Fó shuō juédìng zǒngchí jīng 佛說決定總持經
The Buddha Speaks: The Sūtra of Definitive Dhāraṇī (Skt. Buddhakṣepaṇa; alt. Bō-dìng-chí jīng 波定持經) translated by 竺法護 (Zhú Fǎhù, Dharmarakṣa, 譯)
About the work
T811 in one fascicle is a Mahāyāna sūtra on the doctrine of dhāraṇī and the karmic obstruction to its acquisition, translated by 竺法護 (Dharmarakṣa) at Cháng’ān during his Western Jìn translation career. The Sanskrit reflex per CANWWW is Buddhakṣepaṇa (“[Sūtra of] What Is Tossed [to/by] the Buddha”), with the alternate Chinese title 波定持經 (a phonetic transliteration of part of the Sanskrit). The doctrinal centre of the text is the definitive dhāraṇī (決定總持 juédìng zǒngchí) — the irreversible mnemonic-doctrinal capacity that characterises advanced bodhisattvas.
Abstract
The text opens at Mt Gṛdhrakūṭa near Rājagṛha, where the Buddha, surrounded by 1,250 bhikṣus and 80,000 bodhisattvas, expounds the doctrine of the dhāraṇī-gateway (總持門 zǒngchí mén). Among the audience are ten “men of clan” (族姓子 zúxìngzǐ = kula-putra) who hear the doctrine, are inspired, and resolve to attain the dhāraṇī. They renounce sleep, ease and the householder life, and devote themselves to the practice for seven years.
But after the seven years they have failed: they have not even attained a moment’s settled samādhi, much less the dhāraṇī. They lose heart, abandon their śramaṇa robes, return to lay life, and resume the five lay occupations (五業), embittered against the dharma. Meanwhile King Ajātaśatru (阿闍貰) has come for instruction, and seven days later returns with seven koṭis of his subjects, the failed ten among them.
The bodhisattva Wúqièxíng 無怯行 (“Fearless-Practice”; Skt. probably Aśoka-vikrama) addresses the Buddha and asks the cause of the ten men’s failure. The Buddha reveals their jātaka: in a remote past life they had slandered the Dharma (謗毀佛法 bànghuǐ fófǎ) and refused to listen to it; this karmic root has now ripened in the present obstruction. The body of the sūtra expounds the doctrine that slander of the dharma is the gravest karmic obstruction (āvaraṇa) to spiritual attainment, requiring countless kalpas of repentance and merit-making to clear. The Buddha then teaches the methods by which the obstruction may be overcome: confession (deśanā), the cultivation of the catur-brahma-vihāra, the practice of prajñā-pāramitā, and the recitation of the zǒngchí through which the inner dhāraṇī-faculty becomes irreversibly established.
The doctrine — that dharmāpāya (slander of the dharma) produces multi-kalpa obstruction, but is curable through the bodhisattva-path — is foundational for Mahāyāna theories of karma and the irreversibility of the bodhisattva-mārga.
Translations and research
- Boucher, Daniel. “Dharmarakṣa and the Transmission of Buddhism to China.” Asia Major 19 (2006): 13–37.
- Davidson, Ronald M. “Studies in Dhāraṇī Literature I: Revisiting the Meaning of the Term Dhāraṇī.” Journal of Indian Philosophy 37 (2009): 97–147.
Links
- CBETA online
- Kanseki DB
- Dazangthings date evidence (300): [ T ] T = CBETA [Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association]. Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新脩大藏經. Edited by Takakusu Junjirō 高楠順次郎 and Watanabe Kaigyoku 渡邊海旭. Tokyo: Taishō shinshū daizōkyō kankōkai/Daizō shuppan, 1924-1932. CBReader v 5.0, 2014. https://dazangthings.nz/cbc/source/1/