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We are grateful to Jonathan Silk (Silk 2022, p. 273, n. 15) for pointing out a number of significant errors and omissions in an earlier version of this paragraph.
At the time this translation was made, the edition of Hokazono (Hokazono 1994, 2019a, 2019b) mentioned above was unavailable to us. Since it appears to be a considerable improvement on Lefman’s (as pointed out by Silk 2022, pp. 273, 281–2), we expect to benefit from a close reading of it in a planned future update of this translation. Silk’s appendix (Silk 2022, pp. 288–296) correlating our milestone numbers to both Hokazono’s and Lefmann’s editions will no doubt prove a helpful resource in that task.
The Sanskrit here has Kauṇḍinya, who (with his title Ajñāta-) has already been mentioned. However, Negi cites this and one another instance to suggest the possibility that the Tibetan gsus po che is sometimes used to refer to Kauṇḍinya.
The four rivers is a technical term for the streams (ogha) that are identical to the four “outflows” (āśrava), namely, sensual desires, desire for cyclic existence, wrong views, and ignorance.
We are grateful to Jonathan Silk (Silk 2022 p. 276 n19) for pointing out that these two stanzas are indeed verses, not prose as an earlier version of this translation had formatted them.
We are grateful to Jonathan Silk (Silk 2022 p. 276 n19) for pointing out that these are lines of verse, not prose as an earlier version of this translation had formatted them.
We are grateful to Jonathan Silk (Silk 2022 p. 276–7 n19) for pointing out that this paragraph is prose, not lines of verse as an earlier version of this translation had formatted it.
We are grateful to Jonathan Silk (Silk 2022 p. 277 n19) for pointing out that this paragraph is in prose, not lines of verse as an earlier version of this translation had formatted it.
For reasons of style and readability, in our English rendering we here add the gods’ repeated proclamation, which (as correctly pointed out in Silk 2022, p. 277 n 19) is not repeated in the Tibetan or the Sanskrit.
According to Lefmann’s edition of the Sanskrit and the Tibetan chos ’dod. Vaidya’s Sanskrit has Dharmakāya as the second name here.
We are grateful to Jonathan Silk (Silk 2022 p. 277 n19) for pointing out that the four stanzas to this point are lines of verse, not prose as an earlier version of this translation had formatted them.
We are grateful to Jonathan Silk (Silk 2022 p. 276 n18) for pointing out that an earlier version of this translation had erroneously read bde bar gshegs pa (sugata) here instead of de bzhin gshegs pa (tathāgata). We also note Silk’s justified and carefully argumented disapproval of our (then) rendering of bde bar gshegs pa / sugata as “bliss-gone one,” a term we had used in a few early translations but had independently abandoned, in favor of “Well-Gone One” (as in the present version of this translation), or of simply using the Sanskrit term (as in many other of our translations).
The rest of this statement to the end of the paragraph is abbreviated in the Tibetan (as correctly noted in Silk 2022, p. 277 n19), being a repeat of the equivalent sentences in the previous statements; for a more fluent readability we have provided the full statement here and in the following passages.
We are grateful to Jonathan Silk (Silk 2022 p. 277 n19) for pointing out that the three stanzas to this point are lines of verse, not prose as an earlier version of this translation had formatted them.
This is the first of the “thirty-two marks of a great being,” the rest of which are listed in the paragraphs that follow.
In the passsage that follows, the translation follows the structure of the Sanskrit rather than the Tibetan.
With this paragraph begins a list of the “four confidences (vaiśāradya) of a thus-gone one.”
The qualities listed from this paragraph until 26.205 correspond, with some variations, to enumerations in other texts of the “eighteen unique qualities of a buddha” (āvenikabuddhadharma).
One of the gods gathered at King Śuddhodana’s residence before Prince Siddhārtha’s birth, said to be head god of the Ābhāsvara heaven.
An ancient title given to ascetics, monks, hermits, and saints, namely, those who have attained the realization of truth through their own contemplation and not by divine revelation. It is also used as an epithet of the Buddha Śākyamuni, and has also been rendered here as “Sage.”
In a general sense, samādhi can describe a number of different meditative states. In the Mahāyāna literature, in particular in the Prajñāpāramitā sūtras, we find extensive lists of different samādhis, numbering over one hundred.
In a more restricted sense, and when understood as a mental state, samādhi is defined as the one-pointedness of the mind (cittaikāgratā), the ability to remain on the same object over long periods of time. The Drajor Bamponyipa (sgra sbyor bam po gnyis pa) commentary on the Mahāvyutpatti explains the term samādhi as referring to the instrument through which mind and mental states “get collected,” i.e., it is by the force of samādhi that the continuum of mind and mental states becomes collected on a single point of reference without getting distracted.
One of Māra’s sons who developed faith in Prince Siddhārtha and tried to dissuade Māra from attacking him on the evening of his awakening.
The main palace of the abode of the yakṣas on Mount Sumeru. It is ruled by the great king Vaiśravaṇa, also known as Kubera.
Another name of Sūrya, the god of the sun, or the sun personified.
The king of elephants and Śakra’s mount, who makes offerings to Prince Siddhārtha upon learning of his intent to leave home.
A follower of a non-Buddhist mendicant movement founded by Makkhali Gosāla (fifth century ʙᴄᴇ). The ājīvikas adhered to a fatalist worldview according to which all beings eventually reach spiritual accomplishment by fate, rather than their own actions.
One of the monks attending this teaching in Śrāvastī, at Jeta’s Grove. He was one of the five companions who joined Prince Siddhārtha while practicing austerities and attended his first turning of the wheel of Dharma at the Deer Park, after the Buddha’s awakening. As he was the first to understand the teachings on the four truths, he received the name Ājñātakauṇḍinya, meaning “Kauṇḍinya who understood.” Also known simply as Kauṇḍinya.
A thus-gone one to whom the Bodhisattva made offerings in a past life.
One of the eight goddesses in the west, called upon to grant protection.
The most subtle form of deluded consciousness, which serves as the substratum for karmic seeds to be stored; likewise the substratum from which appearances manifest.
The resinous heartwood of the Aquilaria and Gyirnops evergreen trees in India and southeast Asia, also known as aloeswood (Agallochum).
A thus-gone one to whom the Bodhisattva made offerings in a past life.
One of the monks attending this teaching in Śrāvastī, at Jeta’s Grove.
One of the places the Buddha visited in the region of Gayā.
A major śrāvaka disciple and personal attendant of the Buddha Śākyamuni during the last twenty-five years of his life. He was a cousin of the Buddha (according to the Mahāvastu, he was a son of Śuklodana, one of the brothers of King Śuddhodana, which means he was a brother of Devadatta; other sources say he was a son of Amṛtodana, another brother of King Śuddhodana, which means he would have been a brother of Aniruddha).
Ānanda, having always been in the Buddha’s presence, is said to have memorized all the teachings he heard and is celebrated for having recited all the Buddha’s teachings by memory at the first council of the Buddhist saṅgha, thus preserving the teachings after the Buddha’s parinirvāṇa. The phrase “Thus did I hear at one time,” found at the beginning of the sūtras, usually stands for his recitation of the teachings. He became a patriarch after the passing of Mahākāśyapa.
One of the monks attending this teaching in Śrāvastī, at Jeta’s Grove.
A gatekeeper.
A wealthy merchant in the town of Śrāvastī, famous for his generosity to the poor, who became a patron of the Buddha Śākyamuni. He bought Prince Jeta’s Grove (Skt. Jetavana), to be the Buddha’s first monastery, a place where the monks could stay during the monsoon.
A vast legendary lake on the other side of the Himalayas. Only those with miraculous powers can go there. It is said to be the source of the world’s four great rivers. (Provisional 84000 definition. New definition forthcoming.)
A nāga king.
The name of an ascetic.
Lit. “Unobstructed.” One of the ten great śrāvaka disciples, famed for his meditative prowess and superknowledges. He was the Buddha's cousin—a son of Amṛtodana, one of the brothers of King Śuddhodana—and is often mentioned along with his two brothers Bhadrika and Mahānāma. Some sources also include Ānanda among his brothers.
One of the monks attending this teaching in Śrāvastī, at Jeta’s Grove.
One of the sons of Māra present on the eve of Prince Siddhārtha’s awakening.
Alternate name of Māra.
Lit. “god who moves above the earth.” Name of one of the sixty-four scripts mentioned by Prince Siddhārtha to his schoolmaster Viśvāmitra.
A town in the country of Maineya. Located six leagues away is the place where Chanda, Prince Siddhārtha’s servant, parted with him after his escape from home. It is said a memorial was later built here, known as “Chanda’s Return.”
One of the sons of Māra present on the eve of Prince Siddhārtha’s awakening.
A constellation in the west, personified as a semidivine being. Here called upon for protection.
One of the four main continents that surround Sumeru, the central mountain in classical Buddhist cosmology. It is the western continent, characterized as “rich in the resources of cattle,” thus its Tibetan name “using cattle.” It is circular in shape, measuring about 7,500 yojanas in circumference, and is flanked by two subsidiary continents. Humans who live there are very tall, about 24 feet (7.3 meters) on average, and live for 500 years. It is known by the names Godānīya, Aparāntaka, Aparagodānīya, or Aparagoyāna.
One of the eight goddesses in the east, called upon to grant protection.
The four applications of mindfulness are mindfulness (1) of the body, (2) of feelings, (3) of the mind, and (4) of phenomena. These four are part of the thirty-seven factors of awakening.
One of the sixteen gods guarding the seat of awakening.
The first spiritual teacher Prince Siddhārtha studied with after leaving his home.
One of the daughters of Māra present on the eve of Siddhārtha’s awakening.
A thus-gone one to whom the Bodhisattva made offerings in a past life.
A king, one of the Buddha’s former rebirths.
A constellation in the east, personified as a semidivine being. Here called upon for protection.
The greatest mathematician among the Śākyas. He was appointed as a judge to determine Prince Siddhārtha’s intellectual capabilities.
One of the five Pāṇḍava brothers. Son of Indra.
One of the eight goddesses in the west, called upon to grant protection.
One of the eight goddesses in the north, called upon to grant protection.
A constellation in the west, personified as a semidivine being. Here called upon for protection.
The famous great sage who went to visit Prince Siddhārtha when he was a newborn baby. He made predictions of his awakening as the Buddha and then cried when he realized he would not be alive to witness it.
A constellation in the east, personified as a semidivine being. Here called upon for protection.
Saraca asoca. A tree with aromatic blossoms, clustered together as orange, yellow, and red bunches of petals.
A mountain in the west, called upon to grant wealth and protection.
’phags pa rgya cher rol pa zhes bya ba theg pa chen po’i mdo (Āryalalitavistaranāmamahāyānasūtra). Toh 95, Degé Kangyur vol. 46 (mdo sde, kha), folios 1b–216b.
’phags pa rgya cher rol pa zhes bya ba theg pa chen po’i mdo. bka’ ’gyur (dpe bsdur ma) [Comparative Edition of the Kangyur], krung go’i bod rig pa zhib ’jug ste gnas kyi bka’ bstan dpe sdur khang (The Tibetan Tripitaka Collation Bureau of the China Tibetology Research Center). 108 volumes. Beijing: krung go’i bod rig pa dpe skrun khang (China Tibetology Publishing House), 2006–2009, vol 46, pp. 3–434.
