The Quintessence of the Sun
Chapter Eight
Toh 257
Degé Kangyur, vol. 66 (mdo sde, za), folios 91.b–245.b
- Bandé Zangkyong
- Bandé Kawa Paltsek
Imprint
Translated by the Dharmachakra Translation Committee
under the patronage and supervision of 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha
First published 2022
Current version v 1.0.13 (2024)
Generated by 84000 Reading Room v2.26.1
84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha is a global non-profit initiative to translate all the Buddha’s words into modern languages, and to make them available to everyone.
This work is provided under the protection of a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND (Attribution - Non-commercial - No-derivatives) 3.0 copyright. It may be copied or printed for fair use, but only with full attribution, and not for commercial advantage or personal compensation. For full details, see the Creative Commons license.
Table of Contents
Summary
The Quintessence of the Sun is a long and heterogeneous sūtra in eleven chapters. At the Veṇuvana in the Kalandakanivāpa on the outskirts of Rājagṛha, the Buddha Śākyamuni first explains to a great assembly the severe consequences of stealing what has been offered to monks and the importance of protecting those who abide by the Dharma. The next section tells of bodhisattvas sent from buddha realms in the four directions to bring various dhāraṇīs as a way of protecting and benefitting this world. While explaining those dhāraṇīs, the Buddha Śākyamuni presents various meditations on repulsiveness and instructions on the empty nature of phenomena. On the basis of another long narrative involving Māra and groups of nāgas, detailed teachings on astrology are also introduced, as are a number of additional dhāraṇīs and a list of sacred locations blessed by the presence of holy beings.
Acknowledgements
This text was translated by the Dharmachakra Translation Committee under the supervision of Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche. Benjamin Collet-Cassart translated the text from Tibetan into English and wrote the introduction. Andreas Doctor compared the draft translation with the original Tibetan and edited the text.
The translation was completed under the patronage and supervision of 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha.
The generous sponsorship of Jamyang Sun and Manju Sun, which helped make the work on this translation possible, is most gratefully acknowledged.
Text Body
The Quintessence of the Sun
Chapter Eight
With a wish to induce strong faith in the Three Jewels, the sage Jyotīrasa then uttered these appropriate and sweet-sounding words to all those groups of nāgas:
At that moment, all the male, female, boy, and girl nāgas and great nāgas who had gathered at the sacred site of wise sages joined their palms and exclaimed, “We prostrate to the one who is more exalted than the entire world, who has mastered all phenomena, who clears away the suffering of all sentient beings, who bestows all forms of happiness, who generates all kinds of joy, who has perfected all types of insight, who is always loving and filled with compassion, who accomplishes all activities, who reveals all the paths, who teaches the genuine vision, and who is worshiped by the gods and the nāgas! Worthy One of the three realms who deserves everyone’s worship, we have all been thrown into this prison of suffering—please liberate us from this place! We must stay together with those nāgas.”
The Blessed One then restored the body of all those nāgas to their previous condition, but they were still unable to leave that place. They all said to the sage Jyotīrasa, “That thus-gone one is genuine—he always seeks the happiness of all beings, and he does not want to harm anyone! We want to take refuge in him and stay close to him. Please enable us to leave this place quickly! Please liberate us from this bondage of the māras!”
