The Sūtra on the Threefold Training

The Sūtra on the Threefold Training is, in essence, a brief outline of the core teachings of Buddha Śākyamuni, which he gave while traveling toward Kuśinagara in the last year before his parinirvāṇa. It was given to a large audience of fully ordained monks in a grove to the north of Kuṭigrāmaka, a village in the ancient Indian country of Vṛji, which extended from the north bank of the Ganges opposite Pāṭaliputra up to the Madhesh regions of what is currently southern Nepal. The sūtra’s condensed teaching represents the three stages of the gradual Buddhist path to enlightenment and emphasizes how the trainings are undertaken in progression. The first training, discipline, is taught as the basis for the second training, meditative concentration, which in turn is a prerequisite to wisdom, the third training.

There appear to be several parallels or versions of this text. In its Tibetan translation it is preserved not only as an independent sūtra, but also in the form of short passages in two long vinaya texts, the Bhaiṣajyavastu (sixth chapter of the Vinayavastu)1 and the Vinayakṣudrakavastu.2 It is also found as a passage in the non-Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra, of which so far only incomplete Sanskrit manuscripts are extant, although a Sanskrit version has been reconstructed by Ernst Waldschmidt (1951). With some variant readings, the same passage appears, too, in the still extant Pali Mahāparinibbāna Sutta. Translations of it in Chinese can be found as part of the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra and passages in some vinaya texts.3

A number of studies and translations of the aforementioned texts in Western languages have been carried out, for example those by Waldschmidt (1951) and Rhys Davids (1951). However, there have hitherto been no translations, as far as we know, of the independent sūtra.

In this translation of the sūtra from the Tibetan Kangyur, the text is introduced with the title in Sanskrit and Tibetan, proceeding with the homage and then the general opening formula of “Thus have I heard at one time.” Naturally, in the other versions in which this text is embedded as part of a larger work, these introductory statements and the concluding sentence are not included. Besides this, there are a few variant readings in the Tibetan, Sanskrit, Pali, and especially in the Chinese. Since most of them do not alter the meaning significantly, we have chosen to note only the most important variants.