Foucaux, Phillipe Édouard. Rgya Tch’er Rol Pa ou Développement des Jeux, Contenant l’Histoire du Bouddha Çakya-mouni. Première Partie—Texte Tibétain. Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1847.
Hokazono, Kōichi (1994). Raritavisutara no Kenkyu. Volume 1 [study of Lalitavistara, chs. 1–14]. Tokyo: Daitō Shuppansha, 1994.
Hokazono, Kōichi (2019a). Raritavisutara no Kenkyu. Volume 2 [study of Lalitavistara, chs. 15–21]. Tokyo: Daitō Shuppansha, 2019.
Hokazono, Kōichi (2019b). Raritavisutara no Kenkyu. Volume 3 [study of Lalitavistara, chs. 22–27]. Tokyo: Daitō Shuppansha, 2019.
Lefmann, Salomon. Lalita Vistara. Halle: Verlag der Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses, 1882.
Mitra, R. L. (1853–1877). The Lalita Vistara or Memoirs of the Early Life of S’a’kya Siñha. Bibliotheca Indica: A Collection of Oriental Works, Old Series, nos. 51, 73, 143, 144, 145, 237. Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1853–1877.
Bays, Gwendolyn. The Voice of the Buddha, The Beauty of Compassion: The Lalitavistara Sutra. Tibetan Translation Series, vol. 2. Berkeley, CA: Dharma Publishing, 1983.
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Foucaux, Phillipe Édouard (1870). Étude sur le Lalita Vistara pour une édition critique du texte sanskrit, précédée d’ un coup d’oeil sur la publication des livres bouddhiques en Europe et dans l’Inde. Paris: Maisonneuve, 1870.
Foucaux, Phillipe Édouard (1884). Le Lalitavistara, Développement des Jeux: l’histoire traditionnelle de la vie du Bouddha Çakyamuni. Première partie. Annales du Musée Guimet, vol. 6 Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1884.
Foucaux, Phillipe Édouard (1892). Le Lalitavistara, Développement des Jeux: l’histoire traditionnelle de la vie du Bouddha Çakyamuni. Seconde partie: notes, variantes, et index. Annales du Musée Guimet, vol. 19. Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1892.
Lefmann, Salomon (1874). Lalitavistara: Erzählung von dem Leben und der Lehre des Çâkya Simha. Berlin: Dümmler, 1874.
Lenz, Robert. “Analyse du Lalita-Vistara-Pourana, l’un des principaux ouvrages sacrés des Bouddhistes de l’Asie centrale, contenant la vie de leur prophète, et écrit en Sanscrit.” Bulletin Scientifique publié par l’Académie impériale des Sciences de Saint-Pétersbourg I.7: 49–51; I.8: 57–63; I.9: 71–72; I.10: 75–78; I.11: 87–88; I.12: 92–96; I.13: 97–99. St. Petersburg: Académie impériale des sciences, 1836.
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The Play in Full tells the story of how the Buddha manifested in this world and attained awakening, as perceived from the perspective of the Great Vehicle. The sūtra, which is structured in twenty-seven chapters, first presents the events surrounding the Buddha’s birth, childhood, and adolescence in the royal palace of his father, king of the Śākya nation. It then recounts his escape from the palace and the years of hardship he faced in his quest for spiritual awakening. Finally the sūtra reveals his complete victory over the demon Māra, his attainment of awakening under the Bodhi tree, his first turning of the wheel of Dharma, and the formation of the very early saṅgha.
This text was translated by the Dharmachakra Translation Committee under the supervision of Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche.
Cortland Dahl, Catherine Dalton, Hilary Herdman, Heidi Koppl, James Gentry, and Andreas Doctor translated the text from Tibetan into English. Andreas Doctor and Wiesiek Mical then compared the translations against the original Tibetan and Sanskrit, respectively. Finally, Andreas Doctor edited the translation and wrote the introduction.
The Dharmachakra Translation Committee would like to thank Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche for blessing this project, and Khenpo Sherap Sangpo for his generous assistance with the resolution of several difficult passages.
This translation has been completed under the patronage and supervision of 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha.
The generous sponsorship of 簡源震及家人江秀敏，簡暐如，簡暐丞 Chien YuanChen (Dharma Das) and his wife, daughter, and son for work on this sūtra is gratefully acknowledged.
The Play in Full (Lalitavistara) is without a doubt one of the most important sūtras within Buddhist Mahāyāna literature. With parts of the text dating from the earliest days of the Buddhist tradition, this story of the Buddha’s awakening has captivated the minds of devotees, both ordained and lay, as far back as the beginning of the common era.
In brief, The Play in Full tells the story of how the Buddha manifested in this world and attained awakening. The sūtra, which is structured in twenty-seven chapters, begins with the Buddha being requested to teach the sūtra by several gods, as well as the thousands of bodhisattvas and hearers in his retinue. The gods summarize the sūtra in this manner (chap. 1, 1.14):
“Blessed One, there is an extensive collection of discourses on the Dharma that bears the name Lalitavistara (The Play in Full). This teaching illuminates the basic virtues of the bodhisattvas, showing how the Bodhisattva descended from the sublime palace in the Heaven of Joy, intentionally entered the womb, and sojourned in the womb. It shows the power of the place where he was born to a noble family, and how he surpassed others through all the superior special qualities that he demonstrated through his actions as a youth. It shows his many unique qualities, such as his skills in arts, crafts, writing, arithmetic, calculations, astrology, fencing, archery, feats of physical strength, and wrestling, demonstrating his superiority to all others in these areas. It shows how he enjoyed his retinue of consorts and the pleasures of his kingdom. “This teaching proclaims how he attained the result brought about by the concordant cause of all the bodhisattva activities, showing how he manifested as a bodhisattva and destroyed the legions of Māra. It explains the ten powers, the fourfold fearlessness, and the other innumerable qualities of a thus-gone one, and presents the infinite teachings taught by the thus-gone ones of times past.”
The Buddha silently accepts this request, and the following day he commences the teaching.
The story begins in the divine realms where the future Buddha (who, prior to his awakening, is known as the Bodhisattva) enjoys a perfect life surrounded by divine pleasures. Due to his past aspirations, however, the musical instruments of the palace call out to him, reminding him of his prior commitment to attain awakening (chap. 2). Inspired by this reminder, the Bodhisattva announces, to the despair of the gods, that he will abandon his divine pleasures in pursuit of full and complete awakening on this earth (Jambudvīpa), where he will take birth within a suitably noble family (chap. 3). However, before his departure from the heavenly realms, the Bodhisattva delivers one final teaching to the gods (chap. 4) and, having installed the bodhisattva Maitreya as his regent, he sets out for the human realm accompanied by great displays of divine offerings and auspicious signs (chap. 5). He enters the human world via the womb of Queen Māyā, where he resides for the duration of the pregnancy within an exquisite temple, enjoying the happiness of absorption (chap. 6).
After taking birth in the Lumbinī Grove and declaring his intention to attain complete awakening (chap. 7), we follow the infant Bodhisattva on a temple visit where the stone statues rise up to greet him (chap. 8) and hear of the marvelous jewelry that his father, the king, commissions for him (chap. 9). Next, as the Bodhisattva matures, the sūtra recounts his first day at school, where he far surpasses even the most senior tutors (chap. 10); his natural attainment of the highest levels of meditative concentration during a visit to the countryside (chap. 11); and his incredible prowess in the traditional worldly arts, which he uses to win the hand of Gopā, a Śākya girl whose father requires proof of the Bodhisattva’s qualities as a proper husband (chap. 12).
The Bodhisattva has now reached maturity and can enjoy life in the palace, where he is surrounded by all types of pleasure, including a large harem to entertain him. Seeing this, the gods begin to worry that he will never leave such a luxurious life, and they therefore gently remind him of his vows to awaken (chap. 13). This reminder, however, turns out to be unnecessary, as the Bodhisattva is far from attached to such fleeting pleasures. Instead, to the great despair of everyone in the Śākya kingdom, he renounces his royal pleasures. Inspired by the sight of a sick person, an old man, a corpse, and a religious mendicant (chap. 14), he departs from the palace to begin the life of a religious seeker on a spiritual journey, which eventually leads him to awakening (chap. 15).
Already at this early stage of his religious career, the Bodhisattva is no ordinary being. It quickly becomes apparent that he surpasses all the foremost spiritual teachers of his day. His extraordinary charisma also attracts many beings, such as the king of Magadha, who requests the Bodhisattva to take up residence in his kingdom, but without success (chap. 16). In a final test of the established contemplative systems of his day, the Bodhisattva next follows Rudraka, a renowned spiritual teacher. But once again he is disappointed, although he quickly masters the prescribed trainings.
These experiences lead the Bodhisattva to the conclusion that he must discover awakening on his own, so he sets out on a six-year journey of austere practices, which are so extreme in nature that they take him to the brink of death (chap. 17). Finally the Bodhisattva realizes that such practices do not lead to awakening and, encouraged by some protective gods, he begins to eat a normal diet once again, which restores his former physique and health (chap. 18). At this point he senses that he is on the verge of attaining his goal, and therefore sets out for the seat of awakening (bodhimaṇḍa), the sacred place where all bodhisattvas in their last existence attain full and complete awakening (chap. 19). As he arrives at the seat of awakening, the gods create a variety of impressive miraculous displays, and the place eventually comes to resemble a divine realm, fit for the epic achievement that awaits the Bodhisattva (chap. 20).
Still, just as everything has been prepared to celebrate the attainment of awakening, Māra, the most powerful demon in the desire realm, arrives with the aim of preventing the Bodhisattva from attaining his goal. Together with his terrifying army and seductive daughters, Māra tries every trick in the book to discourage the Bodhisattva, but to no avail. Sad and dejected, Māra eventually gives up his disgraceful attempt at creating obstacles (chap. 21). Now the stage is finally set for the Bodhisattva to attain awakening under the Bodhi tree, a gradual process that unfolds throughout the night until he fully and perfectly awakens at dawn to become the Awakened One (Buddha), or Thus-Gone One (Tathāgata), as he is known subsequent to his awakening (chap. 22). As is only suitable for such an epic achievement, the entire pantheon of divine beings now hurry to the Thus-Gone One, making offerings and singing his praise (chap. 23).
During the first seven weeks following his awakening, the Buddha keeps to himself and does not teach. In fact he worries that the truth he has discovered might be too profound for others to comprehend, except perhaps a bodhisattva in his last existence. Māra, who senses the Buddha’s dilemma, turns up and tries one last trick, suggesting to the Buddha that perhaps this would be a suitable time to pass straight into parinirvāṇa. The Buddha, however, makes it clear that he has no such plans, and finally Māra relents. During these first seven weeks, we also hear of other encounters between the Buddha and some local passersby, but significantly no teaching is given (chap. 24). Setting up an important example for the tradition, the Buddha eventually consents to teach the Dharma only after it has been requested four times, in this case by all the gods, headed by Brahmā and Śakra. As he says, “O Brahmā, the gates of nectar are opened” (chap. 25, 25.49).
