The Good Eon
Introduction

The Good Eon recounts the names and circumstances pertaining to all the one thousand and four buddhas1 who will appear in our world during this current eon, which is commonly known among Mahāyāna Buddhists as the Good Eon.2 Listed as the first scripture in the General Sūtra section of most Kangyur collections, it is among the longest of the Mahāyāna sūtras translated into Tibetan.3 Besides occupying this place of honor in the Kangyur, The Good Eon was often copied or printed separately in Tibet, where it has long functioned as a special ceremonial scripture that is read aloud by lamas on special occasions to foster well-being and good fortune, and that is often kept on the family altar in Tibetan homes for this purpose.

The sūtra unfolds in a park outside the city of Vaiśālī. The Buddha is resting there on his way to Vaiśālī from the city of Śrāvasti, where his monastic community has recently completed the annual rainy season retreat. Within the vast retinue that surrounds the Buddha is the bodhisattva Prāmodyarāja, who after a period of fasting and meditation approaches the Buddha. With the benefit of beings in mind, the bodhisattva requests instruction based on a certain meditative absorption that will allow one to accomplish omniscience. The Buddha proceeds to deliver a teaching on an absorption called elucidating the way of all phenomena, explaining how in the distant past, because a monarch (a previous life of the Buddha Akṣobhya) enabled a teacher (a previous life of the Buddha Amitāyus) to expound that absorption, he and his thousand sons were subsequently able to serve three billion buddhas over eighty eons. As a result, the thousand sons became destined to be the thousand buddhas of the Good Eon. Upon hearing this teaching, innumerable beings are deeply moved and attain profound states of liberation and awakening. At the end of his teaching, the Buddha himself enters this meditative absorption, as does Prāmodyarāja.

After seven days have elapsed, the citizens of Vaiśālī grow concerned and seek a way to rouse the Blessed One from his absorption for the benefit of gods and humans. Prāmodyarāja fulfils their wishes as he reemerges from meditation and requests the Buddha to explain the nature of the six perfections. The Buddha happily complies and delivers a remarkable and detailed long prose discourse (2.­29–2.­370) that elaborates one hundred and twenty-one different variations of the six perfections.

Responding to further questions from Prāmodyarāja, the Buddha reveals that in fact all the future buddhas of the current Good Eon are already present in the audience of bodhisattvas surrounding him, having mastered the absorption that he taught before. Overjoyed by this auspicious news, Prāmodyarāja further requests that the Buddha, out of love for the world, explain the names and circumstances under which these bodhisattvas will awaken as buddhas. The rest of the text comprises the Buddha’s reply, in the form of three enumerations, each of which includes the names of all the buddhas of the Good Eon.

In the first enumeration (2.A.­6–2.A.­99) the Buddha pronounces just the names of all the tathāgatas of the Good Eon, in a verse passage of ninety-three stanzas to which we have added the heading “the names” (although there are no headings in the source text). This list of names is followed by a few stanzas on the benefits of hearing and knowing them.

In the second enumeration (2.B.­2–2.B.­2514), again at Prāmodyarāja’s request, the Buddha then delivers a very extensive account in mixed prose and verse‍—comprising the main bulk of the text‍—that details, for each of the tathāgatas he had named, their respective birthplaces, family lines, physical radiance, family members, and chief disciples; the extent of their monastic community; their lifespans and the general lifespan of humans at the time; the duration of their teachings; and the character of their relics. This second list we have designated “the lives.”

In the third enumeration (2.C.­4–2.C.­997), again at Prāmodyarāja’s request, the Buddha proceeds to explain the circumstances under which each of these buddhas of the Good Eon was first inspired to develop the mind of awakening. Each buddha is covered in one stanza, in which we are told about their previous lives and occupations as they encountered buddhas of the past, and how they were moved to develop the compassionate resolve to attain awakening for the benefit of all. We have given this third list of 994 stanzas the heading “the engendering of the mind of awakening.”4

The importance of giving rise to the mind set on awakening is underlined in a set of verses that follow, and the Buddha then tells another, different story of the previous lives of these thousand buddhas of the Good Eon when they were all the sons of a king who was another previous life of the Buddha Amitāyus. He then adds a further story, that of a universal emperor (a previous life of the Buddha Dīpaṅkara) and his sons, ministers, and queens, the consequence of whose devotion and determination will mature in three separate eons in the distant future. One eon will see ten thousand buddhas appearing (the sons), another eighty thousand (the ministers), and the third eighty-four thousand (the queens). The sūtra thus ends with a powerful account of the wondrous merit that ensues from contact with this teaching on the meditative absorption known as elucidating the way of all phenomena.

