Lalitavistara Sūtra

Translations of
Lalitavistara Sūtra
English The Extensive Play
Sanskrit Lalitavistara Sūtra
Chinese 普曜經
(pinyin: Pǔyào Jīng)
Tibetan རྒྱ་ཆེར་རོལ་པ་
(Wylie: rgya cher rol pa )
Glossary of Buddhism

The Lalitavistara Sūtra is a Mahayana Buddhist sutra that tells the story of Gautama Buddha from the time of his descent from Tushita until his first sermon in the Deer Park near Varanasi. The term Lalitavistara has been translated "The Play in Full" or "Extensive Play," referring to the Mahayana view that the Buddha’s last incarnation was a "display" or "performance" given for the benefit of the beings in this world.

Outline of the text

The sutra consists of twenty-seven chapters:[1]

The Offering of the Four Bowls to the Buddha, Borobudur, Indonesia.

The story ends at the very moment when the Buddha has finally manifested all the qualities of awakening and is fully equipped to influence the world, as he did over the next forty-five years by continuously teaching the Dharma and establishing his community of followers.

The Borobudur reliefs

Overview

The Borobudur reliefs contain a series of panels depicting the life of the Buddha as described in the Lalitavistara Sutra.[2] In these reliefs, the story starts from the glorious descent of the Buddha from the Tushita heaven, and ends with his first sermon in the Deer Park.

As an example of how widely the sutra was disseminated, the Lalitavistara Sutra was known to the Mantranaya (Vajrayana) practitioners of Borobudur, who had the text illustrated by stonemasons.[lower-alpha 1]

Episode 1: The Prelude to the Birth of the Buddha (panels 1-15)

The Bodhisattva in Tushita before his birth as Siddhartha Gautama. Borobudur
Māyā reclining. Borobudur

The Buddha lives among the clouds above Indra’s palace on the peak of Mount Meru. The future Buddha tells the gods he has decided to be reborn on earth. Around his waist there is wrapped a cord that supports his right knee. This is a convention used in Borobudur to denote people of high status. In honor of his upcoming birth, a few gods go to earth to teach Brahmans. The Buddha teaches the “Introduction of the Law” to the gods, and gives his crown to a bodhisattva named Maitreya, who is his successor-designate. The Buddha then asks the gods what form he should take in his mother’s womb. Some recommend the figure of a human, but others tell him that in the Brahmans’ books, the Buddha is described as an elephant with six tusks, brightly shining, with a red head oozing sap.

Queen Māyā and King Śuddodana live in a palace in the city of Kapilavastu. The king grants her request to undertake a vow of self-denial. Queen Māyā is seated in her quarters awaiting the Buddha’s descent. During the “Great Descent”, the Buddha sits on a throne in a pavilion, accompanied by an uncountable number of devas, yakṣiṇīs, and other supernatural beings. While Queen Māyā sleeps, the Buddha enters her womb in the shape of an elephant. That night, a lotus grows from the oceans to Brahma’s heaven. The lotus contains the essence of all creation. Brahma collects the essence in a bowl, and gives the Buddha the essence to drink as a mark of honor. This is one of the most popular scenes in ancient Buddhist art. Queen Māyā decides to go to a forest of ashoka trees. She arrives and sends a servant to ask the king to meet her there.

Episode 2: The Birth and Early Life of the Buddha (panels 16-45)

Māyā dreams of the birth of her son
Māyā leaves for Lumbini to give birth. Borobudur

The king arrives at the edge of the forest but is not allowed to go any further. The queen tells him of her dream, in which an elephant enters her womb. She asks him to get brahmans to interpret the dream. The brahmans tell the couple that the queen will bear a son who will become either a universal ruler or a buddha. Indra and other gods offer for the queen to stay in their palace during her pregnancy. The unborn Buddha creates the illusion that the queen is in all palaces to prevent any of the gods or kings to be disappointed. During her pregnancy, the queen acquires certain powers, such as the ability to restore people possessed by supernatural beings to their normal state by letting them view her, and also the power to heal diseases. The king lives as a hermit during her pregnancy. Queen Māyā asks the king to be allowed to give birth in Lumbini Grove. The queen sets out for the garden in a carriage. When she arrives, she walks until she comes to an ashoka tree which magically bends down for her. She grasps the limb, and the Buddha emerges from her right side. The baby takes seven steps in each of the four compass directions, and at each step a lotus springs up. After his birth, Indra and Brahma disguise themselves as brahmans to congratulate King Śuddhodhana along with many other gods. A week after Gautama is born, Queen Māyā dies and becomes a goddess. Her sister, Gautamī, becomes the baby prince’s guardian. (Later in life, Gautamī became the first bhikkhu.) Some Śākyas suggest the child should be taken to the temple. When the prince arrives, the statues in the temple come to life and kneel before him.