At this point, the Buddha determines through his higher knowledge that the first people to hear his teaching should be his five former companions from the days when he was practicing austerities. Although these ascetics originally rejected the Bodhisattva when he decided to abandon their path, when they meet the Buddha again at the Deer Park outside of Vārāṇasī, they are rendered helpless by his majestic presence and request teachings from him. The five companions instantly receive ordination and, in a seminal moment, the Buddha teaches them the four truths of the noble ones: suffering, the origin of suffering, the cessation of suffering, and the path that leads to the cessation of suffering. Thus this occasion constitutes the birth of the Three Jewels: the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Saṅgha (chap. 26). This marks the end of the teaching proper. Finally, in the epilogue, the Buddha encourages his retinue of gods and humans to take this sūtra as their practice and propagate it to the best of their abilities (chap. 27).
This version of the story thus ends at the very moment when the Buddha has finally manifested all the qualities of awakening and is fully equipped to influence the world, as he did over the next forty-five years by continuously teaching the Dharma and establishing his community of followers. From our perspective, this may seem odd. Why do we not get to follow the Buddha as he builds his community of monks and nuns and interacts with the people of India, high and low, throughout his teaching career? And why do we not get to hear the details of his old age and passing into nirvāṇa? After all, this is the part of his life where his inconceivable qualities are most evident and where his glory as the fully awakened Buddha is most radiant.
The answer of course cannot be settled here, but we can at least surmise. Perhaps the aim of this account is not to describe the life of the Buddha in the way one would expect in a traditional biography, or even a religious hagiography. Instead, the scope of The Play in Full may be to tell the story of the complete awakening of a bodhisattva in his last existence. The many events that occurred post awakening during the Buddha’s forty-five-year teaching career are therefore not of particular interest to a project that aims to describe the awakening of a buddha. These events, moreover, are well documented in the teachings preserved elsewhere in the Buddhist canon.
If this assumption is correct, The Play in Full should not be viewed exclusively as the “life of the Buddha” in the way we might ordinarily understand such a phrase, but rather as an account of the unfolding of awakening itself, clearly centered around the figure of the Buddha Śākyamuni, yet with many themes and plots that do not exclusively refer to his particular life example. Although we do hear of events specific to the life of the Buddha Śākyamuni in the chapters concerning his education, athletic prowess, and so on, we are often reminded that the main occurrences recounted in The Play in Full have unfolded previously, namely whenever past bodhisattvas awoke to the level of a thus-gone one. Thus this story represents nothing new under the sun; instead it recounts what happens to everyone who is in a position such as the Bodhisattva’s.
This brings up another important feature of The Play in Full, which is the ahistorical Mahāyāna backdrop that informs the entire story line. Throughout the text, the story is covered by a latticework of mind-boggling miracles and feats that defy comprehension by the ordinary intellect. Clearly, in the perspective of the Mahāyāna, the world is fashioned according to the lenses that we use to see with. And here, in The Play in Full, the lenses are those of full and complete awakening. This fact is already alluded to in the title of the text, which describes the events in the Bodhisattva’s life as a play. As such, the events in the Bodhisattva’s life are not ordinary karmic activity that unfold based on the mechanisms of a conceptual mind, but rather the playful manner in which the nonconceptual wisdom of a tenth-level bodhisattva unfolds as an expression of his awakened insight. In this manner of storytelling, the reader is invited into the worldview of a timeless and limitless universe as perceived by the adepts of the Mahāyāna. The time span, numbers, and sizes within this Mahāyāna scripture are so persistently overwhelming that all historical and scientific thinking as we know it eventually loses meaning and relevance.
As such, The Play in Full is not a historical document and it was probably never intended to be. Instead it is a story of awakening that itself contains all the key teachings of the Mahāyāna. Thus, to fully appreciate this text, the reader must also attend to its aesthetic and rhetorical functions and how its narrative progression and episodes have been designed to impact readers, rather than simply approaching the text as documentary evidence of a life well lived. The text can thus be read on many levels from a Buddhist perspective, with new facets being discovered upon each reading. For the layperson it may provide an inspiring glimpse into the ethos of the Mahāyāna worldview, for the renunciant it can represent an encouragement to live the contemplative life, and for the scholar it may appear as an exemplary specimen of Buddhist philosophy and literature. For others it may be all of these, and still more.
Still, the fact that The Play in Full is not a text meant to provide historical details of the founder of Buddhism should not prevent us, if we are so inclined, from enjoying this magnificent religious literature through the lenses of historical awareness and philological scholarship. If we choose to adopt such perspectives, The Play in Full does indeed contain a wealth of information of interest to the historically inclined. The basic framework for the story of the Bodhisattva’s awakening was already in place within the Buddhist tradition many centuries before this text appeared in writing, as early scholarship on the sūtra has already pointed out (e.g., Winternitz 1927). This essential framework, however, was greatly developed and adorned by the sūtra’s compilers/authors in order to create its current form, which Vaidya (1958) has dated to the third century
There is no single full biographical account in the Pali canon, but episodes of the Buddha’s life are recounted in such works as the Mahāpadānasutta (DN 14), Mahāparinibbāṇasutta (DN 16), Ariyapariyesanāsutta (MN 26), Mahāsaccakasutta (MN 36), and Acchariya-abbhutasutta (MN 123). Perhaps the earliest work to be partly structured as a biographical account, although it also contains much other material and is not always ordered chronologically, is the Sanskrit Mahāvastu, a Vinaya text of the Lokottaravāda branch of the Mahāsāṅghika. In the Kangyur, the most detailed account of the Buddha’s life from a non-Mahāyāna viewpoint is to be found in the rich narrative sections of the Vinaya texts translated from the Sanskrit of the Mūlasarvāstivāda school, particularly in The Chapter on Schisms in the Saṅgha (Saṅghabhedavastu, the volume-length seventeenth chapter of the Vinayavastu) and in the standalone compilation extracted from it, the Abhiniṣkramaṇasūtra (Toh 301).
However, it is only with the appearance of The Play in Full that an extensive account of awakening according to the Mahāyāna perspective appears. It can be understood as a historically later text in the sense that it is an obvious compilation of various early sources, which have been strung together and elaborated on according to the Mahāyāna worldview. As such, this text is a fascinating example of the ways in which the Mahāyāna rests firmly on the earlier tradition, yet reinterprets the very foundations of Buddhism in a way that fits its own vast perspective. The fact that the text is a compilation is initially evident from the mixture of prose and verse that, in some cases, contains strata from the very earliest Buddhist teachings and, in other cases, presents later Buddhist themes that do not emerge—in written form at least—until the first centuries of the common era. Previous scholarship on The Play in Full (mostly published in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) devoted much time to determining the text’s potential sources and their respective time periods, although without much success. For example, while the first critical publications argued that the verse sections of the text represent a more ancient origin than the parts written in prose, that theory had largely been dismissed by the beginning of the twentieth century (Winternitz 1927). Although this topic clearly deserves further study, it is interesting to note that little new research on this sūtra has been published during the last sixty years (at least in English; some interesting papers by Japanese scholars deserve our attention). As such, the only thing we can currently say concerning the sources and origin of The Play in Full is that it was based on several early and, for the most part, unidentified sources that belong to the very early days of the Buddhist tradition.
The Play in Full makes no attempt to present itself as a homogenous text composed by a single author. In fact it seems that the compilers of the text took pride in presenting an account of the Bodhisattva’s last existence that was as detailed and all-encompassing as possible and thus, to this end, it was perfectly acceptable to draw openly on a variety of sources. One obvious example of this is the fact that although the story is for the most part recounted in the third person, it occasionally and abruptly shifts into a first-person narrative where the Buddha recounts the events himself. In addition, there is often a significant overlap between the topics covered in the prose and verse sections, and in these places the compilers of the text have made no attempt to polish away the inconsistencies and redundancies. It is likely that the discerning readers of the time may have been quite aware of the sources on which The Play in Full draws, and that it was perfectly acceptable at the time to compile a “new” scripture from traditional sources, and to have this newly assembled literature be afforded the same inspired status as other instances of “the words of the Buddha” (buddhavacana). Certainly the Mahāyāna literature contains many statements in support of such an open-ended approach to canonical standards.
The title of this sūtra indicates that this is an elaborate account of the playful activity performed by the Bodhisattva. The fact that it is called in full (vistara) indicates that the compilers saw this text as an elaborate way of viewing the awakening of the Buddha, as opposed to other (from a Mahāyāna perspective) more limited accounts, which have less emphasis on miracles and elasticity of time and place. But in full is not to be understood only in terms of the vast Mahāyāna worldview. It can also signify an elaborate account that includes more details than previous presentations of the topic, since the Sanskrit word vistara can communicate this meaning as well.
Both of these interpretations of vistara are also possible based on the translated title in Tibetan (rgya cher rol pa). Although the grammatical elements in the Sanskrit and Tibetan titles differ, the Tibetan title can nevertheless be interpreted in ways similar to the Sanskrit. As such, the title of this text already gives subtle hints that the internal hermeneutics of this sūtra may differ from our contemporary historical perspective regarding definitions of “the words of the Buddha.” Instead, by embracing the worldview of playful activity that The Play in Full presents, the words of the Buddha can manifest at any time, whether compiled, edited, or even newly authored.
In India, The Play in Full was no doubt a work in progress over several centuries before it finally settled into the form that we know today. It appears to have enjoyed a certain popularity in India, and it also had significant influence in several other Asian regions. In the Gandharan art of the period in which The Play in Full emerged, the themes of the text are widely represented in temple art, and even as far away as the Borobudur Temple complex in Indonesia this sūtra provided inspiration for the elaborate artwork adorning sections of the temple structures. Versions of The Play in Full were translated into Chinese in the fourth century by Dharmarakṣa and in the seventh by Divākara.
We also have a very beautiful and accurate Tibetan translation of the text. This was produced in the ninth century
In the West, the first mention of The Play in Full may have been the chapter-by-chapter summary by Robert Lenz published serially (in French) in 1836. A few years later, in 1839, Alexander Csoma de Kőrös published his own summary in Analysis of the Mdo (Calcutta, pp. 288–96). Eugène Burnouf also mentioned this text in his Introduction à l’histoire du Bouddhisme Indien published in 1844. In 1847, Phillipe Édouard Foucaux published an edition of the Tibetan, and his initial French translation, made from the Tibetan but with reference to the Sanskrit (the first ever translation of The Play in Full) appeared in 1848. An edition of the Sanskrit by Rajendralal Mitra began to appear over two decades starting in 1853, and in 1874 Salomon Lefmann published a partial translation into German. An English translation by Mitra began to appear in 1881, and in 1882 Lefman published his edition of the Sanskrit. Shortly thereafter in 1884, Foucaux published his second French translation, this time from the Sanskrit, followed by a further volume of notes in 1892. Almost a hundred years later, Gwendolyn Bays, who based her work on Foucaux’s translation with reference to the original Sanskrit and Tibetan, published a complete translation in English. More recently still, the Japanese scholar Hokazono Kōichi has published a new and improved Sanskrit edition (accompanied by extensive ancillary material in Japanese and a Japanese translation).
