Toh 215The Mahāyāna Sūtra “Advice to a King” (2): Advice to Udayana, King of Vatsa

Summary

While giving teachings at Vārāṇasī, the Buddha Śākyamuni discerns that the time
is right to train King Udayana of Vatsa. When he meets the king, who at the time is
embarking on a military expedition, the king flies into a rage and tries to kill the
Buddha with an arrow. However, the arrow circles in the sky, and a voice proclaims a verse
on the dangers of anger and warfare. Hearing this verse, the king pays homage to the
Buddha, who explains that an enemy far greater than worldly opponents is the affliction of
perceiving a self, which binds one to saṃsāra. He uses a military analogy to explain how
this great enemy can be controlled by the combined arsenal of the six perfections and
slayed by the arrow of nonself. When the king asks what is meant by “nonself,” the Buddha
replies in a series of verses that constitute a succinct teaching on all persons and all
things being without a self.

Acknowledgements

A draft translation by Khenpo Kalsang Gyaltsen and Chodrungma Kunga Chodron of
the Sakya Pandita Translation Group was revised by George FitzHerbert and edited by David
Fiordalis and Andreas Doctor.

The translation was completed under the patronage and supervision of 84000:
Translating the Words of the Buddha. Dawn Collins copyedited the text. Martina Cotter was
in charge of the digital publication process.

Introduction

Advice to a King (2), which carries the
alternative colophon title Advice to Udayana, King of
Vatsa, is a concise and poetic discourse on the futility of anger and warfare,
and on the liberating power of realizing the truth of emptiness—that all persons and all
things lack any enduring self.

This is one of three sūtras (Toh 214, 215, and 221) included in Kangyurs of
the Tshalpa line under the identical title The Mahāyāna Sūtra
“Advice to a King.” The present sūtra (Toh 215) consists of advice given to
Udayana, the king of Vatsa. The sūtra that immediately precedes it in the Degé Kangyur
(Toh 214), consists of advice to Bimbisāra, the king of Magadha. Finally, a
longer sūtra in the next volume of the Degé Kangyur (Toh 221) presents advice to King
Prasenajit, the king of Kośala.

Only the third of these three (Toh 221) is attested in either Sanskrit or
Chinese, while both Advice to King Bimbisāra (Toh 214) and
the present text Advice to King Udayana of Vatsa (Toh 215)
have no known Sanskrit or Chinese witnesses and exist only in Tibetan. In their
colophons, both of these sūtras are attributed to the translators Dānaśīla and Bandé
Yeshé Dé, who were active during the height of Tibetan imperial patronage of Buddhism in
the late eighth and early ninth centuries ce. However,
neither of the two texts is mentioned in the Phangthangma or Denkarma imperial-period
catalogs, nor are they mentioned in Chomden Raldri’s late
thirteenth-century survey of translated texts. Adding further to the uncertainty of
their provenance, neither text is found in any Kangyurs of the Thempangma recensional
line.

Advice to Udayana, King of Vatsa features a short
dialogue between the Buddha Śākyamuni and King Udayana, framed by a short story of the
king’s conversion. King Udayana was a contemporary of the Buddha and king of Vatsa, one
of the sixteen “great kingdoms” (mahājanapada) of ancient northern India, the capital of which was at
Kauśāmbī.

This king (also known as Udayin or in Pali as Udena) is well known in Buddhist
literature, and in Sanskrit literature more broadly where he is found as the romantic
hero of many legends and dramas, including two plays attributed to Bhāsa, one of the
earliest Indian playwrights. A story of
this king’s conversion to the teachings of the Buddha by the monk Piṇḍolabhāradvāja is
told in a similar form in The Hundred Deeds (Toh 340) and in the Pali Saṃyutta
Nikāya.
He and his two chief wives also feature as the main characters in the frame story of
King Udayana of Vatsa’s Questions (Toh 73), which is included in the
Heap of Jewels (Ratnakūṭa) collection. Stories about him are also found in the
Discipline (Vinaya) section of the Tibetan Kangyur, and in the
extracanonical Divyāvadāna collection of stories.
Narratives about King Udayana are also
found in Chinese Buddhist texts, including one story, also told by Xuanzang in the
travelogue of his journey to India, which attributes to him the commissioning of the
first-ever image of the Buddha.

The sūtra translated here tells a different tale of King Udayana’s conversion
that is not, to our knowledge, found in other sources. Here, the Buddha encounters King
Udayana while the latter is embarking on a military expedition to subdue a neighboring
city. Initially, the king is angered by the inauspicious appearance of a mendicant at
such a time, and he tries to kill the Buddha with an arrow. But the arrow balks, spins
in the sky, and a voice then rings out with a verse on the dangers of anger, whereupon
the king becomes respectful toward the Buddha and a dialogue ensues. Other stories about
King Udayana, including the sūtra mentioned above, King Udayana of Vatsa’s Questions (Toh 73), feature him shooting arrows that are thwarted from reaching their intended
target.

After the king pays homage, the Buddha first queries the king’s proclivity for
warfare, informing him that all his conflicts are futile since they only lead to
suffering in this life and lower rebirths in the next. He then explains that worldly
enemies are trifling when compared to the greater enemy, namely the affliction of
perceiving a self, which is the root of saṃsāra. When the king asks how this great enemy
can be countered, the Buddha uses a military analogy to present the practice of the six
perfections. This, he says, will enable the king to fell the great enemy of perceiving a
self with the “arrow of nonself.” When the king asks what the Buddha means by “nonself”
in this context, the Buddha replies with a condensed teaching regarding persons and
indeed all phenomena as having no self, after which the king embraces his teaching.

