佛滅度後棺斂葬送經

Thus have I heard. At one time the World-Honored One was journeying in the country of Pāṭaliputra. When everyone had halted, Ānanda addressed the World-Honored One, saying: After the World-Honored One has attained final cessation, how shall the funeral rites for the Honored Body be performed?

The World-Honored One said: Attend to your own bodies; do not be concerned with the body of the Buddha. After I have attained final cessation, there will be Brahmins and Kṣatriyas who will see to the funeral rites.

Ānanda said: What manner of rites?

The World-Honored One said: They shall be like the funeral rites of a Wheel-Turning Sage King.

He further said: When the Sage King passes away, his body is wrapped in a thousand lengths of kalpāsika cloth; fragrant water is sprinkled over him from above to below; incense is wrapped about the body, above, below, and on all four sides, evenly distributed; then fire is set for cremation. The bones are gathered, washed with fragrant water, and placed in a jar of gold. A stele is made of fired brick, three feet long and wide, and one foot thick; on the four sides, above and below, a single slab is set up, and the golden jar is placed within. Pillars are raised, banners are hung, and all the requisite offerings are made. Earth is taken to build a stūpa, and offerings of incense and flowers are made.

The Buddha will come to that place. Why is this so? For countless kalpas I have, with a heart of loving-kindness, delivered the four assemblies, practiced the six pāramitās, traveled throughout the ten directions, and rescued sentient beings; my merit is vast, and I have accomplished the Dharma of the Tathāgata, the One Beyond All Attachment, the Truly Genuine Path, this Path of Supreme Right Awakening, becoming the Teacher who tames gods and humans, the highest, beyond all comparison. For those who take earth to make offerings to the stūpa, their blessings are immeasurable.

When the Final Dharma age comes, the world will be defiled and turbid, those of bodily life will be greatly confused, and their wealth will belong in portions to the five houses; therefore I shall leave behind my relics and my bowl, to dispel the calamity of confusion in the world, to bring peace and aid to sentient beings, and to establish lineages, shrines, and images, so that the people may behold them and follow after them. The śramaṇas shall use the Sūtras to guide and teach those who have not yet heard, causing the living to be forever far removed from the cruelty of the prison, and the dead to escape the offenses of the three lower destinies, so that all may ascend to the heavens; and if they build a shrine to the Buddha, this will cause them to come to that place.

Ānanda said: How should the bowl be made?

The Buddha said: My bowl was offered to me by the Four Great Heavenly Kings; four were joined together to make one. It is the vessel for the Buddha's food, and sentient beings must take care not to take from it to eat.

After I have attained final cessation, the nations will contend with one another, the hearts of the people will be perverse and disordered, they will hold life lightly and prize lust, be unfilial, and serve demonic spirits; then the bowl will manifest light of five colors, flying up and down, opening and transforming the hearts of the people. The people, beholding it, will seek to hold fast to the Buddha's virtue, casting off ignorance and so becoming enlightened, willingly practicing the Right Teaching; and all will build temples and shrines, proclaiming the Buddha's virtue.

Turning toward the East, passing through the various nations, ferocity and pestilence will be dispelled, ruler and subject will be at peace, grain and cloth will be abundant, all will be joyful and healthy and without sickness, far removed from the three lower destinies, and all will ascend to the heavens. The king of the Far Eastern country will be benevolent and wise. My alms-bowl will fly across that place. After the king dies, his descendants will be lustful and disordered, abandoning the right and following the perverse, and the hearts of the people will be likewise; beholding that bowl, they will not reverence it, and so the gods and dragons, seeing this, in sorrow and joy will welcome and receive the bowl to bring it back and honor it in worship.

The king, having lost the precious bowl, grieved and was angered in his heart, and proclaimed throughout all the nations, offering a thousand pieces of gold to purchase the bowl, searching for many years, in order to learn the truth of the matter. The people, coveting the great reward, searched everywhere but could not find it. At that time there was a certain poor man, named Śī, who falsely posed as a bhikṣu, was greedy for food and drink, lived with a wife, and raised children; while drunk he led his child to the gate of the palace, saying: I know where the bowl is.

The king, hearing this, was greatly delighted, invited the śramaṇa in, and said: Where is the bowl? He answered: Give me the gold first. The king bestowed a thousand catties of gold. Śī said: It is only a śramaṇa who would steal that bowl.

The king thereupon issued an order to interrogate and torture the śramaṇas, by cruel means. The officials and the people who beheld this, none did not resent the king. The king said: What kind of śramaṇa are you? He answered: My master follows the Buddha.

