Toh 813The Aspiration Prayer from the Words Spoken in “Destroyer of the Great Trichiliocosm”

Summary

This short text contains a set of verses spoken by the Buddha as
he put an end to the epidemic of Vaiśālī, extracted from one
of the two main accounts of that episode. The verses call
for well-being, especially by invoking the qualities of the
Three Jewels and a range of realized beings and eminent
gods. The text comprises two passages from the parent work,
and of these the first and longest corresponds closely to a
well-known Pali text, the Ratana-sutta, widely recited for protection
and blessings.

Acknowledgements

The translation of this text was extracted from Destroyer of the Great
Trichiliocosm, Toh 558, translated by James
Gentry for the Dharmachakra Translation Committee. This
extract was adapted to the present source text and
introduced by the editorial team of 84000: Translating the
Words of the Buddha.

The translation was completed under the patronage and supervision
of 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha.

Introduction

This evocative and inspiring short text in verse is one
of several works in the Kangyur related to the
Buddha’s restoring the city of Vaiśālī to health
after a major epidemic. As might be expected for a
text whose origins lie in that much-related episode,
it has a wealth of parallels in other texts. A
substantial portion of it is very similar to a
passage in the Sanskrit Mahāvastu, and to a well-known Pali text,
the Ratana-sutta.

The work in the form it takes here—a text containing just
these verses—is found in Kangyurs of predominantly
Tshalpa (tshal pa) or mixed lineages, but not in
those with purely Thempangma (them spangs
ma) origins. In the Degé Kangyur it is
found in two places. The first occurrence (Toh 813)
is as one of a series of nineteen texts (Toh
809–827) at the end of the final volume of the
Tantra Collection described in the eighteenth
century catalog of the Degé Kangyur as a subsection
containing prayers of dedication and auspiciousness.
The second (Toh 1098) is in a series of fifteen
texts (Toh 1094–1108) with a similar function in
concluding the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs.

In neither of these occurrences does the text have an
opening title; it simply starts with the line
“Homage to the Three Jewels.” Only in the trailer at
the end do we learn that the text is “the aspiration
prayer from the words spoken in Destroyer of the Great
Trichiliocosm,” and thus that, like most
of the texts in these two sections, it is an extract
from a longer text found in full elsewhere in the
Kangyur. The parent text in question, Destroyer of the Great
Trichiliocosm (Toh 558), is itself one of the texts that
belong to the Pañcarakṣā group, a set of works
centered on five protector goddesses each of whom
both personifies and is invoked by a specific
dhāraṇī, and is found in the Action
Tantra (kriyā) section of the Degé Kangyur’s
Tantra Collection. Since the longer text also exists
in Sanskrit and Chinese, the verses extracted here can
be found in both those languages, although not in
the form of separate, standalone texts analogous to
this one.

The text contains two extracted sets of verses. The first
set comprises sixteen stanzas that are found as a
continuous passage (1.250–1.265) about two thirds of the way through
Destroyer of the Great
Trichiliocosm; these are followed by the
second set, four and a half stanzas that come from
another, separate passage (1.310–1.314) a little later in the parent work
compared to the first set. There is no indication
within the extracted text itself of the break
between these two groups of verses.

The first set of verses (

–

) invokes the Three Jewels
and enumerates their principal qualities as truths
by which the bestowal of well-being is prayed for in
a repeated refrain. The first verse invokes the
Buddha, the next two the Dharma in its aspects of
realization and path respectively, and the following
seven various aspects and qualities of the Saṅgha.
Three shorter stanzas then recapitulate the theme of
the Three Jewels by wishing that all beings might
pay homage to them and thus obtain well-being, and
the final three verses repeat the prayer and
invocation of truth for well-being and express the
wish that all bhūtas act in accordance with the
Dharma.