Two prior English translations of the sūtra have been published. An early,
loose translation was published in 1973 by Thubten Kalzang Rinpoche et al., and a richly
annotated and fine translation by Peter Skilling was published in 2021. This English
translation was made from the Tibetan as found in the Degé Kangyur, in consultation with
variants recorded in the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur
ma).

The Translation

The Mahāyāna Sūtra

Advice to a King (2)

Advice to Udayana, King of Vatsa

Homage to all
buddhas and bodhisattvas.

Thus did I hear at one time. When the Blessed One was teaching the Dharma to
his retinues in the great city of Vārāṇasī, he saw that the time had come to train
Udayana, the king of Vatsa. So, along with his
retinues, he departed for Vatsa.

When he encountered Udayana, the king of Vatsa, the king was setting out with
his four armies to conquer the great city called Place of Gold. However, King Udayana became angry. “Such an inauspicious encounter!” he
exclaimed. “I should kill him!” And with this he drew a sharp, fishtail-headed
arrow and released it at the
Blessed One. However, the arrow spun in the sky and a voice rang out, proclaiming:

“Anger produces suffering.

In this life, it leads to exhaustion, conflict, and fighting,

And in the next life, to the sufferings of hell.

Therefore, abandon anger, conflict, and fighting.”

On hearing these words, King Udayana became devoted to the Blessed One,
prostrated, and sat down to one side.

Then the Blessed One said, “Great King, conflict and fighting lead to
exhaustion, both here, now, and later in the lower realms, so why do you always do
nothing but fight and create conflict?”

“Gautama,” replied the king, “no matter whom I fight, I never experience
defeat. Since I am always victorious, I am inclined toward fighting and warfare.”

The Blessed One said, “Great King, these are lesser foes. Great King, there is
another enemy, far greater and more hostile than them.”

“Who is that enemy?” asked the king.

The Blessed One replied, “This great enemy is called the affliction
of perceiving a self.”

The king said, “Please explain. What is this enemy like?”

The Blessed One replied:

“The thought that perceives a self is the great enemy.

While it is immaterial and without substance,

It has dwelt with you since beginningless time.

“Since the very beginning, this enemy has stolen

The wish-fulfilling jewel of dharmakāya

And hidden it in the dense thicket of dualistic images.

Even now it binds you still and forces you to wander in saṃsāra.

“Worldly enemies can do no more than kill and rob one’s wealth,

And forbearance toward them can fill one’s store of merit.

But this enemy will kill peace, happiness, and liberation;

Associating with it, one’s merit becomes mired in the swamp of saṃsāra.”

The king asked, “How can one fight this great enemy?”

The Blessed One replied:

“To counter the enemy of conceptuality,

With faith you must build a fortress of generosity and discipline,

Then gather an army of virtue, don the armor of forbearance,

Brandish the whip of perseverance, draw the bow of concentration,

And slay the perception of a self with the arrow of nonself and emptiness.”

The king said, “Please explain what you mean by ‘nonself.’ ”

The Blessed One replied:

“On the idea that persons have no self, listen, O King!

“How is it that a person is a continuity of the five aggregates?

Due to the cause, which is being filled by karma and the afflictions,

The result flows out in the form of the five aggregates and their ‘self.’

“Beings become attached to this self,

As they take their own bodies to be ‘me’ and ‘I.’

This ‘self’ fears sickness, death, hunger, and cold.

It is pleased by praise and upset by reproach.

“By apprehending a self, one joins the five rival traditions,

Yet this ‘I’ and ‘self’ do not exist.

Imputed upon the aggregates, they are delusion.

A name is not the self, but merely a label.

“The body is not the self, but flesh and bone—

A gathering of great elements like an outer wall.

Not even mind is the self, because it has no substance.

“On the idea that phenomena have no self, listen, O King!

“Phenomena refers to all things, such as material form and so
on,

Since they do not act and they retain defining characteristics.

They are false notions that involve dualistic images,

And are contrary to what they seem—they do not exist.

“If you wonder why, regarding outer and inner phenomena,

One should not search for emptiness by rejecting entities,

Because emptiness is already there in the appearances themselves.

The term emptiness applies precisely to what is breakable,
destructible, and impermanent.

“Apparent but without intrinsic nature, how do phenomena manifest?

They do not abide as existent, nonexistent, or anything in between.

That which is said to exist is saṃsāra and nirvāṇa.

The nature of saṃsāra consists of mind and its objects.

“You should analyze objects to be unreal in this way:

Divide appearances into particles—particles that cannot be divided further.

All appearances of entities are the mind, like a dream.

And the mind, too, has no color, shape, and so on.

“So, saṃsāra is empty and devoid of a self.

And since there is no saṃsāra, there is also no nirvāṇa.

If existence is not established, then there is also no absence.

And because neither of these two extremes exist, nor is there anything in
between.

“Thus, O King, if you meditate on nonself,

Saṃsāra and perceiving a self will be cut at the root.”

The king said, “Previously, up until now, I have seen enemies where there were
none, and I have been tormented by anger. Now that I have recognized the true enemy, I
will be devoted to nonself to fight that enemy.”

“Great King, excellent,” said the Blessed One. “You have vanquished the enemy
of perceiving a self.”

Thus spoke the Blessed One, and King Udayana of Vatsa and the others rejoiced
and praised what the Blessed One had said.

This completes the Mahāyāna sūtra “Advice to
Udayana, King of Vatsa.”

Colophon

Translated, edited and finalized by the Indian preceptor Dānaśīla and Bandé
Yeshé Dé.

Notes

Bibliography

Source Texts

Modern Sources and Translations