གསར་མདག་ག་སྔན་གྱ་སྦྱར་བ་ཞས་བྱ་བ intro.2

intro.2

As a discourse in which the Buddha narrates one of his past lives, The Past Endeavor of Kanakavarṇa can be placed in the same class of teachings as jātakas, “birth stories,” and avadānas, “exemplary tales.” In this type of teaching, the Buddha explains his present awakened state or the present conditions of others, whether fortunate or unfortunate, by narrating the past-life actions that led to these conditions, thus showing the workings of karma and the inevitable results of meritorious or unmeritorious deeds. Usually, texts of this kind begin with an extensive narrative section that is set in the present. This describes the situation or the individual’s circumstance that the text will then explain by means of a past-life story. However, this is not the case for The Past Endeavor of Kanakavarṇa, which, as will be seen, consists almost entirely of a past-life story of the Buddha, narrated without preamble. Therefore, it was classified as a pūrvayoga, an account of a “past endeavor,” at least according to the title as given in the Tibetan translation.¹ There are no other standalone texts designated as pūrvayoga in the Kangyur, but the genre is represented in individual chapters of Mahāyāna sūtras such as the Saddharma­puṇḍarīka Sūtra and the Samādhi­rāja Sūtra.²