The Precious Discourse on the Blessed One’s Extensive Wisdom That Leads to Infinite Certainty
Introduction

This sūtra, The Precious Discourse on the Blessed One’s Extensive Wisdom That Leads to Infinite Certainty,1 is one of the longer works in the Kangyur, filling no less than five hundred fifty Tibetan pages in the Degé Kangyur. However, in spite of its impressive size, the sūtra has remained virtually unread and unstudied in the West. Apart from a brief summary of the text by Csoma de Körös in 1836,2 it has not to our knowledge been the focus of any scholarship in English until now.

While little is known of its history in India, the sūtra was translated into Tibetan at the time of the early transmission period by the prolific Prajñāvarman and the lesser known Yeshé Nyingpo, and then revised and finalized by Śuddhasiṃha, the Kashmiri Sarvajñādeva, and the great translator and editor Kawa Paltsek. It was included in the Denkarma inventory of translated texts, thought to have been compiled in the early ninth century.3 The Denkarma simply mentions that it consisted of the equivalent of 7,500 ślokas in twenty-five bampo, or bundles.

The sūtra does not seem to have been translated into Chinese, and there is, to our knowledge, no extant Sanskrit manuscript. This English translation has been made from the Tibetan, based primarily on the version in the Degé Kangyur but also with reference to variants as recorded in the Comparative Edition.

The main doctrinal theme of the sūtra is the kinds of knowledge and wisdom specific to a tathāgata, particularly those usually known as the ten powers or strengths (Skt. bala, Tib. stobs)‍—although in this text these ten are not explicitly enumerated as such, and indeed the classification and scope of the qualities presented extends well beyond that usual set of ten (see i.­9–i.­10 below). The explanation takes place first in a long teaching that focuses on how these qualities make the Buddha unique compared to any other spiritual teacher, and later in the text when the Buddha himself recounts the roots of merit in his past that have allowed them to unfold in his awakened state.

The doctrinal content of the sūtra is structured around a narrative in which a sandalwood residence or temple has been constructed for the Buddha in a distant region, supervised by the monk Pūrṇa, who delivers a teaching. The Buddha is invited from afar to visit the temple, and does so by flying there with a large entourage. The excitement of the event causes a commotion among the nāgas in the nearby ocean, and the Buddha responds by flying to Lake Anavatapta to be received by a multitude of nāgas and their kings, and then also delivering a long teaching on events from his past lives.

The story is similar in many respects to an episode in the narrative known as The Exemplary Tale of Pūrṇa (Pūrṇāvadāna), widely disseminated in Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan, and Chinese. It is found in Tibetan (like many such narratives) in the Vinaya section of the Kangyur in the Bhaiṣajyavastu (chapter 6 of the Vinayavastu, Toh 1),4 and in Sanskrit in the Divyāvadāna, a collection thought to have been compiled in Nepal in the seventeenth century from many much older sources.5 Between the narrative in this sūtra and the equivalent episode in The Exemplary Tale of Pūrṇa, there are a number of significant differences,6 and The Exemplary Tale of Pūrṇa records no lengthy teachings given at the time, whether by Pūrṇa or the Buddha. Nevertheless, the similarities are such that it is reasonable to suppose the Pūrṇa of this text to be‍—among the several disciples of the Buddha with the name Pūrṇa7‍—the Pūrṇa whose full story is told in The Exemplary Tale of Pūrṇa, and who was originally a trader from Aparānta on the west coast of India. The full account in The Deeds explains what had led Pūrṇa back to this distant coastal homeland of his, and how he had come by the large quantity of sandalwood required to build a temple. Its narrative also supplies reasons why the building might have been reserved for the Buddha’s use alone‍—a notion that is echoed in this sūtra, but in the quite different form of a detailed discourse on some of the unique qualities that set the Buddha quite apart from anyone else.

Thematically, the sūtra can be divided into three parts: (1) a description of the Buddha’s omniscient wisdom, (2) the praises of the Buddha sung by several nāga kings, and (3) stories of the Buddha’s past lives. Although there are no formal chapter divisions in the Tibetan text, we have divided the translation into three corresponding chapters to allow easier navigation within this very long text.