The sage Jyotīrasa replied, [F.214.a] “In order to reverse the wheel of saṃsāra for the bodhisattva great beings, to purify the path of awakening, to teach the principle of cause and effect to sentient beings, […] and to cause them to achieve the buddha eye, the Thus-Gone One—the omniscient sage who is the outcome of great compassion aimed at providing welfare and happiness to all beings—has revealed the supreme abodes that focus on what has only rarely occurred63 and that, in common with the hearers, focus on sentient beings. For the bodhisattva great beings who attend to teachers, he also taught the sublime states that focus on that which arises from causes and on intellectual analysis. Right now, in countless buddha realms as numerous as all the smallest grains of sand in the Ganges, the Thus-Gone One is using the water of the Dharma to cleanse those bodhisattva great beings who master the six perfections of the unsurpassed vehicle as well as all other beings. He does this in order to free them from the ocean of saṃsāra, to subjugate the four māras, and to ensure that the lineage of the Three Jewels remains uninterrupted. The Thus-Gone One does not observe the realm of sentient beings who are afflicted by a multitude of conceptual afflictions. He is devoid of arising, movement, basis, characteristics, marks, attachment, determination, substance, darkness, light, apprehension, illumination, activity, and distinction. […] He is devoid of wishes with respect to all the aggregates, the elements, the sense sources, and the great elements, as well as craving with respect to the nature of the eye that is devoid of a subject of experience up to craving with respect to the nature of the mind that is devoid of a subject of experience. He is devoid of formation and engagement. He liberates beings through the realm of phenomena, the limit of reality, the absence of cessation, the unadulterated suchness, [F.214.b] the realm of phenomena devoid of engagement, the ultimate emptiness, and the nonregressing sameness of all phenomena.64 He is endowed with the conduct of perpetual wisdom, and he apprehends what is genuine. Right now, this thus-gone one teaches the sublime states devoid of reference point to the bodhisattva great beings who have fully trained in the practices of the six perfections, whose minds are equal to space, who have reached the sameness of unattached wisdom, and who have truly overcome the afflictions associated with the latent tendencies of all views.”
Oh! As this teaching was being given by the sage Jyotīrasa, the nāga king Sāgara and the nāga kings Body-Piercing Needle, Harsh to the Moon, and Precious Protector remembered the roots of virtue and aspirations related to the bodhisattva conduct they had accumulated in the past, and they achieved recall endowed with insight and composure.
At that time, eighty-four other nāgas also remembered the roots of virtue and aspirations related to the bodhisattva conduct they had accumulated in the past, and they achieved the absorption that does not forget the mind of awakening. They said to the bodhisattva Jyotīrasa, “Please take our message to supplicate the compassionate Thus-Gone One, who has developed great compassion such that he can free us from the bondages of the māras in this place!”
“I shall do so!” replied the bodhisattva great being Jyotīrasa, and he miraculously left that place in the appearance of a sage and with a retinue of many thousands of sages.
This concludes the eighth among the eleven chapters included in “The Quintessence of the Sun ,” the noble Great Vehicle discourse of The Great Assembly.
Colophon
This was translated by the Indian preceptors Sarvajñadeva, Vidyākaraprabha, and Dharmākara and the translator Bandé Zangkyong. It was then edited and finalized by the translator-editor Bandé Kawa Paltsek.
Bibliography
Tibetan Sources
nyi ma’i snying po (Sūryagarbha). Toh 257, Degé Kangyur vol. 66 (mdo sde, za), folios 91.b–245.b.
nyi ma’i snying po. bka’ ’gyur (dpe bsdur ma) [Comparative Edition of the Kangyur], krung go’i bod rig pa zhib ’jug ste gnas kyi bka’ bstan dpe sdur khang (The Tibetan Tripitaka Collation Bureau of the China Tibetology Research Center). 108 volumes. Beijing: krung go’i bod rig pa dpe skrun khang (China Tibetology Publishing House), 2006–9, vol. 66, pp. 262–616.
nyi ma’i snying po. Stok Palace Kangyur vol. 63 (mdo sde, na), folios 161.b–394.b.
glang ru lung bstan pa (Gośṛṅgavyākaraṇa). Toh 357, Degé Kangyur vol. 76 (mdo sde, aH), folios 220.b–232.a. English translation in Dharmachakra Translation Committee 2021. [Full citation listed in secondary sources]
zla ba’i snying po (Candragarbha). Toh 356, Degé Kangyur vol. 76 (mdo sde, aH), folios 216.a–229.b.
snying rje pad+ma dkar po (Karuṇāpuṇḍarīka). Toh 112, Degé Kangyur vol. 50 (mdo sde, cha), folios 129.a–297.b. English translation in Roberts 2023. [Full citation listed in secondary sources]
ting nge ’dzin gyi rgyal po (Samādhirāja). Toh 127, Degé Kangyur vol. 55 (mdo sde, da), folios 1.b–170.b. English translation in Roberts 2018. [Full citation listed in secondary sources]
sprin chen po (Mahāmegha). Toh 232, Degé Kangyur vol. 64 (mdo sde, wa), folios 113.a–214.b. English translation in Mahamegha Translation Team 2022. [Full citation listed in secondary sources]
blo gros mi zad pas bstan pa (Akṣayamatinirdeśa). Toh 175, Degé Kangyur vol. 60 (mdo sde, ma), folios 79.a–174.b. English translation in Braarvig and Welsh 2020. [Full citation listed in secondary sources]
Nāgārjuna. mdo kun las btus pa (Sūtrasamuccaya). Toh 3934, Degé Tengyur vol. 110 (dbu ma, ki), folios 148.b–215.a. See also Bhikkhu Pāsādika 1989.