The theme for which The Good Eon is best known is its principal one, the detailed naming and descriptions of the thousand and four buddhas of the present Good Eon.5

The appearance of successive buddhas over time is a theme common to all Buddhist traditions. From a historical viewpoint, artifacts referencing past buddhas can be dated as early as the emperor Aśoka’s time (third century ʙᴄᴇ), and references to the well-known set of seven successive buddhas are frequent from at least the first century ʙᴄᴇ onward. Mentions of multiple buddhas in both time and place are, of course, very widespread in the Mahāyāna sūtras.

The notion that buddhas have arisen and will arise one after another over time is the logical corollary of the idea that buddhas arise not as individuals in isolation but because they have, in previous lifetimes, been inspired and taught by previous buddhas. In this fundamental process through which the presence and teaching of buddhas inspire ordinary beings to themselves become further buddhas, the successive stages are seen as being spread over very long periods spanning many eons. The stages are defined in various different ways, but in essence the process begins with a period in which an individual accumulates merit independently, without necessarily involving the influence of a buddha. This is then followed by the first vow to attain awakening in the presence of a buddha, and at some subsequent point the prophecy of awakening made by another, later buddha. Next comes a long period of maturation during which the six (or more) perfections are practiced and the successive bodhisattva levels are traversed under the guidance of still more buddhas. During this period the bodhisattva will eventually reach a stage of irreversible progress after which awakening is inevitable. The process culminates in the bodhisattva being anointed by the preceding buddha as the next to come, taking birth in the Heaven of Joy, and being reborn in the final human lifetime in which awakening as a tathāgata will occur.6

Each buddha during his dispensation will, in turn, inspire numerous disciples to make the aspirational vow to become awakened, will teach and guide others already on their path to that end, will prophesy the future awakening of many, and will anoint an immediate successor. The number of formal prophecies of awakenings made by the Buddha Śākyamuni alone throughout the canonical sūtras would account for a very large number of future buddhas. Most of these, however, are destined for awakening in a future eon rather than in the present one. The buddhas of the present fortunate eon, detailed in this text, are all understood to have been granted their prophecies in eons of the distant past, even if the text makes no mention of the prophecies themselves.7

In the literature of different Buddhist traditions there are a number of sūtras and text passages that focus on detailing the lives of numerical sets of past buddhas, usually following a framework of standard features similar to that used in the second enumeration in this text, as described above (i.­6). The archetype among the sūtras common to both the Pali Canon and the Chinese (and Sanskrit) āgamas is the Mahāpadāna or Mahāvadāna,8 which gives details of the widely known series of seven successive buddhas. The later Pali Buddhavaṃsa includes twenty-five buddhas, from Dīpaṅkara to Śākyamuni. Two sūtras, both called Bahubuddhaka (“The Many Buddhas”), are incorporated in the Mahāvastu of the Lokottaravāda branch of the Mahāsaṅghika school9 and mention a vast number of buddhas, many in sequences numbering millions of the same name. A similar passage on the same theme, probably related to these Mahāsaṅghika sūtras, is included in the introductory section of the sixth-century Chinese translation of the Abhiniṣkramaṇa­sūtra, the Foben xingji jing.10 Another fragmentary Bahubuddhaka text detailing fifteen buddhas from Dīpaṅkara to Maitreya has been identified among the Gāndhāran scrolls written in Kharoṣṭhī script, found in recent decades and dated to the first century ʙᴄᴇ.11

A comparable “many buddhas” survey of buddhas met by the Buddha Śākyamuni in his past lives is found in the literature of the Mūlasarvāstivādin vinaya, with corresponding versions in Sarvāstivādin and Saṃmitīya texts. It summarizes the succession of buddhas he met in each of the three “incalculably long eons” preceding the present one‍—seventy-five thousand, seventy-six thousand, and seventy-seven thousand respectively‍—and describes the offerings, other acts of veneration, and aspirations he made, with a final section (in some versions) naming some seventy among those buddhas. This passage is found embedded in the Chinese, Tibetan, and fragmentary Sanskrit versions of the Bhaiṣajyavastu, which, in the Tibetan Vinaya section, is chapter 6 of the Vinayavastu (Toh 1).12