This present translation builds on, and benefits from, the considerable efforts of these previous scholars. Unlike earlier translations, however, we have based our translation on the Tibetan text as found in the Degé Kangyur (Toh 95), with reference to the other available Kangyur editions. In addition we have compared the Tibetan translation line by line with the Sanskrit (Lefmann 1882), and we have revised the translation on numerous occasions where the Sanskrit clarified obscure passages in the Tibetan version or represented a preferred reading.
It is fair to say, then, that this translation as it stands is an equal product of the Tibetan and the Sanskrit. Although some scholars may have preferred a translation from the Sanskrit alone, we believe that the present approach is justified, since a comparative study of the available manuscripts makes it clear that several strands of manuscripts were extant in India, sometimes with significant differences in wording and content. Moreover, as the Tibetan translation predates the existing Sanskrit manuscripts by centuries, the Tibetan may indeed represent an earlier stratum that merits attention apart from merely complementing the Sanskrit.
In producing this translation, we have sought to incorporate the best of both manuscript traditions through a diplomatic approach that does not give preference to either language a priori. Since there are literally thousands of differences between the Sanskrit and the Tibetan manuscripts when all levels of variance are considered, we have avoided annotating each individual reading preference in the translation. Our motivation for this has been to present a translation that the general reader can enjoy without getting distracted by numerous philological discussions and annotations that would interest but a few scholarly specialists. Instead, for those who would like to study the translation together with the original manuscripts, we have included references to the page numbers of both the Sanskrit and the Tibetan manuscripts, providing the specialist with an easy means for comparative textual studies. In this way it is our hope that both the general reader and the specialist may find the present translation to be of benefit and inspiration.
Homage to all buddhas and bodhisattvas!
Thus did I hear at one time. The Blessed One was staying in Śrāvastī, in Jeta’s Grove, Anāthapiṇḍada’s Park, along with a great saṅgha of twelve thousand monks.
Among them were the venerable Ājñātakauṇḍinya, the venerable Aśvajit, the venerable Bāṣpa, the venerable Mahānāma, the venerable Bhadrika, the venerable Yaśodeva, the venerable Vimala, the venerable Subāhu, the venerable Pūrṇa, the venerable Gavāṃpati, the venerable Urubilvā Kāśyapa, the venerable Nadīkāśyapa, the venerable Gayākāśyapa, the venerable Śāriputra, the venerable Mahāmaudgalyāyana, the venerable Mahākāśyapa, the venerable Mahākātyāyana, the venerable Mahākapphiṇa, the venerable Kauṣṭhila, the venerable Cunda, the venerable Pūrṇamaitrāyaṇīputra, the venerable Aniruddha, the venerable Nandika, the venerable Kampila, the venerable Subhūti, the venerable Revata, [2] the venerable Khadiravaṇika, the venerable Amogharāja, the venerable Mahāpāraṇika, the venerable Vakkula, the venerable Nanda, the venerable Rāhula, the venerable Svāgata, and the venerable Ānanda.
Along with these monks were thirty-two thousand bodhisattvas, all of whom had only a single birth remaining and were adept in all the perfections of the bodhisattvas. They enjoyed all the superknowledges of the bodhisattvas and had attained all the dhāraṇīs and all the confidence of the bodhisattvas. They had completed all the aspirations of the bodhisattvas, understood and realized all discriminating knowledges of the bodhisattvas, and gained mastery over all the absorptions of the bodhisattvas. They had obtained all the powers of the bodhisattvas and dwelt with all the patience of the bodhisattvas. Indeed each of them had completed all the bodhisattva grounds.
Foremost among them were the bodhisattva great being Maitreya, the bodhisattva great being Dharaṇīśvararāja, the bodhisattva great being Siṃhaketu, the bodhisattva great being Siddhārthamati, the bodhisattva great being Praśāntacāritramati, the bodhisattva great being Pratisaṃvitprāpta, the bodhisattva great being Nityodyukta, and the bodhisattva great being Mahākaruṇācandrin.
At that time the Blessed One dwelt in the city of Śrāvastī, where he was revered by his fourfold retinue, as well as by kings, princes, royal ministers, vassal kings, and attendants. Likewise his followers among the military, the priests, the merchants, the householders, and the royal court revered him. Both city dwellers and those who lived in the countryside, as well as the adherents of extremist philosophies, ascetics, priests, logicians, and wandering hermits, also revered him. He was treated as their master and showed great respect.
Presented with offerings, the Blessed One received abundant savory food and drink, robes, alms bowls, [3] bedding, healing medicines and remedies, and other appropriate necessities. Yet the great wealth and renown he enjoyed were like drops of water rolling off the petals of a lotus flower. The Blessed One remained detached and untainted by it all.
As the Blessed One’s fame spread throughout the world, he became known by various names and epithets, such as the Blessed One, the Worthy One, the Perfectly and Completely Awakened One, He Who Is Both Wise and Virtuous, the Well-Gone One, the Knower of the World, the Peerless Guide Who Tames Beings, the Teacher of Gods and Men, and the Blessed Buddha.
Endowed with the fivefold vision, the Blessed One taught the inhabitants of this and other worlds, each with its gods, Māra, Brahmā, monks, nuns, and priests. To all these beings, gods and humans alike, he taught what he himself had realized, and what he had thereby actualized and accomplished.
The teachings he gave were virtuous in the beginning, virtuous in the middle, and virtuous in the end. Sublime in both word and meaning, the Dharma he taught was at once distinct, complete, pure, and wholesome. He taught all these beings how to live a life of purity.
One evening during his midnight session, the Blessed One entered a state of deep absorption known as the array of the Buddha’s adornments. The moment he entered into this state of absorption, the ray of light known as the light of wisdom free from attachment that arouses the memory of the buddhas of times past shone forth from his head’s crown extension. Illuminating all the pure realms, the light attracted Maheśvara and innumerable other gods. From the mass of light that radiated from the Thus-Gone One, the following verses of exhortation arose:
Struck by the light of wisdom free from attachment, which arouses the memory of the buddhas of times past, the gods of the pure realms were inspired by these verses and immediately arose from their tranquil absorptions. Through the power of the Buddha, they recalled the blessed buddhas of innumerable and incalculable eons, remembering the qualities of the buddha realms of each blessed buddha, as well as the retinue that surrounded the buddhas and the teachings they gave.
That night, just as people went to bed, the gods of the pure realms visited the Blessed One. Among them were Īśvara, Maheśvara, Nanda, Sunanda, Candana, Mahita, Praśānta, Praśāntavinīteśvara, and many other gods of the pure realms. With their brilliant colors, they illuminated the entirety of Jeta’s Grove with a divine light. They prostrated to the Blessed One, placing their heads at his feet, and then stood to one side, supplicating him with the following words:
“Blessed One, there is an extensive collection of discourses on the Dharma that bears the name Lalitavistara (The Play in Full). This teaching illuminates the basic virtues of the bodhisattvas, showing how the Bodhisattva descended from the sublime palace in the Heaven of Joy, intentionally entered the womb, and sojourned in the womb. It shows the power of the place where he was born to a noble family, and how he surpassed others through all the superior special qualities that he demonstrated through his actions as a youth. It shows his many unique qualities, such as his skills in arts, crafts, writing, arithmetic, calculations, astrology, fencing, archery, feats of physical strength, and wrestling, demonstrating his superiority to all other beings in these areas. It shows how he enjoyed his retinue of consorts and the pleasures of his kingdom. [5]
“This teaching proclaims how he attained the result brought about by the concordant cause of all the bodhisattva activities, showing how he manifested as a bodhisattva and destroyed the legions of Māra. It explains the ten powers, the four fearlessnesses, and the other innumerable qualities of a thus-gone one, and presents the infinite teachings taught by the thus-gone ones of times past, including the blessed Padmottara, Dharmaketu, Dīpaṃkara, Guṇaketu, Mahākara, Ṛṣideva, Śrītejas, Satyaketu, Vajrasaṃhata, Sarvābhibhū, Hemavarṇa, Atyuccagāmin, Prabālasāgara, Puṣpaketu, Vararūpa, Sulocana, Ṛṣigupta, Jinavaktra, Unnata, Puṣpita, Ūrṇatejas, Puṣkara, Suraśmi, Maṅgala, Sudarśana, Mahāsiṃhatejas, Sthitabuddhidatta, Vasantagandhin, Satyadharmavipulakīrti, Tiṣya, Puṣya, Lokasundara, Vistīrṇabheda, Ratnakīrti, Ugratejas, Brahmatejas, Sughoṣa, Supuṣpa, Sumanojñaghoṣa, Suceṣṭarūpa, Prahasitanetra, Guṇarāśi, Meghasvara, Sundaravarṇa, Āyustejas, Salīlagajagāmin, Lokābhilāṣita, Jitaśatru, Sampūjita, Vipaśyin, Śikhin, Viśvabhū, Krakucchanda, Kanakamuni, and the Thus-Gone One, the Worthy One, the perfectly and completely awakened Kāśyapa.
“Blessed One, please teach this now to benefit the multitude of beings. Teach it to bring them happiness. Teach it out of compassion for the world, to benefit a great multitude of beings, gods and humans alike. Teach it to be our doctor and to bring us happiness. Teach it to propagate this Great Vehicle. Please teach it to defeat our opponents and overpower all demonic forces; to instruct all the bodhisattvas and inspire all those who follow the Bodhisattva Vehicle to arouse diligence; to embrace the true Dharma and ensure the continuity of the Three Jewels. [6] Please teach it to illuminate all the enlightened activities of the Buddha.”
Out of compassion for these gods, and indeed for the entire world including the gods, the Blessed One remained silent, thereby offering his consent. Seeing that this silence indicated the Blessed One’s consent, the gods were overjoyed and content. With happiness and delight, they prostrated at his feet and circled him three times, scattering sandalwood powder, aloeswood powder, and māndārava flowers. Then they vanished.
At dawn the next day, the Blessed One proceeded to a circular bamboo grove. Surrounded by the assembly of bodhisattvas, and with the saṅgha of listeners gathered before him, he sat down on the seat they had prepared and addressed the monks:
“Monks, this evening a group of gods from the pure realms came before me. Among them were Īśvara, Maheśvara, Nanda, Sunanda, Candana, Mahita, Praśānta, Vinīteśvara, and many others.”
The Blessed One then continued to recount the events of the previous evening, up to the point where the gods disappeared. Bowing before the Blessed One with palms joined, the bodhisattvas and great listeners then made the following request:
“Blessed One! Please grant us the teaching entitled The Play in Full. Please teach this now to benefit the multitude of beings and bring them happiness. Please teach it out of compassion for the world and to benefit the myriad of beings, gods and humans alike. Please teach it to benefit the bodhisattva great beings of the present as well as the future. Please teach it to bring benefit and happiness.”
Out of compassion for the great bodhisattvas, for the great listeners, for gods, humans, and demigods, and indeed for the entire world, the Blessed One remained silent, thereby offering his consent. He then addressed the assembly: [7]
This concludes the first chapter, on the setting.
Now, monks, what is this extensive discourse on the Dharma known as The Play in Full?
