Toh 870 intro: 84000's introduction
Recollecting the Names of the Buddha Ratnaśikhin intro
- Language
- English
84000's introduction
intro.1
Recollecting the Names of the Buddha Ratnaśikhin includes a short dhāraṇī and the brief statement that if it is recited at the time of death, one will avoid lower rebirth and be reborn in the Heaven of the Thirty-Three.
intro.2
Recollecting the Names of the Buddha Ratnaśikhin includes a dhāraṇī invoking the buddha Ratnaśikhin. The text then states that whoever recites it at the time of death will not be reborn in the lower realms but will instead take rebirth in the Heaven of the Thirty-Three.
intro.3
This dhāraṇī text appears to be connected with the account from The Sūtra of the Sublime Golden Light (Toh 555), in which it is recounted that, in the past, the Buddha Ratnaśikhin made a commitment that any being who hears his name at the time of death will be reborn in the Heaven of the Thirty-Three.¹ The fruits of his commitment are borne out in the narrative of The Sūtra of the Sublime Golden Light, in which several beings report having taken higher rebirths through the fortune of hearing the Buddha Ratnaśikhin’s name. The specific dhāraṇī found in the present text is, however, not included in The Sūtra of the Sublime Golden Light.
intro.4
According to a number of canonical works, the Buddha Ratnaśikhin is a buddha from the past in whose presence the Buddha Śākyamuni trained during earlier lifetimes, prior to his awakening. The Play in Full, in describing Śākyamuni’s service to former buddhas, mentions that Śākyamuni “offered a candle to Ratnaśikhin.”² Vasubhandu’s Abhidharmakośa identifies Ratnaśikhin as the buddha under whom Śākyamuni completed the first of his three “incalculable eons” of training.³
intro.5
Like many dhāraṇī texts, Recollecting the Names of the Buddha Ratnaśikhin is found in both the Tantra section as well as the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs section of the Degé Kangyur. It lacks a Sanskrit title as well as a colophon and it is not listed in any of the imperial-period catalogs. However, a text bearing a nearly identical title does appear at Dunhuang, suggesting that Recollecting the Names of the Buddha Ratnaśikhin was translated into Tibetan and circulated in Tibet in a relatively early period.⁴
intro.6
The Sanskrit for the first part of the dhāraṇī proper is included in a series of dhāraṇīs located on two gold foils found in a reliquary from a shrine at Candi Plaosan in Indonesia. A variant of the dhāraṇī is found in the Sūtra of the Dhāraṇī of Knowledge of Former Lives (Sumingzhi tuolouni jing), which was translated into Chinese by Faxian in 996.⁵ However, it appears that no Sanskrit recension or Chinese translation of Recollecting the Names of the Buddha Ratnaśikhin is extant.
intro.7
This English translation was made on the basis of the two Degé Kangyur recensions of the text (Toh 537⁶ and Toh 870⁷), with reference to the Stok Palace edition as well as the notes to the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma). The recensions consulted have no significant discrepancies. The dhāraṇī itself has been transcribed exactly as it appears in Toh 537.