The scriptural accounts mentioned so far refer essentially to buddhas of the past, even if many of them also introduce Maitreya as the buddha who will succede Śākyamuni in the future. A much more extended future is outlined in a number of texts that contain the notion that our present eon is particularly “good” or fortunate in that a thousand (or in some texts five hundred) buddhas will appear in it, many of these texts not being of distinctly Mahāyāna allegiance.13 The Good Eon, with its enumerations of only four past buddhas but one thousand still to come, is therefore by no means unique, even if the detail in which it sets out these buddhas’ names and other characteristics is unparalleled. Another feature of The Good Eon, origin stories (in fact two different origin stories) of the thousand buddhas as a group of practitioners whose collective inspiration to attain awakening arose on a specific, collectively experienced occasion, are also not confined to this text alone. The next most detailed account of the thousand buddhas’ origin story comes in the Karuṇa­puṇḍarīka (The White Lotus of Compassion, Toh 112),14 of which the third and fourth chapters contain a long narrative about a king called Araṇemin (a previous lifetime of Amitāyus), his priest Samudrareṇu, and the priest’s son, the Buddha Ratnagarbha, whose followers more generally are destined to become most of the best-known buddhas and bodhisattvas of the Mahāyāna. Among them, a thousand young brahmin disciples are prophesied to become the thousand buddhas of the Good Eon, and of these seven are named.15

Similarly, a long narrative jātaka passage in the Tathāgatācintya­guhya­nirdeśa (The Teaching on the Unfathomable Secrets of the Tathāgatas, Toh 47) describes how the thousand sons of a king called Dhṛtarāṣṭra (a previous incarnation of the Buddha Dīpaṅkara) are prophesied to become the thousand buddhas of the Good Eon; some twenty of those buddhas are named, but only the first six match the names in The Good Eon.16

In the Vimala­kīrti­nirdeśa (The Teaching of Vimalakīrti, Toh 176), too, the Buddha recounts a jātaka story about the thousand sons of a king called Ratnacchattra (a previous lifetime of the Buddha Ratnārcis) who, under the Buddha Bhaiṣajyarāja, are prophesied to become the thousand buddhas.17

That the names and other details related to the thousand buddhas do not all correlate perfectly across texts is no great surprise. Even the three lists of buddhas within this single text do not match with full precision. That does not mean, however, that the prolific detail of this text and others like it should be dismissed as unimportant. Indeed, as this sūtra itself makes clear, just to recite, hear, and honor these names forges deep connections and aspirations, generates immeasurable merit, and brings inconceivable blessings. Moreover, the plethora of detail presented in this scripture also serves to underline the importance of aspiration, to reinforce the idea that countless buddhas can evolve from sentient beings, to illustrate the essential notion of lineage, and perhaps to delineate the past connections linking this set of successive buddhas destined to appear consecutively in a defined period of time in this particular universe. As a consequence of the merit and blessings associated with this powerful and intriguing theme of the thousand buddhas, it has found rich expression over the centuries not only in a wide range of literature but also in ritual,18 in temple mural and thangka paintings, and in sets of sculpted images.

A central theme of the sūtra‍—but one that can easily be overlooked, eclipsed as it is by the detailed accounts of the thousand buddhas themselves‍—is the meditative absorption that, the Buddha explains, has been the practice through which the buddhas Amitāyus and Akṣobhya attained buddhahood (1.­87 and 2.­3 respectively), and the practice through which the thousand princes destined to become the thousand buddhas first began to progress on the path (2.­3–2.­4).

The meditative absorption (samādhi) in question, which he names as elucidating the way of all phenomena, is not so much the kind of concentrated state of mind that is often designated by the term samādhi, but more a wide-ranging ensemble of attitudes, behaviors, and practices. In all their diversity, what these elements have in common is that they are all based on the defining quality of bodhisattvas, the mind set on awakening for the sake of all beings.

The sūtra contains a long list of almost five hundred different facets of this meditative absorption (1.­19–1.­34). This first list is followed (after a short verse description) by another list of ninety-seven qualities that are acquired by bodhisattvas who attain the absorption (1.­49–1.­53), culminating in the Buddha’s equating the absorption with its ultimate result, omniscience itself.

