Teaching the Eleven Thoughts

This brief sūtra takes place just before the Buddha attains parinirvāṇa, when he imparts his “final testament” (Tib. zhal chems) to those gathered around him. This consists of a brief instruction on eleven “thoughts” (Skt. saṃjñāna/saṃjñā; Tib. ’du shes)1 that should be cultivated by one who is on the verge of death: nonattachment, love, freedom from resentment, a sense of moral responsibility, a perspective on virtue and vice appropriate to the moment of death, courage in the face of the next life, a perception of impermanence and the lack of self, and the knowledge that nirvāṇa is peace.

There is no known Sanskrit version of this sūtra, and the Chinese canon does not include a translation.2 Because it has no colophon, we have no information concerning its translation from Sanskrit into Tibetan. It does appear that the sūtra had a complex transmissional history in Tibet. Versions of Teaching the Eleven Thoughts are found in both the Tshalpa (tshal pa) and Thempangma (them spangs ma) Kangyurs, but there is also a nearly identical sūtra called Teaching the Ten Thoughts (’du shes bcu bstan pa) that is not found in the Tshalpa Kangyurs but is found in the Thempangma Kangyurs (Stok, Ulaanbaatar, and Shey, as well as the Bhutan Kangyurs that appear to be in the Thempangma line). Teaching the Ten Thoughts is also found in the Hemis Kangyur, in the Lhasa and Narthang Kangyurs, and in the Lang mdo and the Namgyal collections.3 Moreover, a sūtra called Teaching the Ten Thoughts is found in three Dunhuang manuscripts,4 but in each case the actual text is a version of Teaching the Eleven Thoughts. Teaching the Ten Thoughts is distinguished from Teaching the Eleven Thoughts by its slightly more elaborate descriptions of the individual thoughts. As examples, we might compare the wording of the first two items in the two sūtras. In the present sūtra, the first two items are the thoughts of “nonattachment to this life” and “love for all beings”; in Teaching the Ten Thoughts, the first two items are the thoughts of nonattachment to “the domain (spyod yul) of this life” and of both love and compassion for all beings. The difference in number between the two sūtras is due to the fact that Teaching the Ten Thoughts has a single thought related to moral discipline, “the thought of acknowledging all faults and corruptions of moral discipline and undertaking the entirety of moral discipline,” whereas the present sūtra divides this thought into two‍—“the thought of acknowledging all faulty moral discipline” and “the thought of undertaking the entirety of moral discipline.” Apart from this, there are interesting variants and overlaps in spelling, word choice, and so forth that, while they do not substantially alter the meaning, suggest that there were multiple lines of translation, transmission, and/or editorial intervention that resulted in the different versions of the two nearly identical sūtras that are available to us today.

The list of saṃjñā enumerated in these two sūtras appears to be unique in the Kangyur, but there are several other sets of ten saṃjñā that at least partially overlap with the set of eleven found here. These include those found in the Girimānanda Sutta (Aṅguttara Nikāya 10.60) of the Pali canon, a version of which was translated into Tibetan in the fourteenth century by Tharpa Lotsawa and Ānandaśrī of Lankā (The Sūtra of Giriyānanda, ri’i kun dga’ bo’i mdo, Toh 38), in the Mahā­parinirvāṇa Sūtra (Toh 119), and in the Artha­vistara­dharma­paryāya (Toh 318). To illustrate, The Sūtra of Giriyānanda enumerates ten saṃjñā to be taught to the monk for whom the sūtra is named, who is suffering from a severe illness. Those ten are those of impermanence, the lack of self, impurity (mi gtsang ba), impediments (bar du gcod pa), abandoning, being without desire (’dod chags), cessation, not delighting in any world, impermanence in all conditioning (’du byed), and mindfulness of in- and out-breathing. By contrast, the Mahā­parinirvāṇa Sūtra presents a list of ten saṃjñā that consists of impermanence, suffering, the lack of self, abandoning food (kha zas spong ba), nonattachment to any world, death, the many faults of wrongdoing (nyes pa’i skyon mang ba), abandoning, cessation, and the lack of craving (sred pa med pa). The Mahā­parinirvāṇa Sūtra prefaces its presentation of this list by saying that a bodhisattva great being, monk, nun, layman, or laywoman who endeavors in these ten will attain nirvāṇa.

The present translation is based on the version of the sūtra found in the Degé Kangyur, with reference to the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma) and the Stok Palace Kangyur. The Stok Palace Kangyur version of Teaching the Ten Thoughts5 was also consulted for comparison, and a translation of that text has been included as an appendix.