The first part, after a brief introductory passage, comprises an extensive teaching addressed by Pūrṇa to the unnamed householder who is the temple’s master builder. From the householder’s opening statement, he also seems to be the sponsor, or one of the sponsors, of the building project,8 and he is at first concerned that the building will be left empty during the times when the Buddha resides elsewhere. Wishing to put his gift to good use, he suggests to Pūrṇa that perhaps other spiritual seekers could live in the temple whenever the Buddha is absent. In reply Pūrṇa explains why that would not be proper, since no other spiritual teacher possesses qualities that would warrant their occupying the omniscient one’s residence. To make his case, Pūrṇa now delivers an extensive teaching (which continues for more than two hundred pages) on the omniscient wisdom unique to the Buddha. Pūrṇa lists all the kinds of knowledge that the Buddha possesses in a format that is loosely structured around the often cited “ten powers of a buddha,” as well as the other awakened insights of a buddha, such as his fearlessness and correct understanding. This teaching is essentially an abhidharma exposition of awakened experience.

The enumerations of the Buddha’s qualities set out in this section are well known from numerous other sources, although Pūrṇa’s teaching does not always follow to the letter the traditional way these sets of qualities are structured. One common list of the Buddha’s ten powers of knowing (jñāna­bala), which appears frequently throughout both Pali and Sanskrit sources, is as follows:9

While Pūrṇa’s presentation of the ten powers generally follows the above schema (though with several differences in the order), he also interrupts this structure with elaborations on the individual powers, which he breaks up into further subsections. At times, this results in extensive topical tangents in which numerous subcategories of abhidharma theory‍—including not only the elements and senses, but also cosmology, time, the workings of karma, the predispositions of beings, and so forth‍—are related to the Buddha’s omniscience. A number of references across these categories are interwoven with his explanations. As an aid to navigation in this long and complex passage, we have added subtitles, not in the Tibetan text, that also correlate (if incompletely) with the stories told in the third chapter (see below).

The unique contribution of Pūrṇa’s teaching is no doubt his attempt to relate each of the ten powers in turn‍—and many of their subdivisions, too‍—to each of the four truths of the noble ones (suffering, origin, cessation, and path) individually. For each type of knowledge unique to the fully awakened experience, we are told that the Buddha knows how it relates specifically to the knowledge of each of the four truths. The Buddha thus correctly knows how to employ every single one of his awakened qualities to bring the limitless beings under his sphere of influence to their own awakening.

This first part of the sūtra is characterized by extensive repetition, with only minor variations as the text progresses through the various lists of the Buddha’s awakened qualities and their relationship to the four truths. This rather stringent and repetitive language is of course reflected in the translation.10 To a contemporary audience, such continuous repetition may seem awkward and tedious, and even counterproductive to religious inspiration. However, it is important to remember that in the Indian Buddhist culture in which the sūtra emerged, sacred texts fulfilled functions quite different from those of contemporary literature, which is largely secular. Extensive repetition of key passages is integral to a number of Buddhist scriptures, serving important mnemonic purposes and perhaps therapeutic ones, too.11 Contemporary readers may choose either to skim this part of the sūtra, or to read it in its complete form and immerse themselves in the worldview that the text develops. This section does contain a great deal of detailed information; the many kinds of wisdom and knowledge that Pūrṇa enumerates, and the fields he describes as their purview, cover a huge range of subjects. The section concludes with a final set of fifty descriptions (1.­416–1.­465) of all these wisdoms as mere convention without any ultimate reality.

In the second part of the sūtra, the master builder asks Pūrṇa if it would be possible to invite the Buddha and his monastic community to the new building and offer them a banquet. Although the Buddha is far away in Śrāvastī, the master builder follows Pūrṇa’s advice and instructions on how to make offerings, pray to the Buddha, and invite him to come.12 The Buddha is aware of the invitation and responds to it by flying through the sky with five hundred of his monks, who arrive for the meal with many miraculous displays. The excitement of their arrival, and their reception by millions of gandharvas sent by Śakra, causes a great commotion among the nāgas in the nearby ocean, and after the meal the Buddha flies off to the nāga king Anavatapta’s lake to pacify and instruct them. Numerous nāgas bring him offerings and, one after the other, thirty-one nāga kings sing his praises. At the end of their songs the Buddha declares that they are now on the way to awakening.

