What the sūtra is about
The sūtra opens with the Buddha on Vulture Peak at Rājagṛha, with ninety-eight thousand great monks. In chapter 2 the bodhisattva Diệu Tràng sits alone and wonders why the life of Śākyamuni was so short, only eighty years; the chapter is called the Tathāgata's Lifespan. Chapter 3 distinguishes the three bodies of the Buddha.
Chapter 4 tells how that night Diệu Tràng dreams of a golden drum shining like the sun; a brahmin strikes it, and its sound carries verses on the practice of repentance. The next morning he goes up Vulture Peak and repeats the verses before the Buddha. Chapter 5, on removing karmic obstacles, fills the whole of scroll 3. In the combined edition the matching chapter 4 is called «Repentance».
The later chapters
Chapters 6 to 11 hold dhāraṇīs, the Lotus Simile hymn and two chapters on emptiness. Chapter 12, the Four Kings Protect the Country, tells how the four Heavenly Kings vow to honour the sūtra and protect those who uphold it. Chapters 15 to 19 concern the goddess of Great Eloquence, the goddess of Great Auspiciousness, the earth goddess Kiên Lao and the great Yakṣa generals.
Chapter 25 tells the story of the merchant's son Lưu Thủy. Scroll 10 opens with the chapter on Giving Up the Body: the Buddha recalls a past life in which he saved a shoal of fish with water and food, then tells of prince Tát-đỏa, who comes upon a tigress with seven newborn cubs, starving and exhausted, and gives up his own body to save them. The sūtra closes with four chapters of praise and the chapter of Entrustment.
Three translations and the combined edition
The library holds three different Vietnamese translations of the same ten scrolls of the Golden Light Sūtra. Translation 1 has note numbers in square brackets and a «Notes» section in every scroll. Translation 2 runs without note numbers. Translation 3 calls the sūtra «Golden Light» in plain Vietnamese («Ánh sáng hoàng kim») and names some chapters differently, such as «Increasing Wealth» (chapter 17). All three keep the same ten scrolls and thirty-one chapters, so they can be compared scroll by scroll.
The Combined Golden Light Sūtra (合部金光明經) has eight scrolls and twenty-four chapters. The preface printed at the head of scroll 1 tells how the monk Bảo Quí of the Đại Hưng Thiện temple had three earlier translations, by Đàm Vô Sấm, Xà Na Quật Đa and Chân Đế; when the chapters of Entrustment and of the Ngân Chủ Dhāraṇī were found, everything was combined into twenty-four chapters copied in eight scrolls. In this edition chapter 4 is «Repentance» and chapter 5 «Removing Karmic Obstacles», both in scroll 2.
Reading and chanting the sūtra
By the reading pages' own estimate, each scroll takes about 20 to 40 minutes; all ten scrolls of one translation come to nearly five hours. You can read one scroll a day. Open the scroll, press «Chant» and choose the slow speed the first time: the text scrolls and a wooden fish keeps the beat. The library holds the Vietnamese translations only — no Sino-Vietnamese transliteration, recording or PDF download yet.
