རྒྱལ་པ་ལ་གདམས་པ་ཞས་བྱ་བ་ཐག་པ་ཆན་པའ་མད intro: 84000's introduction
Advice to a King (1) intro
- Language
- English
84000's introduction
intro.1
Discerning that the time is right to train King Bimbisāra, the Buddha Śākyamuni goes to Magadha, along with his entourage. The king is hostile at first but when his attack on the Buddha is thwarted and a verse on impermanence is heard, he becomes respectful. In the discourse that ensues, the Buddha tells the king that it is good to be disillusioned with the world because saṃsāra is impermanence and suffering. He then elaborates with a teaching on impermanence followed by a teaching on suffering. When the king asks where, if saṃsāra is so full of suffering, well-being is to be found, the Buddha responds with a short exposition on nirvāṇa as the cessation of all suffering and the cause for supreme happiness. Moved by his words, the king decides that he will renounce worldly concerns and seek nirvāṇa. The Buddha praises the king and concludes the teaching with the potent refrain, “When one is attached, that is saṃsāra. When one is not attached, that is nirvāṇa.”
intro.2
Advice to a King (1), which carries the alternative colophon title “Advice to King Bimbisāra,” is a poetic discourse on the value of understanding impermanence and the nature of suffering as the key to unlocking the prison of saṃsāra. In concise and direct language, it evokes the fragility and impermanence of human life, points out the futility of worldly accomplishments, and describes in detail the inevitable sufferings of saṃsāra in the six realms of rebirth. The teaching concludes with refrains on nirvāṇa as the cessation of suffering and the supreme happiness.
intro.3
The text 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 214) consists of advice given to Bimbisāra, the king of Magadha. The sūtra that immediately follows it in the Degé Kangyur (Toh 215)¹ consists of advice to Udayana, the king of Vatsa. Finally, a longer sūtra in the next volume of the Degé Kangyur (Toh 221) presents advice to Prasenajit, the king of Kośala.
intro.4
Only the third of these three (Toh 221) is attested in either Sanskrit or Chinese, while both the present text, Advice to King Bimbisāra (Toh 214), and Advice to Udayana, King 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,² 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.³
intro.5
King Bimbisāra of Magadha, whose capital was at Rājagṛha, was a contemporary of the Buddha Śākyamuni (according to some sources he was born on the same day) and he was among the most important royal patrons of the Buddha and his early community. As such, he features frequently in Buddhist literature. As Skilling notes, however, the framing narrative of Advice to King Bimbisāra “is strikingly out of step with the received tradition” concerning this king’s relationship with the Buddha.⁴ Other sources, such as the Vinaya literature and the biography of the Buddha titled The Play in Full (Lalitavistara, Toh 95),⁵ suggest that the king first met the Buddha while the latter was still a wandering mendicant and was impressed by him even then. In contrast, this text has the Buddha going to meet King Bimbisāra, apparently for the first time, only after the Buddha’s community was already established at Prince Jeta’s Grove (under the patronage of King Prasenajit of Kośala), and it portrays King Bimbisāra rudely rebuffing him at first. This unusual framing story raises further questions about the textual history of this sūtra. Such questions notwithstanding, at the heart of the sūtra is an eloquent, concise, and forceful teaching on impermanence, suffering, karma, and the promise of peace.
intro.6
There have been two previous English translations of Advice to King Bimbisāra: an early, loose translation published in 1973 by Thubten Kalzang Rinpoche et al., and a richly annotated and fine translation by Peter Skilling 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).