Monks, the Bodhisattva dwelt in the supreme realm of the Heaven of Joy, where he was honored by offerings, received consecration, and was praised and revered by one hundred thousand gods. [8] He had achieved his goal and was elevated by his former aspirations. His intelligence was such that he had attained the entire range of the Buddhadharma. Indeed his eye of wisdom was at once both vast and utterly pure. Radiating with mindfulness, intelligence, realization, modesty, and joyfulness, his mind was extremely powerful. He had mastered the perfections of generosity, discipline, patience, diligence, mental stability, knowledge, and skillful means, and was adept in the fourfold path of Brahmā: great love, great compassion, great joy, and great equanimity. With great awareness, he was free of obscurations and had manifested the vision of wisdom free from attachment. Likewise he had perfected each and every quality of awakening: the applications of mindfulness, the thorough relinquishments, the bases of miraculous power, the faculties, the powers, the branches of awakening, the path, and the factors of awakening.
Sublime signs and marks, indicating his boundless accumulation of merit and wisdom, beautifully adorned the body of the Bodhisattva, who had engaged in proper conduct for a long time. Acting in perfect accordance with his words, his unerring statements were always genuine. At once honest, straightforward, and free of guile, his mind was invincible. Free of pride, conceit, arrogance, fear, and timidity, he was impartial toward all beings.
The Bodhisattva had paid homage to countless awakened beings, to billions upon billions of buddhas. His loving gaze was revered by billions upon billions of bodhisattvas. Likewise Śakra, Brahmā, Maheśvara, the guardians of the world, gods, nāgas, gandharvas, demigods, garuḍas, kinnaras, and yakṣas, in their multitudes, rejoiced in his glory.
Having perfectly discerned their every word, the Bodhisattva’s learned understanding of the teachings was at once unimpeded, discerning, and perfect. He was an unerring vessel of mindfulness, able to recall the teachings of all the buddhas. The number of dhāraṇīs he had received was infinite. The Bodhisattva was the great captain of the vessel of the Dharma, which he had perfectly accomplished through the applications of mindfulness, the thorough relinquishments, the bases of miraculous power, the faculties, the powers, the branches of awakening, the path, the perfection of knowledge, the precious quality of skillful means, and merit. With the intention to travel beyond the four rivers, he conquered Māra, subdued hostile forces, and defeated all of his opponents. Indeed he set himself at the frontlines and destroyed the enemy hordes of the afflictions with the firm vajra weapon of supreme wisdom.
This great being was like a lotus. Having a stem of great compassion deeply rooted in the mind of awakening, this lotus was born of superior intention. It was sprinkled with the water of profound diligence and had skillful means as its center, branches of awakening for its anthers, and mental stability for its stamen. This lotus arose from an immaculate ocean of a vast accumulation of virtues. Its blossoming petals, illuminated by moonlight free from the torment of pride and arrogance, were pristine. Emitting the scent of discipline, study, and conscientious speech unhindered throughout the ten directions, this lotus was foremost throughout the world in terms of knowledge, [9] yet untainted by the eight worldly concerns. It radiated the sweet fragrance of the accumulation of merit and wisdom, while the sunlight of knowledge and wisdom warmed it, causing the hundred petals of its pure vision to blossom.
The Bodhisattva was a lion among men. Swift and strong were his four bases of miraculous power, just as the claws and fangs of the four noble truths were extremely sharp. He bared the fangs of the four communions with Brahmā and gathered others through the four ways of attraction with his head. With a well-proportioned body, due to having understood the twelve links of dependent origination, and a flowing mane of the complete perfection of the thirty-seven factors of awakening, along with awareness and wisdom, his mouth opened with the three gateways to liberation, while his eyes indicated the utter purity of tranquility and insight. He dwelt in the mountain caves of mental stability, complete liberation, absorption, and deep meditation. Born of the jungles of the four activities and discipline, he was endowed with the ten powers, the fourfold fearlessness, and perfect might. The hairs on his body did not bristle with the fear of creation and destruction, nor did his valor ever diminish. He subdued the masses of extremists, who are like rabbits and deer, letting out the great lion’s roar of no self.
As the sun of great beings, light rays of knowledge radiated from the orb of his liberation and concentration, dispelling the light of the swarms of extremists, who are like fireflies, and eliminating the darkness and obscuring film of ignorance. Indeed, with brilliant strength and diligence, the radiant majesty of his merit shone brightly among gods and humans.
As the light of the moon, there was no darkness within him; he perfectly embodied all that is wholesome. The sight of him was beautiful to behold and pleasing to the mind, and his eye faculty was unobstructed. Adorned by the constellations of one hundred thousand gods, the moonlight of the soothing branches of awakening radiated from this sphere of concentration, liberation, and wisdom, causing the lilies among humans and gods to bloom.
The Great Bodhisattva was followed by a fourfold retinue, like the moon by the four continents, and he was endowed with the jewels of the seven branches of awakening. He engaged all beings equally and possessed an unimpeded analytical capacity. His intention was enhanced by the sublime and perfectly complete austerities and spiritual practices that he observed on the path of the ten virtuous activities. As the king of Dharma, he turned the precious wheel of the supreme Dharma without hindrance, having been born into a line of universal monarchs.
Filled with all the precious teachings, including that of dependent origination, so profound and difficult to fathom, he never tired of study. Thus his boundless wisdom had become vast and all-encompassing. His discipline was beyond measure as well. Indeed his mind was as vast as the oceans and the earth. Equal to earth, water, fire, and air, [10] his mind was as firm and unmoving as Mount Meru. He was free from attachment and aversion, with a mind as pristine and open as the center of space; it was vast and unlike any other. His superior intent was utterly pure. His acts of generosity were done well, as were his previous endeavors and his superior deeds.
He sought out all basic virtues and had formed positive habitual tendencies. Ascertaining the basic virtues, he practiced all such virtues for seven incalculable eons. He practiced the seven forms of generosity and engaged in the five types of action that create merit, just as he tread the path of the ten virtues—the three physical, the four verbal, and the three mental wholesome actions—and practiced the forty kinds of correct application. Likewise did he make the forty kinds of correct aspiration, immerse himself in the forty kinds of right intention, perfect the forty kinds of liberation, and erect the forty kinds of right interest.
He took ordination with four million buddhas and presented five and a half million buddhas with offerings. Similarly the Bodhisattva served 1,540 million solitary buddhas. Establishing innumerable sentient beings on the paths to the higher realms and liberation, he desired to become perfectly and completely awakened, to attain supreme, genuine, and complete awakening.
With only one lifetime remaining, he passed away and was reborn in the supreme realm of the Heaven of Joy as a supreme divine child named Śvetaketu. The assembly of gods showed him great reverence, honoring him as one who would leave their midst and take birth in the human world, where before long he would become the Buddha, attaining perfect, complete, and unexcelled awakening.
He dwelt in a celestial palace with 32,000 floors, adorned with verandas, domes, architraves, skylights, cool pavillions, multiple stories, and courtyards. This palace was filled with parasols, flags, and streaming banners; it was covered by canopies of tiny jeweled bells and strewn with māndārava and mahāmāndārava flowers. The songs of millions upon millions of celestial maidens could be heard throughout. [11] Its enchanting, even grounds were covered with golden canopies and filled with various trees, such as mountain ebonies, campakas, trumpet vines, orchids, muchalindas, mahāmuchalindas, aśokas, banyans, persimmon trees, narras, karṇikāras, kesaras, sāls, and coral trees. In every direction there were flowered canopies, overflowing with jyotiṣ, mālikas, barasikas, taraṇīs, sumanas, bali, kotaranis, and other sweet-smelling flowers. Likewise there were danukari flowers, celestial flowers, blue lotuses, pink lotuses, water lilies, and white lotuses. Various birds flew through the air, singing out their beautiful melodies. Among them were parrots, śārikas, cuckoos, geese, peacocks, ducks, pheasants, snipe, partridge, and many others.
Millions upon millions of gods turned their eyes toward the palace and gazed at it in awe. The great and vast Dharma was proclaimed throughout, and thereby the force of their enthusiastic desire subdued all the afflictions, eliminating pride, conceit, arrogance, aggression, rage, and anger, and bringing about happiness, well-being, joy, and mindfulness on a vast scale.
The Bodhisattva dwelt comfortably in this great celestial palace, where a discourse on the genuine Dharma emerged amid a symphony of 84,000 musical instruments. From their sound, the following verses of inspiration arose, telling of the many virtuous deeds that the Bodhisattva carried out in times past:
This concludes the second chapter, on the inspiration.
Monks, in this way the Bodhisattva was exhorted that the time for the Dharma had come. Emerging from that great celestial palace, the Bodhisattva went to the great Dharmoccaya Palace, where he taught the Dharma to the gods in the Heaven of Joy. In the palace, he seated himself upon a lion throne known as Sublime Dharma. He was joined in the palace by a group of gods whose good fortune equaled that of the Bodhisattva, and who had entered the same vehicle. Bodhisattvas with similar conduct to the Bodhisattva gathered from throughout the ten directions. Retinues with equally pure intentions accompanied the gods, without the assembly of divine maidens and even without ordinary gods. Altogether a retinue of 680 million entered the palace, each sitting on a lion throne according to rank.
The Bodhisattva then said, “Monks, in twelve years the Bodhisattva shall enter the womb of his mother.”
At that time the gods from the pure realms ventured to Jambudvīpa. Hiding their divine forms, they took on the guise of priests and taught the Vedas to other priests. They made it known that one who entered the womb in this manner [14] would be a great being possessed of thirty-two marks:
“Someone with such marks would become one of two things. There would be no third option,” they said. “If such an individual were to live as a householder, he would become a universal monarch with a fourfold army. He would become a conqueror, a righteous Dharma king. Such a king would have the seven treasures: the precious wheel, the precious elephant, the precious horse, the precious jewel, the precious wife, the precious steward, and the precious minister.
“How is it that a universal monarch comes to possess the precious wheel? Such a wheel can only belong to a king who has been properly consecrated by sprinkling his head. On the fifteenth day of the lunar month, while observing a poṣadha fast, the king will first wash his head and then go to the top terrace of the palace, surrounded by the women of the female quarters. Then a precious, divine wheel with one thousand spokes will appear from the east. As high as seven tāla trees, the wheel, which is not made by a smith, is round with a central hub and made entirely of gold.
“This precious, divine wheel will now belong to the king, who is appointed to the highest rank of the ruling class. As he sees it, he will think to himself, ‘I have heard that if a precious, divine wheel appears from the east when a king, who has been appointed to the highest rank of the ruling class, ascends to the top floor of the palace surrounded by a gathering of women while observing a poṣadha fast on the fifteenth day of the lunar month, then he shall become a universal monarch. Since I can now clearly perceive this precious, divine wheel, I must certainly be a universal monarch!’
“The king appointed to the highest rank of the ruling class will then draw his cloak back from one shoulder and lower his right knee to the ground. Turning the precious, divine wheel with his right hand, he will proclaim, ‘Precious wheel, noble and divine, please turn in harmony with the Dharma, rather than that which is not the Dharma.’
“The precious, divine wheel, set in motion by the king appointed to the highest rank of the ruling class, will magically travel through space to the east, followed by the universal monarch and his four army divisions. Wherever the wheel comes to rest, [15] there the king appointed to the highest rank of the ruling class and his four army divisions will set up their camp.
