Fó shuō màyì jīng 佛說罵意經
The Buddha’s Sūtra on Reviling Thoughts translated by 安世高 (Ān Shìgāo, 譯)
About the work
T732 in one fascicle is one of the brief karma-and-mind doctrine sūtras carrying 安世高’s name in the Taishō. The title — màyì “reviling thoughts” — refers to the unwholesome mental act of reviling or cursing, treated here as one of the principal kinds of unwholesome action of the mind.
Abstract
The text addresses the karmic consequences of màyì — angry, reviling, cursing thoughts directed at others — as a particularly destructive kind of mental action. The Buddha exposits how thoughts of cursing and reviling, even when not expressed in speech, generate negative karma; how they corrode the practitioner’s mental clarity; and how the cultivation of metta (cí 慈) and patience (kṣānti 忍) is the antidote. The text is a brief moral-psychological discourse in the early Chinese Buddhist register.
The thematic focus on the mind’s role in karma — rather than on bodily action alone — is characteristic of the early Buddhist tradition’s emphasis on cetanā (intention) as the primary source of karmic value. The text fits the broader pattern of 安世高-attributed and pseudo-安世高 sūtras that focus on mental cultivation and moral psychology, complementing his better-attested meditation translations (the Ānbān shǒuyì jīng T602, the Yīnchírù jīng T603).
The cluster of 安世高-attributed karma- and mind-doctrine sūtras: KR6i0418, KR6i0423, KR6i0424, KR6i0425, this work KR6i0426, KR6i0427, KR6i0428.
Translations and research
- Nattier, Jan. A Guide to the Earliest Chinese Buddhist Translations. Tokyo, 2008.
- Zürcher, Erik. The Buddhist Conquest of China. Leiden: Brill, 1959 (rpt. 2007).