Texts About Stūpas

The Avalokinī Sūtra takes place in the city of Rājagṛha, where the Buddha teaches on the benefits that result from honoring the stūpas of awakened beings. The major part of this teaching consists in the Buddha detailing the many positive rewards obtained by those who worship the buddhas’ stūpas with offerings, such as flowers, incense, and lamps.

The Buddha’s disciple Ānanda is on an alms round in Śrāvastī when he notices an immaculate palace. He wonders whether it would be more meritorious to offer such a palace to the monastic community or to enshrine a relic of the Buddha within a small stūpa. He poses this question to the Buddha who describes how the merit of the latter far exceeds any other offerings one could make. The reason the Buddha cites for this is the immense qualities that the buddhas possess.

While the Buddha is residing in the Realm of the Thirty-Three Gods with a retinue of deities, great hearers, and bodhisattvas, Avalokiteśvara asks the Buddha how beings can gain merit from building a stūpa. The Buddha responds by stating the Buddhist creed on dependent arising:

The Buddha then explains that this dependent arising is the dharmakāya, and that whoever sees dependent arising sees the Buddha. He concludes the sūtra by saying that one should place these verses inside stūpas to attain the merit of Brahmā.

In The Marvelous Dharma Discourse Ānanda asks the Buddha about the relative merit accrued by huge offerings made to revered beings as compared to the merit accrued by making even a miniature stūpa for the veneration of a buddha who has passed into parinirvāṇa. The Buddha replies that the merit accrued by creating even a tiny stūpa the size of a small fruit for the veneration of a buddha is greater than that accrued by offering the entire world, or even the universe and its palaces, to all stream enterers, once-returners, non-returners, arhats, pratyekabuddhas, and the saṅgha in the four directions.

This short text presents a set of mantras that, when placed inside a stūpa, multiply the merit of having built one stūpa by one hundred thousand. These dhāraṇīs are specifically said to be of benefit to future generations whose merit will be weak.

The Dhāraṇī for a Caitya is a short manual on the ritual preparation for and casting of small caityas from clay. The ritual has three main parts: a description of the general transformative power of the dhāraṇī, the preparation rituals for the ground and clay, and rituals for the consecration of the cast images. The main dhāraṇī, with the name vimaloṣṇīṣa, “stainless uṣṇīṣa,” was widely used in central and northeast Asian Buddhism, especially in the context of purification, consecration, and inauguration rituals.