The Chapter on the Scale of Life

The Chapter on the Scale of Life is the thirty-seventh of the forty-five chapters in the Ornaments of the Buddhas (Skt. Buddhāvataṃsaka; Tib. sangs rgyas phal po che). This chapter continues the Ornaments of the Buddhas’ series of dialogues, which occur not long after the Buddha’s awakening in Magadha. In this chapter a bodhisattva named King of Mind offers a discourse on the relativity of time between buddhafields. In the preceding chapter, he had expounded on the incalculable numbers of buddhas, bodhisattvas, and the worlds in which they appear. In this chapter, he focuses more particularly on the theme of time. The chapter’s title, “The Scale of Life,” makes it clear that the central theme of the varying spans of time found across different buddhafields has a direct bearing on the immense lifespans of the buddhas who live in them, preside over them, and are also responsible for their manifestation, as well as the lifespans of the bodhisattvas and other beings who inhabit them. Eleven buddhafields are enumerated in a formulaic manner, with an eon in the first being equivalent to a day in the following buddhafield, where an eon is, in turn, the equivalent of a day in the next, and so forth. In this way, a hierarchy of buddhafields is presented that begins with our world and culminates with the paramount buddhafield, Padmaśrī. This language of incredibly vast scales of time has the effect of testing the limits of human conception, thereby demonstrating that the qualities of the buddhas and their buddhafields are beyond quantification or conceptualization.

The Chapter on the Scale of Life is nearly identical to two other sūtras, Expounding the Qualities of the Thus-Gone Ones’ Buddhafields (Toh 104)1 and The Sūtra of King of the Inconceivable (Toh 268).2 Of the three versions, The Chapter on the Scale of Life is the most abbreviated because it lacks the narrative elements that frame the discourse in the other two sūtras. Whereas Toh 104 and 268 are stand-alone sūtras that need to be established in the historical narrative of the Buddha’s teaching career, The Chapter on the Scale of Life is part of the more extensive discourse presented in the Ornaments of the Buddhas collection, and thus is integrated into its narrative frame.3 The name of the primary interlocutor also differs across the three texts, as do some of the names of the buddhas and buddhafields listed in them. In the case of Toh 268, the names of most of the buddhafields are omitted altogether. Apart from these differences, the structure, terminology, and content of the three texts is largely the same. A Sanskrit witness of Toh 104 with the slightly variant title Ananta­buddha­kṣetra­guṇodbhāvana (Proclaiming the Qualities of the Infinite Buddhafields) provides an important resource for accessing the Sanskrit text for all three of these closely related sūtras.4

The Ornaments of the Buddhas is listed in both the Denkarma (Tib. ldan/lhan dkar ma) and Phangthangma (Tib. ’phang thang ma) catalogs, the two extant inventories of translations from the Imperial Period (629–841 ᴄᴇ).5 While there is no colophon specific to The Chapter on the Scale of Life, the colophon to the complete Ornaments of the Buddhas text states that it was translated by the chief editor-translator Yeshé Dé, together with the Indian scholars Jinamitra, Surendrabodhi, and others.

The translation offered here is based on the version found in the Degé Kangyur in consultation with the Sanskrit attested in the Ananta­buddha­kṣetra­guṇodbhāvana. Additionally, the variant readings recorded in the Comparative Edition (Tib. dpe bsdur ma) and the Stok Palace Kangyurs were consulted, and Expounding the Qualities of the Thus-Gone Ones’ Buddhafields and The Sūtra of King of the Inconceivable informed the translation. A Chinese translation of the Ornaments of the Buddhas was produced by Buddhabhadra (359–429) in the fifth century and is included in the Chinese canon (Taishō 278, Da fang guang fo hua yan jing 大方廣佛華嚴經). The “Scale of Life” chapter has been translated from the Chinese in The Flower Ornament Scripture, Thomas Cleary’s translation of the entire Ornaments of the Buddhas.6 Where possible, the Sanskrit names of buddhas and buddhafields have been supplied by the Ananta­buddha­kṣetra­guṇodbhāvana.