Fó shuō zìài jīng 佛說自愛經
The Buddha’s Sūtra on Self-Love (i.e., proper care for oneself) translated by 竺曇無蘭 (Zhú Tánwúlán, 譯)
About the work
T742 in one fascicle is another of 竺曇無蘭’s Eastern Jìn translations at the Xièzhènxī Monastery 謝鎮西寺 in Yangdu (381–395). The title — zìài “self-love,” “self-care” — refers to the proper Buddhist care for oneself: not selfish indulgence but the cultivation of one’s own welfare through right action and right view.
Abstract
The text addresses the proper Buddhist disposition toward oneself: not the rejection of self-care (which would be a misreading of anātman), but its right ordering — zìài as the wise person’s commitment to their own long-term welfare across rebirths. The Buddha exposits how the truly self-loving person abstains from unwholesome actions (which would harm them in future lives) and cultivates wholesome ones (which will benefit them). The text closes with the contrasting figure of the “self-hater” — the person who, through ignorance, harms themselves through unwholesome action.
The doctrine parallels the Pāli Attadīpa-sutta (Saṃyutta-nikāya 22.43) and the Khaggavisāṇa-sutta in addressing the bodhisattva-path of self-cultivation as a form of loving-care for one’s own continuum. The exposition is one of the more interesting brief Buddhist treatments of the anātman / zì-ài paradox: the absence of a self does not entail the absence of care for oneself; on the contrary, anātman makes self-care more rational, not less.
Related: KR6i0435, KR6i0437 — Tánwúlán’s cluster of brief moral-doctrine sūtras.
Translations and research
- Zürcher, Erik. The Buddhist Conquest of China. Leiden: Brill, 1959 (rpt. 2007).
- Bodhi, Bhikkhu, trans. The Connected Discourses of the Buddha. Boston: Wisdom, 2000.