Toh 228The Sūtra on the the Buddha’s Deliberations
Pāli / Sanskrit:Buddhasaṅgītisūtra
In this sutra, the Buddha decides to enter a strict three-month retreat to remedy a suddenly worsening degeneration in the world, which has caused sentient beings to lose interest in hearing and practicing the Dharma. They have even lost all reverence and respect for the Buddha himself. While the Buddha is in retreat, he uses his clairvoyant powers to convene with countless other buddhas whose realms are facing similar troubles. Together, they decide to recite in unison the profound Dharma of the Great Vehicle, and after the three months have passed the situation in the world has been restored through their recital. Once again, beings have faith and interest in the Dharma. The teaching that was delivered together by all the many buddhas is finally entrusted by the Buddha to his disciples for future generations to study and draw inspiration from. One interesting historical fact about this sutra is that the earliest existing Chinese Buddhist manuscript is a copy of this text, dated to the end of the 3rd century and discovered in the early 20th century in excavations at Turfan.
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An Exposition of the Buddhasaṅgīti Sutra (The Sutra of the Buddha’s Deliberation)
Background
The Buddhasaṅgīti Sutra belongs to the Northern Transmission canon and is preserved in the Kangyur, the treasury of the Tibetan Sutra Basket. This sutra has special historical value, because the earliest surviving Chinese Buddhist manuscript is a translation of this sutra, made at the end of the third century CE and discovered in the early twentieth century during excavations at Turfan.
The sutra is presented in the context of a world in which signs of decline of the true Dharma (saddharma-vipralopa) appear. Sentient beings gradually lose faith in the Dharma and no longer have interest in hearing, studying, and practicing the teaching. Even reverence for the Buddha himself disappears. This is the most troubling condition in the Dharma cycle of a buddha-world.
Main Content
Seeing this state of decline, the Buddha decides to enter a three-month seated retreat according to a strict mode of practice, in order to deeply remedy the disturbances in the world. This is not merely quiet meditation; during this retreat, the Buddha employs the power of the six kinds of higher knowledge (ṣaḍabhijñā), especially the divine eye (divyacakṣus), to communicate with countless other buddhas in their buddha-fields.
These buddhas are also facing similar difficulties: sentient beings in their worlds are losing faith and declining in the Dharma. Through this interconnection, the buddhas come to an important decision: together they will recite the profound Dharma gates of the Mahāyānasūtra in harmonious unison. This is not the isolated action of each individual Buddha, but a universal cooperation, to use a modern term, among the buddhas in order to directly liberate the world.
After three months, through the power of the Dharma recited in one voice, which is called “Buddhasaṅgīti” (the Buddha’s gathered recitation), the condition of decline is restored. Sentient beings again show interest, their minds are restored, and reverence for the Buddha-Dharma is reborn.
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