Suǒyù zhìhuàn jīng 所欲致患經
Sūtra on How Desires Bring Calamity translated by 竺法護 (Zhú Fǎhù / Dharmarakṣa, 譯)
About the work
T737 in one fascicle is another brief Dharmarakṣa rendering, addressing the relation between desire (kāma / yù 欲) and calamity (ādīnava / huàn 患). The text fits the same thematic cluster as KR6i0430 / T736 — short moral-doctrinal Buddha-discourses on the harms of unwholesome action.
Abstract
The text expounds the canonical Buddhist analysis of desire as the source of suffering: each object of yù — wealth, status, sexual pleasure, food, sleep — generates corresponding huàn (calamity). The exposition is structured as a series of cause-effect demonstrations: pursuing wealth leads to anxiety and conflict, pursuing sex leads to attachment and disappointment, pursuing food leads to bodily corruption, etc. The Buddha closes with the standard Buddhist solution: not the suppression of desire but the seeing-through of its objects, leading to detachment.
The text parallels the Pāli Mahā-dukkhakkhandha-sutta (Majjhima-nikāya 13) and other canonical kāmaupādāna (clinging to sense-pleasures) discourses. Dharmarakṣa’s rendering preserves the brief discourse-format characteristic of these Āgama / Nikāya texts; he is one of the most important early translators of the Āgama tradition into Chinese alongside 安世高 and 支謙.
Related: KR6i0430 / T736 (Sì zì-qīn jīng), KR6i0432 / T738 (Fó shuō fēnbié jīng) — Dharmarakṣa’s cluster of brief moral-doctrine sūtras.
Translations and research
- Boucher, Daniel. Bodhisattvas of the Forest and the Formation of the Mahāyāna. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008.
- Zacchetti, Stefano. In Praise of the Light. Tokyo, 2005.