Gautama is sent to school when he is old enough. The schoolmaster is Viśvāmitra, and a god named Śubhāṅga is also there. The story skips a few years and then describes a visit to a rural village. This is where the scene of the first meditation takes place. The prince sits down under a guava tree to meditate.

The king wishes Gautama to marry because he remembers the prophecy that his son is to become a sage or a great ruler. The prince tells him he will give his answer in seven days. The prince consents and chooses Gopā as his wife. Only she can bear to look at him without being blinded by his radiance. Gopā’s father is not certain the prince is suitable for his daughter, so he requires the prince undergo some tests to prove his mental and physical abilities.

Episode 3: the Buddha’s Marriage and Renunciation of His Earlier Life (panels 46-75)

Prince Siddhartha Gautama cuts his hair and becomes a renunciant. Borobudur

Prince Siddhartha and 500 other princes go out to the city to demonstrate his powers. He sets a problem that only he can solve. The next test is an archery competition. Prince Siddhartha used an ancient bow which had been preserved in a temple since his grandfather’s time. He shot an arrow through seven trees, and through other various targets including an iron boar. Gopā’s father agrees to the marriage. Various gods including Indra and Brahma congratulate him on his marriage and ask when he will begin his quest for enlightenment.

The king dreams of the prince’s departure and tries to attract him to remain by building three more palaces to amuse him. The king posts guards around the prince’s palace and sends young women to entertain him. This is one of the most successful compositions on the monument.

One day the prince decides to go to a royal pleasure garden. Suddenly an old man appears to him, and the prince goes back to the palace. This is the first of the Four Encounters which motivate the prince to begin his quest for enlightenment. The second encounter the prince again sets out for the pleasure garden, but sees a sick man. Another occasion occurs where the prince sees a dead man surrounded by grieving relatives. The last encounter is again created by the gods, and involves a monk. He is at peace compared to the grief and suffering felt by the others. The prince meditates based on the example of the monk and on the path of salvation from suffering.

Prince Siddhartha comforts Gopā that night, who had a bad dream, then the next day went to the king and asked permission to leave. After the prince says goodbye to gods and other supernatural beings, he cuts off his hair. Then he discards his royal robes and puts on orange robes of a passing hunter. The prince goes to two places where brahman female hermits offer him food. Siddhartha had embarked on a life as a wandering ascetic.

Eventually Siddhartha reached Vaiśālī, where he asks permission to become a pupil of a brahman named Arada Kalapa. After some time, Arada acknowledged Siddhartha as his equal, and Siddhartha also becomes a teacher. Later, Siddhartha decides to resume his travels, and comes to the city of Rājagṛha to beg. The people are in awe of his appearance and think Brahma himself has come to beg. The next day a bright shining light comes from Mount Pandava, where Siddhartha is staying. The king asks him to stay and take half the kingdom. Siddhartha later visits a teacher in Rājagṛha named Rudraka and is invited to join him.

Episode 4: the Buddha’s Enlightenment (panels 76-105)

After a while the prince goes to Magadha. Five men from Rudraka’s group decide to follow him, and they meditate on Gayasirsa Mountain. Then the prince and his new disciples go to meditate beside the Nairañjanā River. This is where Siddhartha practices such harshness that he nearly starves himself. Because he is near death, his mother Māyā comes to see him and begins to cry. The gods offer to provide him with magical strength so he will not have to eat, but he is scared the people will believe he can live without food. He abandoned his fast, and the five disappointed disciples leave him.

The prince then goes to a place called Uruvila. Siddhartha decides to put on a new robe and takes a shroud from a dead woman named Rāḍhā. He washes it on a stone by a pond. When Siddhartha tries to leave the pond, the demon Māra makes the banks rise enormously high. The goddess of a tree beside the pond bends her branch and saves Siddhartha. Another god gives him a reddish robe.

The village chief’s daughter, Sujātā, invites the prince to her house and feeds him. Siddhartha returns to the Nairañjanā to bathe and takes a golden bowl that Sujātā gave him. Gods come to him and attend him. The prince sits down and finishes the food Sujātā gave him. When he is finished, Siddhartha throws the bowl into the river. Indra desired it, and turned into a garuda to take it from the nagaraja who saved the bowl.

Brahma and a group of gods go to pay homage to Siddhartha. It is now time for Sakyamuni to seek a tree to meditate under. The Māra attacks the prince in a final effort of preventing him to seek enlightenment. Māra failed to defeat Sakyamuni by force, so he sends his beautiful daughters to try to arouse him, but this fails also.