The second, shorter set of verses (

–

There is no mention in this extracted text that its
original context was the story of the Buddha’s
arrival in Vaiśālī to quell a terrible famine and
epidemic that had been ravaging the city and its
environs. In the narrative of Destroyer of the Great Trichiliocosm from
which it is extracted, however, this is very clearly
the case. The parent text starts with the suffering
of the citizens of Vaiśālī, in response to which the
Buddha summons to Rājagṛha the important gods and
particularly the Four Guardian Kings, who promise to
bring back under their control the various kinds of
nonhuman beings and spirits that have brought about
the epidemic and other calamities. Each king in turn
proposes ritual steps and controlling mantras for
the purpose of restoring well-being.

It is at this point that the Buddha decides to travel to
Vaiśālī himself. Arriving at the gates of the city,
he steps across the threshold, raises his arm,
teaches Brahmā on the dhāraṇī that is itself Destroyer of the Great
Trichiliocosm, and then recites the verses
that make up the first set in this extract. In the original text,
the verses are followed by another dhāraṇī and
teaching on it, and the yakṣas, rākṣasas, and other
harmful spirits are overcome and either run away or
volunteer to take up the Dharma and change their
ways; the epidemic ends and well-being is restored.
This first set of verses reproduced here therefore
represents a central element in the episode—part of
its very climax—and it is no great surprise that it
features prominently in this extract.

The reason for the inclusion of the second set of verses
is less obvious. After the episode of the quelling
of the epidemic and the vanquishing or conversion of
the spirits responsible for it, the text of Destroyer of the Great
Trichiliocosm continues with a variety of
explanations, ritual instructions, and exchanges
with the Four Guardian Kings focused on different
physical and spiritual ailments and the importance
of the dhāraṇī in treating them. The passage that
constitutes the second set of verses extracted here
is part of a ritual instruction for the removal of
poisons, and its invocation for that purpose of the
qualities of the Buddha’s principal disciples is
just one of several similar passages invoking other
forces. From the source text context, its mention of
poison seems to refer to physical poisons, but
perhaps intended here for the purposes of this
extracted text is a metaphorical interpretation in
the overall theme of well-being. Alternatively, it
may have been included to round off the invocation
of the qualities of the Saṅgha by mentioning some of
the qualities of its individual members.

The longest, initial set of verses has parallels in a
number of other passages in the Buddhist canonical
literature that relate the story of how the Buddha’s
arrival in Vaiśālī put an end to the epidemic that
was afflicting the city and its region. The overall
narrative of the events in the Buddha’s life has
been preserved most fully in the Vinaya literature,
and the different accounts of this episode, like
those of other events, can be divided approximately
into two groups, both by their content and also
according to the bodies of Vinaya literature in
which they have been preserved.

In this case, one near parallel is in the account of the
episode that is spread over several chapters of the
Mahāvastu,
a text that has
survived in Sanskrit and is related to the Vinaya of
the Mahāsāṃghika-Lokottaravādin school. According to
that account, the Buddha’s arrival near the city is
enough by itself to expel the harmful spirits that
have caused the epidemic, and culminates in his
reciting, still outside the city, a set of seventeen
verses of auspiciousness (svastigāthā), thirteen of
which extol the Three Jewels as the source of
blessings and well-being. Of these, although the
wording of the two texts in Sanskrit is
significantly different, ten stanzas recognizably
match the ten initial stanzas of the present work.
The Mahāvastu
version includes a longer initial homage, a verse
immediately afterwards invoking the spirits, and an
extra stanza on the jewel of the Saṅgha (eleventh of
the long stanzas). The two texts differ most
noticeably in their concluding verses.

In the Pali Canon, a similar set of seventeen verses
makes up the Ratana-sutta, a very
well-known text that is widely recited as a
protection or paritta. The Ratana-sutta
itself consists only of the seventeen verses,
without any narrative setting, and in Pali sources
what is recorded of the background episode comes
only from later commentaries: the
Buddha teaches the verses to Ānanda at the city
gate, Ānanda goes around inside the city reciting
them, and finally the Buddha himself enters the city
and recites them again. The text begins with an
invocation and exhortation of the nonhuman spirits
present, similar to that of the Mahāvastu version but
more detailed. Again, there is one stanza on the
Buddha, two on the Dharma, and six on the Saṅgha.
The Pali version then adds two more stanzas on the
Buddha and an additional one on the Saṅgha, before
invoking all Three Jewels at the end in three
stanzas said to have been spoken by Sakka (Skt.
Śakra).