This part of the sūtra echoes in some respects the various iterations of the narrative known as the Anavataptagāthā (Verses of Anavatapta) found in early Gandhārī manuscripts13 as well as in the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya literature,14 in which (as one of his ten most important acts according to some versions) the Buddha flies to Lake Anavatapta with his monks. In the Mūlasarvāstivādin version (but not the Gandhārī text) of that narrative, as well as in the present sūtra (2.­26–2.­35), as a prelude Śāriputra and Maudgalyāyana engage in a humorous contest of supernatural powers. In all versions, at the lake, in the Anavataptagāthā many of the elders recite verses telling of the previous lives in which they aspired to become disciples, but here it is the nāga kings who recite verses of praise, and then the Buddha himself who relates‍—for most of the rest of the sūtra‍—the causes in his own previous lives that have led to his present qualities.

The third and final part of the sūtra forms in this way another extensive section (of almost three hundred Tibetan pages), in which the Buddha, at the request of one of the nāga kings and Maudgalyāyana, recounts the times in his past lives when specific spiritual trainings and religious activities led to his developing the insights that have now fully manifested in the form of his awakened knowledge. In a series of stories from his past, we are introduced to the individual events that produced thirty-three particular kinds of knowledge, as well as the precise relationship of each to the four truths of the noble ones. In this translation, we have added subtitles (not in the Tibetan) for each of these episodes. Typically, the stories recount unique trainings and practices that the aspiring bodhisattva undertook in order to serve beings. The accounts of those spiritual practices of his, that this third part of the sūtra thus presents as pathways to the specific insights of a buddha’s awakening, are set out in an order that corresponds closely to the order in which those same insights appear in the first part‍—they are a roadmap to the very qualities described by Pūrṇa earlier in the sūtra.

The sūtra, especially the long and detailed first part on the wisdoms and kinds of knowledge specific to a tathāgata, is potentially a rich canonical source for the enumerated topics set out in treatises such as the widely studied Abhi­dharma­kośa and Abhi­dharma­samuccaya. Nevertheless, the sūtra does not seem to have been very widely cited, and the few Tibetan authors who mention it over the centuries tend to focus on details that diverge from those in other, better known sources.

In the thirteenth century, the renowned Kadampa master Chomden Rikpai Raldri (1227–1305) cited this sūtra as mentioning that the mistaken views can be enumerated into sixty-two kinds.15 Subsequently, the sūtra seems to have been taken up in large part by authors associated with the Sakya and Kagyü schools. The historian Butön (1290–1364) listed it in his famous annals of Buddhism and remarked that it was noteworthy in particular for providing an alternative term for the present eon. While our present age is commonly known to Buddhist cosmology as the Bhadra­kalpa, or “Excellent Eon,” Butön highlights a passage in the sūtra stating that it may also be referred to as the “Vision of One Thousand Lotuses.”16 The sūtra’s mention of this name has been noted in other works, such as the extensive outline to the Lhasa Kangyur.17 Similarly, Gorampa Sönam Senge (1429–1489) highlights the text’s unique presentation of five, instead of four, māras, the fifth being the māra of karma.18 Taktsang Lotsawa Sherab Rinchen (b. 1405), in his renowned Understanding All Tenets, is one of a number of authors who cite the sūtra’s advice that bodhisattvas ought to become learned in treatises on all subjects.19

Among noteworthy Kagyü scholars to have made reference to the text are Gö Lotsāwa Shönnu Pal (1392–1481). In his influential commentary on the Ratna­gotra­vibhāga, Gö Lotsāwa calls on the sūtra to support his argument that non-Buddhists may attain the five superknowledges, yet in a way that is “not perfected.”20 Likewise, Drakpa Döndrub (1550–1617), an important Karma Kagyü master noted for his emphasis on the Prajñāpāramitā teachings, cited the text in his commentary on Atiśa’s Lamp for the Path to Awakening as a reference for understanding the lifespans of the gods in various god realms.21 Finally, the important Drikung Kagyü master, and first in the Chungtsang (chung tshang) incarnation lineage, Chökyi Drakpa (1595–1659), makes use of the text to support his argument that meditation experiences, if misinterpreted, can be the activity of Māra, a reference that could refer to any of a number of passages in the text.22

It is curious that the rather few references to this sūtra made by Tibetan authors tend to focus more on its oddities than on its extensive scope. Its main theme‍—that the vast but also infinitely detailed knowledge of the Tathāgata place him in a category so far beyond even the most accomplished of other human beings as to represent an entirely different order‍—is an important one, and we are pleased to make it available for the first time to readers in English.