The Sūtra on Having Moral Discipline

The Sūtra on Having Moral Discipline is set in Prince Jeta’s Grove in Śrāvastī, where the Buddha teaches his saṅgha of monks about the benefits of having moral discipline and the importance of guarding it. It is difficult, he says, to obtain a human life and encounter the teachings of a buddha, let alone to then take monastic vows and maintain moral discipline. But unlike just losing that one human life, which comes and then inevitably is gone, the consequences of failing in moral discipline are grave and experienced over billions of lifetimes. The Buddha continues in verse, praising moral discipline and its necessity as a foundation for engaging in the Dharma and attaining nirvāṇa. His teaching concludes with a reflection on the folly of pursuing fleeting worldly enjoyments.

It is noteworthy that this is not designated a Mahāyāna sūtra1 and does not address any explicitly Mahāyāna subjects. The Buddha is only in the presence of monks, and he only instructs them on how to attain nirvāṇa and the higher realms, rather than buddhahood. As the Buddha is addressing the monastic congregation, it can be assumed that the topic of moral discipline here pertains to maintaining the vows of a fully ordained monk, and indeed he refers to taking monastic vows as if it were a given for his audience.

In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, this sūtra is included in liturgical texts used in connection with the practice of the Vinaya. It is also cited and quoted in texts related to the Vinaya, and several topical outlines (sa bcad) of the sūtra were composed by Tibetan authors. Additionally, there are Tibetan commentaries on the sūtra itself, two of which we have consulted for this translation: one by the Rimé master Thupten Chökyi Drakpa (thub bstan chos kyi grags pa, 1823–1905) and one by the Geluk master Losang Palden Tenzin Nyendrak (blo bzang dpal ldan bstan ’dzin snyan grags, 1866–1928). This sūtra is also, though less commonly, called The Sūtra Praising Moral Discipline (tshul khrims rab bsngags kyi mdo).2

No information is given in the colophon as to the translator or editor of the Tibetan, nor is this sūtra found in any of the Tibetan imperial catalogs. In all, we know little about the history of the Tibetan translation.

There was no known Sanskrit original of Having Moral Discipline available until recently, when a manuscript containing a collection of twenty sūtras was found in the Potala Palace in Lhasa. Bhikṣuṇī Vinītā published a critical edition and English translation of this collection in the series Sanskrit Texts from the Autonomous Region (2010). Unfortunately, due to the inaccessibility of the manuscript collection and because it is missing a final colophon, its origin and date are currently unknown.3 There seems to be a thematic connection among these twenty sūtras: Vinītā notes that moral discipline (śīla) is a recurrent theme in the manuscript,4 and we also can identify themes of karmic cause and effect and the hierarchy of merit.

There are many details of the Tibetan versions that vary significantly from the Sanskrit manuscript, although the overall content is virtually the same. In the Sanskrit, the verses begin at the very start of the Buddha’s teaching (1.­3), whereas in the Tibetan the verse structure begins later (1.­6). Where the verses do begin in the Tibetan, there are some differences in the grouping of lines, and at times the Sanskrit is wordier or contains entirely different content, although not enough to significantly alter the meaning of the sūtra. We have attempted to group the lines of verse into stanzas by theme rather than into regular quatrains, and though this results in a few stanzas with an irregular number of lines, it matches with the Sanskrit at enough points to seem like a reasonable choice.

There is one Chinese translation (Taishō 1497) by Dānapāla (施護, b.?–d. 1017 ᴄᴇ). The Chinese translation is simply called Śīlasūtra (The Sūtra on Moral Discipline). This may be of interest as there are many texts called Sīlasutta in the Pali canon, but as far as we can tell none are similar enough in content for a clear relationship to be established. The Chinese text shows a significant degree of variation in the finer details as compared to both the Sanskrit and the Tibetan, but it shares the same basic structure and does not depart from the content found in the other texts.

There are several other English translations of this sūtra available, which we have consulted for our translation. One by Thubten Kalzang Rinpoche, Bhikkhu Nagasena, and Bhikkhu Khantipalo was made in 1973 and published by the Library of Tibetan Works & Archives; another was made in 1985 by the Nālandā Translation Committee as part of The Rites of Poṣadha, the translation of a liturgical text incorporating the sūtra by the fourteenth Karmapa, Thekchok Dorje (theg mchog rdo rje).5

We have based our translation primarily on the Degé edition of the Tibetan Kangyur, but we also consulted the Sanskrit, Chinese, and other Kangyur editions in the case of questionable terms or passages to establish the most plausible and accurate readings of the text. Citations of the Sanskrit in the notes are given using Vinītā’s emendations of the handwritten Potala manuscript. Any instance where we have diverged from the Degé has been noted, and any significant differences found in the various versions of the sūtra are recorded and explained in the notes.