A second loose group of texts, less closely similar but
derived from the same episode—the Buddha’s quelling
of the epidemic in Vaiśālī—are those from the
Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya corpus. The long Chapter on Medicines (Bhaiṣajyavastu, sixth
chapter of the Vinayavastu, Toh 1) contains
the episode as just one of a great many other
narrative elements, and a verbatim extract from it,
The Mahāsūtra “On Entering
the City of Vaiśālī” (Vaiśālīpraveśamahāsūtra), containing the
Buddha’s full proclamation, mantra, and verses of
well-being as taught on the occasion to Ānanda, is
found in three different sections of the Degé
Kangyur. A Sanskrit text
closely related to the latter (though with
significant differences), the Mahāmantrānusāriṇī, has
survived as another part of the Pañcarakṣā group. An even shorter
extract in Tibetan called The
Verses for Well-Being Extracted from the Noble
Sūtra “On Entering the City of Vaiśālī”
contains only the nineteen verses of well-being, and
is found as a standalone text once in the Kangyur
and once in the Tengyur.

The verses of well-being in the Mahāsūtra version (and in
the other texts of the second loose group just
described) are quite different from the verses in
the present text. Instead of invoking all Three
Jewels and then focusing particularly on the Saṅgha,
as here, the Mahāsūtra stanzas focus more on the
Buddha. The general theme is nevertheless similar,
and the concluding verses share the same appeal made to
the bhūta spirits to change their ways and protect
beings instead of harming them.

The text as it is in this extracted form is not mentioned
in the imperial early text inventories, but it does
appear in the early fourteenth century list of
translated texts appended to Butön’s History of the Dharma. It was not included in
the Thempangma Kangyurs, but it appears in the
Tshalpa Kangyurs as early as 1410 in the first
printed Kangyur, the Yongle. It was probably not
translated from a separate text in Sanskrit but was
extracted from the Tibetan translation of its source
work, Destroyer of the Great
Trichiliocosm, which itself had been
translated into Tibetan during the early ninth
century by the translator-editor Bandé Yeshé Dé and
the Indian scholars Śīlendrabodhi, Jñānasiddhi, and
Śākyaprabha.

This extract could reasonably be described—if
approximately, given the differences—as the Tibetan
version of the Pali Ratana-sutta, yet it is far from being as
well known and as widely used as the Ratana-sutta
itself is in Pali Buddhist traditions. In terms of
ritual function, the Tibetan Buddhist equivalent is
rather the more extensive Mūlasarvāstivādin Mahāsūtra “On Entering the City of
Vaiśālī.”

Some intriguing questions remain. Why was the set of
verses that happen to match the Ratana-sutta
selected from a wide-ranging original text to be
reproduced in this extracted form at all? Did the
tradition of using texts like this related to the
Vaiśālī epidemic as blessings, protections, or
dedications go far enough back in history to have
predated the differentiation of the various early
schools and Vinaya lineages, and to have
subsequently survived in more than one? Or did these
traditions arise independently in different places?
Or were the editors, compilers, and keepers of the
canonical texts in fourteenth century Tibet more
aware of the significance that this particular set
of verses had acquired in other Buddhist cultures
than geographical separation might lead us to think?
These questions are compounded, moreover, by the
addition to the extract of the final four and a half
stanzas, which seem to refer to a quite different
application.

That answers to these questions may remain elusive in no
way diminishes the pleasure we take in introducing
to English readers this eloquent, ancient text for
well-being.

The Translation

Homage to the Three
Jewels!

In this world or beyond there is nothing—

Not even a precious gem in the higher realms—

That equals the Thus-Gone One, the god of
gods,

The supreme among humans.

Thus, he is called the most precious gem.

By this truth may there be well-being here!

There is nothing at all comparable to the
Dharma

Of uncompounded, quiescent ambrosia—

The uncompounded ambrosia of extinction and
dispassion

Discerned by the Sage of the Śākyas through his
knowledge.