“As he travels, the provincial kings of the eastern lands will come to greet him, carrying silver vessels filled with gold dust, and gold vessels filled with fragments of silver. ‘Welcome, lord,’ they will say. ‘Please come. This kingdom is yours. It is extremely vast and prosperous. With bountiful harvests, it is both delightful and populous. Indeed it is filled with people. Now that you have arrived in this land, lord, it is yours. We beseech you to stay.’
“Replying to the provincial kings, the king appointed to the highest rank of the ruling class will respond, ‘May you rule your respective kingdoms according to the Dharma, and not by what is not Dharma. Do not take the lives of living beings, do not take what is not given, and do not engage in sexual misconduct. Likewise you should refrain from telling lies, sowing discord, speaking harshly, and talking frivolously. Do not let your mind be overcome by covetousness, malice, or misguided beliefs. Do not befriend those who take life or those with misguided beliefs. Should non-Dharma arise in my dominion, do not applaud those who practice it.’ In this way the king, who is appointed to the highest rank of the ruling class, will conquer the east.
“Having conquered the east, the precious wheel will then move toward the eastern seas. Crossing over them, it will travel magically through space to the south, accompanied by the universal monarch and his four army divisions. As before he will conquer the south, and then move on to conquer the west and the north.
“Once the king has conquered the north, the wheel will move toward the northern seas and, traveling magically through the sky to the royal palace, it will come to rest unharmed at the entrance to the quarters of the queen’s retinue. In this manner the king appointed to the highest rank of the ruling class comes to possess the precious wheel.
“How is it that a universal monarch comes to possess the precious elephant? The precious elephant of the king appointed to the highest rank of the ruling class appears in the same way that the precious wheel appeared. Completely white in color, the precious elephant has four limbs, two tusks, and a trunk. Its head is ornamented with gold, and it bears a gold victory banner. Likewise it is bedecked with gold ornaments and covered with gold netting. [16] Its magical powers enable it to fly through the sky and transform itself. This king of elephants is known as Bodhi.
“When the king appointed to the highest rank of the ruling class wishes to examine the precious elephant, he will mount it at daybreak and travel throughout this great earth, which is surrounded by oceans. After returning to the royal palace, he will fondly resume his governance. In this manner the universal monarch comes to possess the precious elephant.
“How is it that a universal monarch comes to possess the precious horse? The precious horse of the king appointed to the highest rank of the ruling class appears just as before. The precious horse has a blue body and a black head with a braided mane. It is bridled, bearing a gold victory banner and gold ornaments, and it is covered with gold netting. With its magical powers, it can fly through the sky and transform itself. This king of horses is known as Bālāhaka.
“When the king appointed to the highest rank of the ruling class wishes to examine the precious horse, he will mount it at daybreak and travel throughout this great earth, which is surrounded by oceans. After returning to the royal palace, he will fondly resume his governance. In this manner the universal monarch comes to possess the precious horse.
“How is it that a universal monarch comes to possess the precious jewel? The precious jewel of the king appointed to the highest rank of the ruling class appears just as before. It is a lapis lazuli gem of pure blue color, with eight facets and very fine craftsmanship. With the light emitted from the precious jewel, the entirety of the female quarters are bathed in light.
“When the king appointed to the highest rank of the ruling class wishes to examine the precious jewel, then, at midnight, in complete darkness, he will affix it to the tip of a victory banner and venture out in the gardens [17] to observe the sublime grounds. The light emitted by the precious jewel will illuminate the surrounding area for an entire league, including all four divisions of the king’s army. The people who dwell in the vicinity of the precious jewel will be illuminated by its radiance. Seeing and recognizing each other, they will say to one another, ‘Wake up, friends. Start your work and get to the market. The sun is up and the day has begun.’ In this manner the universal monarch appointed to the highest rank of the ruling class comes to possess the precious jewel.
“How is it that the universal monarch appointed to the highest rank of the ruling class comes to possess the precious wife? The precious wife of the king appointed to the highest rank of the ruling class appears just as before. In accord with tradition, the precious wife has been born into the warrior class. She is not too tall or short, too fat or thin, too dark or fair. Indeed she is beautiful in form, pleasant in manner, and pleasing to the eye. She is in the full bloom of life, and every pore of her body gives off the scent of sandalwood, while from her mouth wafts the fragrance of utpala flowers. Her body is as soft to the touch as kācilindika cloth; in cold weather her body is warm to the touch, and in warm weather it is cool. Her mind, let alone her body, desires no one other than the universal monarch. In this manner the universal monarch comes to possess the precious wife.
“How is it that the universal monarch appointed to the highest rank of the ruling class comes to possess the precious steward? The precious steward of the king appointed to the highest rank of the ruling class appears just as before. Learned, lucid, and intelligent, the precious steward’s divine sight will enable him to perceive treasures—both those that are owned and those that are not—in the surrounding area for up to an entire league. With those treasures that do not belong to anyone, he will cater to the material needs of the universal monarch. In this manner the universal monarch comes to possess the precious steward. [18]
“How is it that the universal monarch appointed to the highest rank of the ruling class comes to possess the precious minister? The precious minister of a king who has been properly consecrated by sprinkling his head appears just as before. The precious minister is learned, lucid, and intelligent. The universal monarch merely has to think of commissioning an army and it is done. In this manner the universal monarch comes to possess the precious minister. The universal monarch thus possesses these seven treasures.
“The universal monarch will also have one thousand sons. Brave, heroic, and supremely able in body, these sons will attain nothing but victory over the forces that oppose them. Without resorting to punishment or acts of violence, the king will rule with the Dharma, bringing peace and order to the entire vast kingdom that extends all the way to the oceans.
“If, however, he leaves his family behind and becomes a monk, he will become a buddha. Relinquishing the attachment of desire, and without relying on anyone else as a guide, he will become the teacher of gods and humans.”
With these words, the gods inspired the priests to recite the Vedas.
In a similar manner, other gods arrived in Jambudvīpa to exhort the solitary buddhas. “Noble ones,” they said. “Give up this buddha realm. In twelve years’ time, the Bodhisattva will enter the womb of his mother.”
Monks, at that time there was a solitary buddha named Mātaṅga who dwelt on Mount Golāṅgulaparivartana in the city of Rājagṛha. Hearing the exhortation of the gods, he became as still as mud resting upon a boulder, then rose up into the sky to the height of seven tāla trees. Merging with the fire element, like a torch he passed into nirvāṇa. His bile and phlegm, ligaments and bones, and flesh and blood were completely consumed by fire, leaving nothing but a few relics on the ground. Even today, they are known as ‘the footprints of the sage.’
Monks, at this same time five hundred solitary buddhas were assembled in a deer park outside Vārāṇasī. They too heard the exhortation of the gods, rose up into the sky to the height of seven tāla trees and, turning into fire, passed into nirvāṇa like a torch. [19] Their bile and phlegm, ligaments and bones, and flesh and blood were completely consumed by fire. Nothing was left behind, save a few relics that fell to the ground. From this point on, the area came to be known as Ṛṣipatana, or the Hill of the Fallen Sages. The area also came to be known as Mṛgadāva, or the Deer Park, since deer frolicked there without fear.
Monks, in this manner the Bodhisattva dwelt in the supreme realm of the Heaven of Joy, where he engaged in four great examinations. What were these four? He examined the time of his birth, the continent of his birth, the country of his birth, and the family of his birth.
And why, monks, did the Bodhisattva examine the time of his birth? Because a bodhisattva does not enter his mother’s womb at the beginning of time when sentient beings are evolving. Rather it is when the world has formed and when birth, old age, sickness, and death have become known that a bodhisattva enters his mother’s womb.
And why, monks, did the Bodhisattva examine the continent of his birth? Because a bodhisattva is not born in an outlying continent, nor is he born on the eastern continent of Pūrvavideha, on the western continent of Aparagodānīya, or on the northern continent of Uttarakuru. Rather a bodhisattva is born on the southern continent of Jambudvīpa.
And why, monks, did the Bodhisattva examine the country of his birth? Because a bodhisattva is not born in outlying lands where people are as stupid as sheep, with dull faculties, ignorant, and incapable of distinguishing right from wrong. Rather a bodhisattva is born in a central land. [20]
And why, monks, did the Bodhisattva examine the family of his birth? Because a bodhisattva is not born into an inferior family, like a family of outcastes, flutemakers, cartwrights, or servants. A bodhisattva is only born into one of two families—a priestly family or a family of the ruling class. When the priestly families are dominant in the world, the bodhisattva is born into a priestly family. When the ruling-class families are dominant in the world, the bodhisattva is born into a ruling-class family. Thus, monks, at this time the ruling-class families were dominant in the world, so bodhisattvas were born into such families.
For this reason, the Bodhisattva engaged in these four great examinations as he dwelt in the supreme realm of the Heaven of Joy. Having examined these points, he remained silent. [B2]
Monks, the gods and bodhisattvas then asked one another, “Into what precious family will the Bodhisattva be born? In what mother’s womb will he be conceived?”
Some said, “The Vaideha family in the land of Magadha is wealthy, prosperous, and happy. This is a fitting place for the Bodhisattva to be conceived.”
“This is not a worthy place for the Bodhisattva to be conceived,” others responded, “for the mother’s family is not pure, nor is the father’s. The family’s fortunes have come about from little merit, not a vast store of merit. They are impetuous, unstable, and fickle. The surrounding environs of their land are like a desert, with few groves, lakes, and ponds. This is a primitive land, like a remote village. Hence this is not a worthy place for the Bodhisattva to take birth.”
Some said, “The Kośala family has a large retinue, many mounts, and great wealth. This is a fitting place for the Bodhisattva to be conceived.”
“This is not a worthy place, either,” others replied. “The Kośala family descends from outcastes. Neither the father’s nor the mother’s families are pure. Their interests are base and their line is ignoble. Moreover, they have no limitless store of wealth and treasures. Hence this is not a worthy place for the Bodhisattva to take birth.” [21]
Some said, “The family of the king of Vatsa is wealthy, prosperous, and happy. This is a fitting place for the Bodhisattva to be conceived.”
To this, others replied, “This is not a worthy place. The family of the king of Vatsa is base, violent, and lacking in nobility. They are illegitimate by birth, and their accomplishments have not resulted from the noble deeds of their parents. The king is a nihilist. Hence this is not a worthy place for the Bodhisattva to take birth, either.”
Some suggested, “The city of Vaiśālī is wealthy, prosperous, and happy. Delightful and teeming with people, it is like a heavenly palace, with terraces, balconies, architraves, skylights, cool pavilions, multistoried buildings, and palaces. This city is filled with blooming flowers, ringed with gardens, and encircled by forests. This is a worthy place for the Bodhisattva to be conceived.”
“This is not a worthy place, either,” others replied. “They do not speak to one another with decorum. They have no Dharma practice, nor do they respect their superiors, elders, leaders, or those in between. Each thinks that he is king, never taking on the role of a student or accepting the Dharma. Hence this city is not worthy of the Bodhisattva, either.”
Others said, “The Pradyota family in the city of Ujjayinī has a great army and many mounts. They have emerged victorious in battle over their foes. This is a fitting place for the Bodhisattva to be conceived.”