Lists very similar to these are seen in several other important Mahāyāna sūtras belonging to the genre sometimes described collectively as the “samādhi sūtras.” Their Tibetan translations in many Kangyurs are mostly grouped together on the basis that their titles all contain the term samādhi (Tib. ting nge ’dzin),19 but among texts with such titles a particular subset is formed by those containing long lists, like this one, of features attributed to a named samādhi, clearly referring to a diverse set of practices and attitudes that are not states of meditation, concentration, or visionary experience of the kind more usually designated by the term samādhi.20 Texts in this group include The King of Samādhis (Samādhi­rāja, Toh 127),21 The Samādhi of Valiant Progress (Śūraṅgama­samādhi, Toh 132), The Samādhi in which the Buddhas of the Present All Stand Before One (Pratyutpanna­buddha­saṃmukhāvasthita­samādhi, Toh 133), and The Absorption that Encapsulates All Merit (Sarva­puṇya­samuccaya­samādhi, Toh 134),22 all of which appear to have been referred to as “samādhis” by Asaṅga as early as the fourth century CE in his Mahā­yāna­saṃgraha.23 To these texts can be added The Absorption of the Miraculous Ascertainment of Peace (Pra­śānta­viniścaya­prāti­hārya­samādhi, Toh 129).24

The Good Eon, perhaps because it is placed elsewhere in the Kangyur and because its samādhi is not seen as its principal topic, is not widely recognized as belonging to this group of texts. Nevertheless, the samādhi list it contains bears striking similarity to the lists in the other sūtras mentioned, all of which (with the possible exception of The Absorption that Encapsulates All Merit) are quite similar to each other and contain sequences of nearly identical phrasing. Further research would be required to determine the details of the relationships between the list in this text and those in the other samādhi sūtras.

The samādhi list in The Good Eon is matched particularly closely by a samādhi list in a little-explored sūtra that exists only in Chinese, 觀察諸法行經 (Guancha zhufaxing jing), which as Taishō 649 is placed at the end of a series of other samādhi sūtras in volume 15. It was translated in the late sixth century ᴄᴇ by Jñānagupta. Its title is also the name of the samādhi described in the text, which matches the name of the samādhi in The Good Eon. As a sūtra in its own right, it starts with a different introductory passage and is set on Vulture Peak in Rājagṛha,25 but then focuses on the Buddha’s dialog with the bodhisattva Prāmodyarāja26 concerning the samādhi and its description. It appears therefore to represent an independent sūtra centered on the same samādhi passage as is found here in The Good Eon, but without the content concerning the thousand buddhas.27

No complete version of The Good Eon is extant in any Indic language, and until recently the only known references to this scripture in Indian Buddhist literature were two brief citations included in two famed anthologies, the Śikṣāsamuccaya (Toh 3940) and the Sūtrasamuccaya (Toh 3934).28 However, the recent discoveries of two manuscript fragments (one Gāndhāri and one Sanskrit) testify to a somewhat wider circulation of the text in India than was previously assumed.29 Though no complete Indic version of The Good Eon survives, we can trace its textual history back to at least 300 ᴄᴇ when it was first translated into Chinese (Taishō 425). The translator, the monk Dharmarakṣa, was one of the most important translators of Mahāyāna Buddhist texts in China, responsible for the translation of around one hundred and fifty texts, including the first Chinese version of the Lotus Sūtra.30 In addition to this Chinese translation, two newly identified fragments of another Chinese translation of The Good Eon now support the theory that an additional Chinese translation was produced by the famed translator Kumārajīva (344–411) but, sadly, was subsequently lost.31

According to the colophon to the Tibetan translation, the sūtra was translated into Tibetan by the Indian scholar Vidyākara­siṁha and the Tibetan translator Palgyi Yang. It was subsequently revised and finalized by the famous Tibetan editor Paltsek. This suggests that the Tibetan translation was produced in the late eighth or early ninth century ᴄᴇ. This dating is also confirmed by the text’s inclusion in the Denkarma catalog of the early ninth century.32

This English translation was prepared based on the Tibetan translation in the Degé Kangyur in consultation with the Comparative Edition (Tib. dpe bsdur ma) and the Stok Palace Kangyur.

Our translation benefited immensely from the previous research published on this sūtra. We are especially indebted to the highly informative article series published by Peter Skilling on The Good Eon (2010, 2011, 2012) and the joint publications by Skilling and Saerji on this sūtra (2014, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019). Skilling and Saerji did meticulous research on the names of the many buddhas that appear in the text, and we have, in many cases, adopted their renderings of these epithets.33 These scholars also translated the important section of the text that describes how these buddhas first developed the mind of awakening. Skilling and Saerji further published a careful study of the many references to the past lives of the Buddha that appear in the section on the perfections. We have referenced this research in the notes to our translation so that interested readers can easily consult it for further details. Finally, we also benefited from a complete translation of the Tibetan text that was published by Dharma Publishing several decades ago (The Fortunate Aeon, 1986). Considering the complexity and obscurity of many passages in this text, it is our hope that The Good Eon may continue to receive the sustained attention of scholars in the future. It is also our hope that this translation may be of benefit to those who wish to engage further with this beautiful sūtra.