Denkarma (pho brang stod thang ldan dkar gyi chos kyi ’gyur ro cog gi dkar chag). Toh 4364, Degé Tengyur vol. 206 (sna tshogs, jo), folios 294.b–310.a.
Chomden Rikpai Raltri (bcom ldan rig pa’i ral gri). bstan pa rgyas pa rgyan gyi nyi ’od. In bka’ gdams gsung ’bum phyogs bsgrigs thengs gsum pa, 1:191–266. Chengdu: si khron mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2009. BDRC W1PD153536.
Chinese Sources
Rizang fen 日藏分. Taishō 397-14. (Translation of the Sūryagarbhasūtra by Narendrayaśas [Naliantiyeshe 那連提耶舍]).
Secondary Sources
Bhikkhu Pāsādika, ed. Nāgārjuna’s Sūtrasamuccaya: A Critical Edition of the Mdo kun las btus pa. Fontes Tibetici Havnienses 2. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1989.
Braarvig, Jens. Akṣayamatinirdeśasūtra. Vol. 2, The Tradition of Imperishability in Buddhist Thought. Oslo: Solum Forlag, 1993.
Braarvig, Jens, and David Welsh, trans. The Teaching of Akṣayamati (Akṣayamatinirdeśa, Toh 175). 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha, 2020.
Cutler, Joshua W. C., ed. The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment. Vol. 3. Translated by The Lamrim Chenmo Translation Committee. Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion, 2002.
Demiéville, Paul. Choix d’études bouddhiques. Leiden: Brill, 1973.
Dharmachakra Translation Committee, trans. The Prophecy on Mount Gośṛṅga (Gośṛṅgavyākaraṇa, Toh 357). 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha, 2021.
Herrmann-Pfandt, Adelheid. Die lHan kar ma: ein früher Katalog der ins Tibetische übersetzten buddhistischen Texte. Vienna: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2008.
Hoernle, A. F. Rudolph. Manuscript Remains of Buddhist Literature Found in Eastern Turkestan. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1916.
Kotyk, Jeffrey Theodore. “Buddhist Astrology and Astral Magic in the Tang Dynasty.” PhD diss., Leiden University, 2017.
Lévi, Sylvain (1904). “Notes chinoises sur l’Inde: IV. Le pays de Kharoṣṭra et l’écriture kharoṣṭrī.” Bulletin de l’Ecole française d’Extrême-Orient 4 (1904): 543–79.
———(1905). “Notes chinoises sur l’Inde: V. Quelques documents sur le bouddhisme indien dans l’Asie centrale (première partie).” Bulletin de l’Ecole française d’Extrême-Orient 5 (1905): 253–305.
Mahamegha Translation Team (2022), trans. The Great Cloud (1) (Mahāmegha, Toh 232). 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha, 2018.
Mak, Bill M. “Indian Jyotiṣa through the Lens of Chinese Buddhist Canon.” Journal of Oriental Studies 48, no. 1 (June 2015): 1–19.
Martin, Dan. Unearthing Bon Treasures: Life and Contested Legacy of a Tibetan Scripture Revealer, with a General Bibliography of Bon. Brill’s Tibetan Studies Library 1. Leiden: Brill, 2001.
Nakamura, Hajime. Indian Buddhism: A Survey with Biographical Notes. Intercultural Research Institute Monograph Series 9. Tokyo: KUFS Publication, 1980.
Nattier, Jan. Once Upon a Future Time: Studies in a Buddhist Prophecy of Decline. Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1991.
Roberts, Peter Alan, trans. The King of Samādhis Sūtra (Samādhirājasūtra, Toh 127). 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha, 2018.
———(2023), trans. The White Lotus of Compassion (Karuṇāpuṇḍarīkanāmamahāyānasūtra), Toh 112. 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha, 2023.
Silk, Jonathan A. Managing Monks: Administrators and Administrative Roles in Indian Buddhist Monasticism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.