Thus, it is called the most precious gem.

By this truth may there be well-being here!

There is nothing comparable to the absorption

That perceives the vajra-like, nondual
path—

The manifestation, in due order, of what is most
desired,

The permanent accomplishment of the teacher’s
absolute practice.

Thus, it is called the most precious gem.

By this truth may there be well-being here!

The eight great kinds of person praised

And called the four
pairs,

Extolled as “venerable” by the Thus-Gone One,

The incomparable person, the Great Sage,

Yield great fruits when offered to,

Like seeds planted in a fertile field—

This is called the most precious gem of the
Saṅgha.

By this truth may there be well-being here!

Since those who strive with firm resolve

And enter Gautama’s teaching

Gain access to ambrosia,

Remove darkness, and attain nirvāṇa,

They are called the most precious gem of the
Saṅgha.

By this truth may there be well-being here!

As soon as they connect with this vision,

Belief in the transitory collection,

Ethical discipline in the form of extreme
austerity,

And doubt are simultaneously cast off,

And they see the truths of the noble ones.

Thus, they are called the most precious gem of
the Saṅgha.

By this truth may there be well-being here!

With body, speech, or mind

They never produce the threefold evil deeds,

And even when they suddenly do, they do not
conceal them,

And in that way, their view is not tainted with
grasping.

Thus, they are called the most precious gem of
the Saṅgha.

By this truth may there be well-being here!

Just as a threshold beam planted in the
ground

Is unmoved by winds from the four directions,

So are the members of the saṅgha of noble
ones,

Who have insight into the highest path of the
noble ones.

Thus, they are called the most precious gem of
the Saṅgha.

By this truth may there be well-being here!

Those who cultivate with profound wisdom

The eloquently taught truths of the noble ones

And consider giving away even their own bodies

Never encounter the eight perils.

Thus, they are called the most precious gem of
the Saṅgha.

By this truth may there be well-being here!

Just as a flame extinguished by the wind

Cannot be taken up and counted,

So do the offspring of the buddhas

Become indemonstrable

Once they have discarded all fetters.

Thus, they are called the most precious gem of
the Saṅgha.

By this truth may there be well-being here!

May all sentient beings, moving or still, be well
here!

And may they pay homage to the Buddha,

The supreme teacher, venerated by gods and
humans!

May there be well-being here today!

May all sentient beings, moving or still, be well
here!

May they pay homage to the Dharma,

The peaceful dispassion venerated by gods and
humans!

May there be well-being here today!

May all sentient beings, moving or still, be well
here!

May they pay homage to the Saṅgha,

The supreme assembly venerated by gods and
humans!

May there be well-being here today!

May all sentient beings, moving or still,

Be well here!

May whatever bhūtas are assembled here,

All those who dwell upon the earth or in the
sky,

Act always lovingly toward all creatures

And practice Dharma day and night!

By the truth that the Victorious One, having
vanquished his foes,

Spoke truthfully, without falsehood,

May there be well-being here,

And may all be delivered from grave perils!

✦  ✦  ✦

By the majesty of
all the buddhas,

The majesty of the pratyekabuddhas,

The powers of the arhats,

And all the secret mantra holders,

By the wisdom of Śāriputra,

The supernatural power of Maudgalyāyana,

The vision of Aniruddha,

And the ascetic practices of Kāśyapa;

By the previous attainments of Kauṇḍinya,

The learning of Ānanda,

The benevolence of Brahmā,

And the supremacy of Śatakratu;

By the territories of the guardians of the
world,

The power of Maheśvara,

The might of the generals,

And the supernatural splendor of Hārītī—

Through their might and majesty,

May poison be removed from me!

Notes

Bibliography

Tibetan Source Texts

Sanskrit and Pali Texts

Other Works

Butön

bu ston
བུ་སྟོན།

Mahāvastu
mahāvastu

Thempangma

them spangs ma
ཐེམ་སྤངས་མ།

Tshalpa

tshal pa
ཚལ་པ།