The king said: What precepts does the Buddha have?

Śī said: There are two hundred and fifty precepts.

The king said: What is the first precept?

He answered: The first is to follow after benevolence and loving-kindness: to bestow grace and give alms upon all living beings everywhere, to regard the lives of all the living beings of the world as one's own life, to rescue, cherish, and protect them, and then to establish the Path for them, to delight in opening and transforming them, to safeguard them as one's own body, extending even to the grasses and trees, without falsehood, and never losing any opportunity.

The king said: How excellent! The Buddha's teaching of benevolence and loving-kindness encompasses heaven and earth—what sentient being is there that does not receive its benefit!

The second is to follow after purity: not to hoard defiled treasures, but to honor the nation; what is not given, one may not seize; even the smallest things, what is not granted, one may not take.

How excellent! This indeed may be called a pure person.

The third is to follow after chastity: the heart without lust, the mouth not speaking deceitfully; falsehood and perverse beauty one resolutely will not heed; upon seeing those women, one regards them as mother, as elder sister, as younger sister, as daughter; one would rather endure the burning of one's body than commit lustful disorder.

The king said: How excellent! To follow after the true and to cherish purity—nothing surpasses the Buddha's teaching.

The fourth is to guard one's speech: not to speak with a double tongue, nor evil words, abuse, false words, or embellished words, not to praise to one's face and then to slander, not to attest to perverse arts, demons and spirits, supplications, and curses as being no offense; one would rather swallow burning coals than utter a venomous word.

The king said: How excellent is the Buddha's transforming teaching! It is to be heeded and to be feared—that speech must be guarded with such care.

The fifth is to forever abstain from liquor. For liquor causes the king to be without benevolence, the official to be without loyalty, the parent to be without righteousness, the child to be unfilial, the woman to be wantonly lustful—the thirty-six faults, the ruin of the nation and the destruction of the household, there is nothing that does not arise from liquor; one would rather drink poison and die than to be drunk and live.

The king said: How excellent is the Buddha's luminous teaching, which causes one to swallow virtue and remember the Path, to extinguish all evils, to give rise to all that is good, to make purity one's body and plainness one's resolve. The Sūtra teaches benevolence and loving-kindness, yet you bid me issue an order to kill. The precept says to keep purity without greed, yet you took the gold. The precept says not to indulge in lust, yet you keep a wife. The precept says one must be utterly truthful, yet you slandered the śramaṇa, saying: The stealing of the bowl renders my offense to be no offense. The precept says one must not be intoxicated with liquor, yet you came here drunk. Do those śramaṇas out there possess these five virtues in full—are they ones of Lofty Conduct?

He answered: They are ferocious and defiled, even more so than I.

The king asked the officials: How is it that these śramaṇas create such karma?

They answered: They beg for alms without measure, and their defilements are even greater than that master's.

The king said: The Buddha's precepts number two hundred and fifty, his benevolence surpasses what one would deem benevolent, his purity is like the elements, his chastity is like empty space, his faith is like the four seasons, and his brightness exceeds even the heavens, the sun, and the moon. To have the karmic connection to encounter such a one, yet to seize the Dharma robe, to steal the alms-bowl, to falsely pose as a śramaṇa, and to throw into disorder the right and the true—not keeping a single precept, yet speaking of two hundred and fifty precepts.

He commanded the officials, saying: The pure shrine of the Buddha is the lineage of the worthy and the holy; it is not the cave or the nest of birds and beasts. Drive out the defiled ones, and do not allow them to dwell within the shrine.

The noble ones of the nation, wishing to initiate and to bring benefit to the shrine, were yet those who did not delight in dwelling skillfully within it to proclaim the sacred teaching of the Buddha. They could but wipe away their tears, for from now on the Great Path declines, and the sacred teaching grows weaker by the day.

The Buddha said to Ānanda: After my final cessation, though I leave behind the bowl and the relics, if there be a worthy person who with a sincere heart upholds them in reverence, in the end they will all ascend to the heavens.

Ānanda said: At the close of a thousand years, the bowl still manifests divine virtue, transforming in such a manner as this—how much more the sacred teaching of the Unsurpassed, Truly Genuine Path, the Supreme Right Awakening.

When the Buddha had expounded this sūtra, the gods, dragons, demons, spirits, kings and officials, and the four assemblies, there was none who was not choked with emotion, who did not bow their heads and withdraw.