To this the response came, “This is not a worthy place, for these people are malicious and violent. They are uncivilized, wild, and impetuous, without any heed for the consequences of their actions. Hence this is not an appropriate place for the Bodhisattva to be conceived.”
Some said, “The city of Mathurā is rich, prosperous, and happy. It is populous, filled with people. [22] The royal palace of King Subāhu, who commands an army of brave warriors, is a fitting place for the Bodhisattva to be conceived.”
“This is not a worthy place,” others replied. “This king was born into a family with wrong views. Indeed he is like a savage, so it is inappropriate for the Bodhisattva to take his final existence in a family with wrong views. Hence this as well is not an appropriate place for the Bodhisattva to be conceived.”
Some suggested, “The king of the city of Hastināpura was born in the family descended from Pāṇḍu. This king is brave, courageous, and handsome. He has conquered opposing armies. Thus it is fitting for the Bodhisattva to be conceived in this family.”
To this, others responded, “This family is also not worthy of the Bodhisattva. Those born into the Pāṇḍava family have confused their genealogy. They say that Yudhiṣṭhira is the son of Dharma, that Bhīmasena is the son of Vāyu, that Arjuna is the son of Indra, and that Nakula and Sahadeva are the sons of the two Aśvins. Hence it is not proper for the Bodhisattva to be conceived in this family.”
Some said, “The city of Mithilā is extremely beautiful and prosperous. This is the land ruled by King Sumitra, who has many elephants, horses, chariots, infantry, and troops. He also has great material wealth, with great stores of gold, silver, jewels, pearls, beryl, conches, crystals, corals, fine gold, and many other riches and belongings. He is powerful, with an army unafraid of the kings from surrounding lands. He has many friends, and he delights in the Dharma. This family is a fitting place for the Bodhisattva to be conceived.”
“This is not appropriate,” others replied. “King Sumitra does indeed have these qualities. Yet he is extremely aged, so he does not even possess the ability to produce a son. Moreover, he already has many sons. It is not proper for the Bodhisattva to be conceived in this family.”
In this manner the bodhisattvas and gods observed all the illustrious royal families to be found throughout the sixteen kingdoms of Jambudvīpa, [23] and found them all to be inadequate.
As they considered this, a god named Jñānaketudhvaja, who was firmly established in the Great Vehicle and could not be turned away from awakening, spoke to the great assembly of gods and bodhisattvas: “Come, my friends. Let us go before the Bodhisattva himself and ask him what sublime qualities a precious family must have in order for a bodhisattva to take his final birth there.”
“Excellent!” they replied. With palms joined, they all went before the Bodhisattva and asked him, “Sublime Being, what sublime qualities must a precious family have for a bodhisattva to take his final birth there?”
Looking upon the great assembly of bodhisattvas and the great assembly of gods, the Bodhisattva then addressed the gathering: “Friends, the family into which a bodhisattva takes his final birth must have sixty-four excellent qualities. What are these sixty-four qualities?
“This family must be noble and it must be known by all. It must not be petty or prone to violence. It must be of a good caste and good clan. It must have excellent marital unions, with excellent marital unions in the past, and marital unions between individuals who are pure. These marital unions must be between people who are both pure, well-known by all, and renowned for their great power. This family must have many men and women. It must be fearless, not base or cowardly. It must not be greedy, but disciplined. It must be wise and watched over by ministers. This family must be creative and thereby enjoy worldly pleasures. This family should be steadfast in its friendships and safeguard the lives of all the beings throughout the animal kingdom. [24] They must have gratitude and know how to conduct themselves appropriately. They must not be moved by ambition, anger, ignorance, or fear. They must be afraid of engaging in negative deeds. They must not dwell in ignorance. This family must be benevolent and industrious. It must be inspired to give, be generous, and remember the kindness of others. They must be physically strong, with great power and strength, indeed supreme strength. They must make offerings to the sages, to the gods, and to stūpas, and also pay homage to their ancestors. They must not hold grudges.
“This family must be renowned throughout the ten directions and have a vast retinue. It must not be divided. It must be peerless. This family must be the most senior and the most illustrious among all families. It must be powerful, and renowned as such. They must respect their fathers, mothers, mendicants, and priests. They must have great stores of treasure and grain. They must have a great deal of gold, and many jewels, gems, pearls, lapis lazuli, conches, crystals, corals, fine gold, silver, and many other riches and belongings. They must have many elephants, horses, camels, oxen, and sheep. They must have many male servants, female servants, officials, and workers. This family must be difficult to defeat. It must accomplish all of its aims. It must be a family of universal monarchs. It must be aided, in great measure, by the root virtues accumulated in the past. It must be descended from a noble family, a family of bodhisattvas. [25] Indeed this family must be irreproachable when it comes to any accusations of faults related to one’s birth, such as those found in this entire world with its gods, demons, and brahmās, mendicants and priests. Friends, the family of a bodhisattva in his final existence must have these sixty-four qualities.
The Play in Full tells the story of how the Buddha manifested in this world and attained awakening, as perceived from the perspective of the Great Vehicle. The sūtra, which is structured in twenty-seven chapters, first presents the events surrounding the Buddha’s birth, childhood, and adolescence in the royal palace of his father, king of the Śākya nation. It then recounts his escape from the palace and the years of hardship he faced in his quest for spiritual awakening. Finally the sūtra reveals his complete victory over the demon Māra, his attainment of awakening under the Bodhi tree, his first turning of the wheel of Dharma, and the formation of the very early saṅgha.
This text was translated by the Dharmachakra Translation Committee under the supervision of Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche.
Cortland Dahl, Catherine Dalton, Hilary Herdman, Heidi Koppl, James Gentry, and Andreas Doctor translated the text from Tibetan into English. Andreas Doctor and Wiesiek Mical then compared the translations against the original Tibetan and Sanskrit, respectively. Finally, Andreas Doctor edited the translation and wrote the introduction.
The Dharmachakra Translation Committee would like to thank Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche for blessing this project, and Khenpo Sherap Sangpo for his generous assistance with the resolution of several difficult passages.
This translation has been completed under the patronage and supervision of 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha.
The generous sponsorship of 簡源震及家人江秀敏，簡暐如，簡暐丞 Chien YuanChen (Dharma Das) and his wife, daughter, and son for work on this sūtra is gratefully acknowledged.
The Play in Full (Lalitavistara) is without a doubt one of the most important sūtras within Buddhist Mahāyāna literature. With parts of the text dating from the earliest days of the Buddhist tradition, this story of the Buddha’s awakening has captivated the minds of devotees, both ordained and lay, as far back as the beginning of the common era.
In brief, The Play in Full tells the story of how the Buddha manifested in this world and attained awakening. The sūtra, which is structured in twenty-seven chapters, begins with the Buddha being requested to teach the sūtra by several gods, as well as the thousands of bodhisattvas and hearers in his retinue. The gods summarize the sūtra in this manner (chap. 1, 1.14):
“Blessed One, there is an extensive collection of discourses on the Dharma that bears the name Lalitavistara (The Play in Full). This teaching illuminates the basic virtues of the bodhisattvas, showing how the Bodhisattva descended from the sublime palace in the Heaven of Joy, intentionally entered the womb, and sojourned in the womb. It shows the power of the place where he was born to a noble family, and how he surpassed others through all the superior special qualities that he demonstrated through his actions as a youth. It shows his many unique qualities, such as his skills in arts, crafts, writing, arithmetic, calculations, astrology, fencing, archery, feats of physical strength, and wrestling, demonstrating his superiority to all others in these areas. It shows how he enjoyed his retinue of consorts and the pleasures of his kingdom. “This teaching proclaims how he attained the result brought about by the concordant cause of all the bodhisattva activities, showing how he manifested as a bodhisattva and destroyed the legions of Māra. It explains the ten powers, the fourfold fearlessness, and the other innumerable qualities of a thus-gone one, and presents the infinite teachings taught by the thus-gone ones of times past.”
The Buddha silently accepts this request, and the following day he commences the teaching.
The story begins in the divine realms where the future Buddha (who, prior to his awakening, is known as the Bodhisattva) enjoys a perfect life surrounded by divine pleasures. Due to his past aspirations, however, the musical instruments of the palace call out to him, reminding him of his prior commitment to attain awakening (chap. 2). Inspired by this reminder, the Bodhisattva announces, to the despair of the gods, that he will abandon his divine pleasures in pursuit of full and complete awakening on this earth (Jambudvīpa), where he will take birth within a suitably noble family (chap. 3). However, before his departure from the heavenly realms, the Bodhisattva delivers one final teaching to the gods (chap. 4) and, having installed the bodhisattva Maitreya as his regent, he sets out for the human realm accompanied by great displays of divine offerings and auspicious signs (chap. 5). He enters the human world via the womb of Queen Māyā, where he resides for the duration of the pregnancy within an exquisite temple, enjoying the happiness of absorption (chap. 6).
After taking birth in the Lumbinī Grove and declaring his intention to attain complete awakening (chap. 7), we follow the infant Bodhisattva on a temple visit where the stone statues rise up to greet him (chap. 8) and hear of the marvelous jewelry that his father, the king, commissions for him (chap. 9). Next, as the Bodhisattva matures, the sūtra recounts his first day at school, where he far surpasses even the most senior tutors (chap. 10); his natural attainment of the highest levels of meditative concentration during a visit to the countryside (chap. 11); and his incredible prowess in the traditional worldly arts, which he uses to win the hand of Gopā, a Śākya girl whose father requires proof of the Bodhisattva’s qualities as a proper husband (chap. 12).
The Bodhisattva has now reached maturity and can enjoy life in the palace, where he is surrounded by all types of pleasure, including a large harem to entertain him. Seeing this, the gods begin to worry that he will never leave such a luxurious life, and they therefore gently remind him of his vows to awaken (chap. 13). This reminder, however, turns out to be unnecessary, as the Bodhisattva is far from attached to such fleeting pleasures. Instead, to the great despair of everyone in the Śākya kingdom, he renounces his royal pleasures. Inspired by the sight of a sick person, an old man, a corpse, and a religious mendicant (chap. 14), he departs from the palace to begin the life of a religious seeker on a spiritual journey, which eventually leads him to awakening (chap. 15).
Already at this early stage of his religious career, the Bodhisattva is no ordinary being. It quickly becomes apparent that he surpasses all the foremost spiritual teachers of his day. His extraordinary charisma also attracts many beings, such as the king of Magadha, who requests the Bodhisattva to take up residence in his kingdom, but without success (chap. 16). In a final test of the established contemplative systems of his day, the Bodhisattva next follows Rudraka, a renowned spiritual teacher. But once again he is disappointed, although he quickly masters the prescribed trainings.
These experiences lead the Bodhisattva to the conclusion that he must discover awakening on his own, so he sets out on a six-year journey of austere practices, which are so extreme in nature that they take him to the brink of death (chap. 17). Finally the Bodhisattva realizes that such practices do not lead to awakening and, encouraged by some protective gods, he begins to eat a normal diet once again, which restores his former physique and health (chap. 18). At this point he senses that he is on the verge of attaining his goal, and therefore sets out for the seat of awakening (bodhimaṇḍa), the sacred place where all bodhisattvas in their last existence attain full and complete awakening (chap. 19). As he arrives at the seat of awakening, the gods create a variety of impressive miraculous displays, and the place eventually comes to resemble a divine realm, fit for the epic achievement that awaits the Bodhisattva (chap. 20).