Sakyamuni reaches Supreme Enlightenment, and becomes the Buddha, the “Enlightened One.” the Buddha remained in the same position for seven days, but arises to walk twice to far distances. Both times however, he returned to his bodhimaṇḍa under the Bodhi Tree.

Four weeks after enlightenment, the Buddha goes to stay with a nāgarāja named Mucalinda. The weather was poor so the nāgarāja protects the Buddha while he meditates. After five weeks, the Buddha leaves Mucilinda’s palace to walk to a banyan tree. On the way he meets ascetics who ask him how he has borne such a week of bad weather. The Buddha goes to meditate under another tree, and merchants pass by who are frightened by the portents, but a goddess reassures them. The merchants offer the Buddha food. He would like a bowl to put it in, and the four gods, “Great Kings,” each offer him bowls. Afraid to offend them, he takes them all and combines them into one.

Episode 5: The Preaching of the First Sermon (panels 106-120)

Gautama Buddha after his enlightenment with the five ascetics. Borobudur

That same night, the gods including Brahma and Indra, ask the Buddha to preach the Law. By morning he agrees to preach, and asks to whom he should first preach the Law. He asks for Rudraka, but he has been dead for a week. Next he asks for Arada Kalapa, but he is also dead. The Buddha then asks for the five disciples he had earlier, and he sees they are in the Deer Park at Varanasi. The Buddha sets off for Varanasi, and on the way he meets a monk who asks where he is going. He goes through several cities, and is honored in each of them. The Buddha comes to the Ganges, and the ferryman refuses to row him across without payment. The Buddha flies across the river, and the boatman faints.

The Buddha arrives in Varanasi, and begs for food. He finds the five former disciples, and they are awed by his radiance and arise to serve him. The disciples ceremonially bathe the Buddha. Then the Buddha preaches his first sermon, which sets the “Wheel of the Law” in motion.[4]

Historical context

In the early 20th century, P. L. Vaidya believed that the finished Sanskrit text dated to the 3rd century A.D.[5]

The text is also said to be a compilation of various works by no single author and includes materials from the Sarvastivada and the Mahayana traditions.

Concerning the origins of the text, the Dharmachakra Translation Committee states:[6]

This scripture is an obvious compilation of various early sources, which have been strung together and elaborated on according to the Mahāyāna worldview. As such this text is a fascinating example of the ways in which the Mahāyāna rests firmly on the earlier tradition, yet reinterprets the very foundations of Buddhism in a way that fit its own vast perspective. The fact that the text is a compilation is initially evident from the mixture of prose and verse that, in some cases, contains strata from the very earliest Buddhist teachings and, in other cases, presents later Buddhist themes that do not emerge until the first centuries of the common era. Previous scholarship on The Play in Full (mostly published in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) devoted much time to determining the text’s potential sources and their respective time periods, although without much success. [...] Although this topic clearly deserves further study, it is interesting to note that hardly any new research on this sūtra has been published during the last sixty years. As such the only thing we can currently say concerning the sources and origin of The Play in Full is that it was based on several early and, for the most part, unidentified sources that belong to the very early days of the Buddhist tradition.

Translations into English

Numerals

In the Lalitavistara, the Buddha explains to a mathematician named Arjuna the system of numerals in multiples of 100, starting from a koti (in later literature 10^7 but this is uncertain) to a tallakshana (10^53 then).

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ The indigenous term Mantranaya is not a corruption or misspelling of mantrayana, although it is largely synonymous. Mantranaya is the earlier term for the esoteric Mahayana teachings emphasizing mantras. The clearly Sanskrit sounding Mantranaya is evident in Old Javanese tantric literature, particularly as documented in the oldest esoteric Buddhist tantric text in Old Javanese, the Sang Kyang Kamahayanan Mantranaya see Kazuko Ishii (1992).[3]

References

  1. ↑ Dharmachakra Translation Committee 2013, p. iii-x.
  2. ↑ Soekmono (1976), pp 21-22.
  3. ↑ Ishii Kazuko (1992). "The Correlation of Verses of the 'Sang Kyang Kamahayanan Mantranaya' with Vajrabodhi's 'Japa-sutra'" (PDF). Area and Culture Studies 44. Retrieved 2010-12-13.
  4. ↑ Miksic, J. (1990). Borobudur: Golden Tales of the Buddhas. Singapore: Periplus Editions Ltd.
  5. ↑ L. A. Waddell (1914). "The So-Called "Mahapadana" Suttanta and the Date of the Pali Canon". The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland: 661–680. Retrieved 2011-06-29.
  6. ↑ Dharmachakra Translation Committee 2013, p. xii.

Web references

  1. ↑ A Play in Full: Lalitavistara (2013), translated by the Dharmachakra Translation Committee (complete translation from Tibetan into English)

Sources

External links

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