Fó shuō sìyuàn jīng 佛說四願經
The Buddha’s Sūtra on the Four Wishes translated by 支謙 (Zhī Qiān, 譯)
About the work
T735 in one fascicle is a third-century rendering by 支謙 (active at Jiànyè 建業 222–252) of a brief Indian doctrinal sūtra on the four kinds of yuàn 願 (wishes, vows, aspirations).
Abstract
The text expounds four kinds of human wish or vow: typically classified as wishes for wealth, for sons, for long life, and for good rebirth — the standard Indian and Chinese ordinary-aspirations enumeration. The Buddha addresses each in turn, exposing how the worldly fulfillment of each yuàn is impermanent and ultimately disappointing, and how the practitioner should reorient their yuàn to the path of liberation (nirvāṇa-yuàn). The text closes with the bodhisattva-vow as the proper transformation of the four wishes.
The text fits the genre of brief moral-didactic sūtras characteristic of 支謙’s translation programme — the KR6i0407 / T713 Bèiduō shù xià sīwéi shíèr yīnyuán jīng on dependent-origination, the KR6i0400 / T708 Liǎo běnshēngsǐ jīng on the Śālistamba, and a series of brief doctrinal sūtras like this one. 支謙’s style is characteristically clear and pedagogically focused, making his renderings of these short works among the most accessible early Chinese Buddhist texts.
Translations and research
- Nattier, Jan. A Guide to the Earliest Chinese Buddhist Translations. Tokyo: International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology, 2008. Treats Zhī Qiān’s translation programme.
- Zürcher, Erik. The Buddhist Conquest of China. Leiden: Brill, 1959 (rpt. 2007).