 – 412 CE, the period of Kumārajīva’s mature translation activity at the Cháng’ān 長安 bureau. The bracket adopted here reflects this window. The text is one of the smaller works in Kumārajīva’s corpus and is paralleled in the Esoteric / Tantric Buddhist tradition by texts on the bodhicittotpāda — the “production of bodhicitta” — that became foundational to the Sino-Tibetan Tantric Mahāyāna.
The doctrinal substance — the zhuāngyán pútí xīn — is one of the foundational topics of Mahāyāna soteriology; the Buddha’s teaching to the great assembly of named-bodhisattvas (each of whose names — Wisdom-Light, Dharma-Light, Moon-Light, Sun-Light, Boundless, etc. — corresponds to a distinct doctrinal-cosmological theme) provides a compact compendium of the Avataṃsaka-tradition’s doctrine of the bodhisattva path’s cosmological-soteriological structure.
The Taishō text (T0307) is established on the standard apparatus.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language translation located.
- Robinson, Richard H. Early Mādhyamika in India and China. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967 — context for Kumārajīva’s translation methodology.
- Hamar, Imre, ed. Reflecting Mirrors (2007).
- Lamotte, Étienne, tr. Le traité de la grande vertu de sagesse (5 vols., Louvain, 1944–1980) — for the broader Kumārajīva corpus.
Other points of interest
- The list of named bodhisattvas at the opening — Wisdom-Light, Dharma-Light, Moon-Light, Sun-Light, etc. — is itself a cosmological-soteriological schema: each name encodes a distinct dimension of the bodhisattva path’s cosmic structure. This naming-scheme is characteristic of Avataṃsaka-family materials.