Still, just as everything has been prepared to celebrate the attainment of awakening, Māra, the most powerful demon in the desire realm, arrives with the aim of preventing the Bodhisattva from attaining his goal. Together with his terrifying army and seductive daughters, Māra tries every trick in the book to discourage the Bodhisattva, but to no avail. Sad and dejected, Māra eventually gives up his disgraceful attempt at creating obstacles (chap. 21). Now the stage is finally set for the Bodhisattva to attain awakening under the Bodhi tree, a gradual process that unfolds throughout the night until he fully and perfectly awakens at dawn to become the Awakened One (Buddha), or Thus-Gone One (Tathāgata), as he is known subsequent to his awakening (chap. 22). As is only suitable for such an epic achievement, the entire pantheon of divine beings now hurry to the Thus-Gone One, making offerings and singing his praise (chap. 23).
During the first seven weeks following his awakening, the Buddha keeps to himself and does not teach. In fact he worries that the truth he has discovered might be too profound for others to comprehend, except perhaps a bodhisattva in his last existence. Māra, who senses the Buddha’s dilemma, turns up and tries one last trick, suggesting to the Buddha that perhaps this would be a suitable time to pass straight into parinirvāṇa. The Buddha, however, makes it clear that he has no such plans, and finally Māra relents. During these first seven weeks, we also hear of other encounters between the Buddha and some local passersby, but significantly no teaching is given (chap. 24). Setting up an important example for the tradition, the Buddha eventually consents to teach the Dharma only after it has been requested four times, in this case by all the gods, headed by Brahmā and Śakra. As he says, “O Brahmā, the gates of nectar are opened” (chap. 25, 25.49).
At this point, the Buddha determines through his higher knowledge that the first people to hear his teaching should be his five former companions from the days when he was practicing austerities. Although these ascetics originally rejected the Bodhisattva when he decided to abandon their path, when they meet the Buddha again at the Deer Park outside of Vārāṇasī, they are rendered helpless by his majestic presence and request teachings from him. The five companions instantly receive ordination and, in a seminal moment, the Buddha teaches them the four truths of the noble ones: suffering, the origin of suffering, the cessation of suffering, and the path that leads to the cessation of suffering. Thus this occasion constitutes the birth of the Three Jewels: the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Saṅgha (chap. 26). This marks the end of the teaching proper. Finally, in the epilogue, the Buddha encourages his retinue of gods and humans to take this sūtra as their practice and propagate it to the best of their abilities (chap. 27).
This version of the story thus ends at the very moment when the Buddha has finally manifested all the qualities of awakening and is fully equipped to influence the world, as he did over the next forty-five years by continuously teaching the Dharma and establishing his community of followers. From our perspective, this may seem odd. Why do we not get to follow the Buddha as he builds his community of monks and nuns and interacts with the people of India, high and low, throughout his teaching career? And why do we not get to hear the details of his old age and passing into nirvāṇa? After all, this is the part of his life where his inconceivable qualities are most evident and where his glory as the fully awakened Buddha is most radiant.
The answer of course cannot be settled here, but we can at least surmise. Perhaps the aim of this account is not to describe the life of the Buddha in the way one would expect in a traditional biography, or even a religious hagiography. Instead, the scope of The Play in Full may be to tell the story of the complete awakening of a bodhisattva in his last existence. The many events that occurred post awakening during the Buddha’s forty-five-year teaching career are therefore not of particular interest to a project that aims to describe the awakening of a buddha. These events, moreover, are well documented in the teachings preserved elsewhere in the Buddhist canon.
If this assumption is correct, The Play in Full should not be viewed exclusively as the “life of the Buddha” in the way we might ordinarily understand such a phrase, but rather as an account of the unfolding of awakening itself, clearly centered around the figure of the Buddha Śākyamuni, yet with many themes and plots that do not exclusively refer to his particular life example. Although we do hear of events specific to the life of the Buddha Śākyamuni in the chapters concerning his education, athletic prowess, and so on, we are often reminded that the main occurrences recounted in The Play in Full have unfolded previously, namely whenever past bodhisattvas awoke to the level of a thus-gone one. Thus this story represents nothing new under the sun; instead it recounts what happens to everyone who is in a position such as the Bodhisattva’s.
This brings up another important feature of The Play in Full, which is the ahistorical Mahāyāna backdrop that informs the entire story line. Throughout the text, the story is covered by a latticework of mind-boggling miracles and feats that defy comprehension by the ordinary intellect. Clearly, in the perspective of the Mahāyāna, the world is fashioned according to the lenses that we use to see with. And here, in The Play in Full, the lenses are those of full and complete awakening. This fact is already alluded to in the title of the text, which describes the events in the Bodhisattva’s life as a play. As such, the events in the Bodhisattva’s life are not ordinary karmic activity that unfold based on the mechanisms of a conceptual mind, but rather the playful manner in which the nonconceptual wisdom of a tenth-level bodhisattva unfolds as an expression of his awakened insight. In this manner of storytelling, the reader is invited into the worldview of a timeless and limitless universe as perceived by the adepts of the Mahāyāna. The time span, numbers, and sizes within this Mahāyāna scripture are so persistently overwhelming that all historical and scientific thinking as we know it eventually loses meaning and relevance.
As such, The Play in Full is not a historical document and it was probably never intended to be. Instead it is a story of awakening that itself contains all the key teachings of the Mahāyāna. Thus, to fully appreciate this text, the reader must also attend to its aesthetic and rhetorical functions and how its narrative progression and episodes have been designed to impact readers, rather than simply approaching the text as documentary evidence of a life well lived. The text can thus be read on many levels from a Buddhist perspective, with new facets being discovered upon each reading. For the layperson it may provide an inspiring glimpse into the ethos of the Mahāyāna worldview, for the renunciant it can represent an encouragement to live the contemplative life, and for the scholar it may appear as an exemplary specimen of Buddhist philosophy and literature. For others it may be all of these, and still more.
Still, the fact that The Play in Full is not a text meant to provide historical details of the founder of Buddhism should not prevent us, if we are so inclined, from enjoying this magnificent religious literature through the lenses of historical awareness and philological scholarship. If we choose to adopt such perspectives, The Play in Full does indeed contain a wealth of information of interest to the historically inclined. The basic framework for the story of the Bodhisattva’s awakening was already in place within the Buddhist tradition many centuries before this text appeared in writing, as early scholarship on the sūtra has already pointed out (e.g., Winternitz 1927). This essential framework, however, was greatly developed and adorned by the sūtra’s compilers/authors in order to create its current form, which Vaidya (1958) has dated to the third century
There is no single full biographical account in the Pali canon, but episodes of the Buddha’s life are recounted in such works as the Mahāpadānasutta (DN 14), Mahāparinibbāṇasutta (DN 16), Ariyapariyesanāsutta (MN 26), Mahāsaccakasutta (MN 36), and Acchariya-abbhutasutta (MN 123). Perhaps the earliest work to be partly structured as a biographical account, although it also contains much other material and is not always ordered chronologically, is the Sanskrit Mahāvastu, a Vinaya text of the Lokottaravāda branch of the Mahāsāṅghika. In the Kangyur, the most detailed account of the Buddha’s life from a non-Mahāyāna viewpoint is to be found in the rich narrative sections of the Vinaya texts translated from the Sanskrit of the Mūlasarvāstivāda school, particularly in The Chapter on Schisms in the Saṅgha (Saṅghabhedavastu, the volume-length seventeenth chapter of the Vinayavastu) and in the standalone compilation extracted from it, the Abhiniṣkramaṇasūtra (Toh 301).
However, it is only with the appearance of The Play in Full that an extensive account of awakening according to the Mahāyāna perspective appears. It can be understood as a historically later text in the sense that it is an obvious compilation of various early sources, which have been strung together and elaborated on according to the Mahāyāna worldview. As such, this text is a fascinating example of the ways in which the Mahāyāna rests firmly on the earlier tradition, yet reinterprets the very foundations of Buddhism in a way that fits its own vast perspective. The fact that the text is a compilation is initially evident from the mixture of prose and verse that, in some cases, contains strata from the very earliest Buddhist teachings and, in other cases, presents later Buddhist themes that do not emerge—in written form at least—until the first centuries of the common era. Previous scholarship on The Play in Full (mostly published in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) devoted much time to determining the text’s potential sources and their respective time periods, although without much success. For example, while the first critical publications argued that the verse sections of the text represent a more ancient origin than the parts written in prose, that theory had largely been dismissed by the beginning of the twentieth century (Winternitz 1927). Although this topic clearly deserves further study, it is interesting to note that little new research on this sūtra has been published during the last sixty years (at least in English; some interesting papers by Japanese scholars deserve our attention). As such, the only thing we can currently say concerning the sources and origin of The Play in Full is that it was based on several early and, for the most part, unidentified sources that belong to the very early days of the Buddhist tradition.
The Play in Full makes no attempt to present itself as a homogenous text composed by a single author. In fact it seems that the compilers of the text took pride in presenting an account of the Bodhisattva’s last existence that was as detailed and all-encompassing as possible and thus, to this end, it was perfectly acceptable to draw openly on a variety of sources. One obvious example of this is the fact that although the story is for the most part recounted in the third person, it occasionally and abruptly shifts into a first-person narrative where the Buddha recounts the events himself. In addition, there is often a significant overlap between the topics covered in the prose and verse sections, and in these places the compilers of the text have made no attempt to polish away the inconsistencies and redundancies. It is likely that the discerning readers of the time may have been quite aware of the sources on which The Play in Full draws, and that it was perfectly acceptable at the time to compile a “new” scripture from traditional sources, and to have this newly assembled literature be afforded the same inspired status as other instances of “the words of the Buddha” (buddhavacana). Certainly the Mahāyāna literature contains many statements in support of such an open-ended approach to canonical standards.
The title of this sūtra indicates that this is an elaborate account of the playful activity performed by the Bodhisattva. The fact that it is called in full (vistara) indicates that the compilers saw this text as an elaborate way of viewing the awakening of the Buddha, as opposed to other (from a Mahāyāna perspective) more limited accounts, which have less emphasis on miracles and elasticity of time and place. But in full is not to be understood only in terms of the vast Mahāyāna worldview. It can also signify an elaborate account that includes more details than previous presentations of the topic, since the Sanskrit word vistara can communicate this meaning as well.
Both of these interpretations of vistara are also possible based on the translated title in Tibetan (rgya cher rol pa). Although the grammatical elements in the Sanskrit and Tibetan titles differ, the Tibetan title can nevertheless be interpreted in ways similar to the Sanskrit. As such, the title of this text already gives subtle hints that the internal hermeneutics of this sūtra may differ from our contemporary historical perspective regarding definitions of “the words of the Buddha.” Instead, by embracing the worldview of playful activity that The Play in Full presents, the words of the Buddha can manifest at any time, whether compiled, edited, or even newly authored.
In India, The Play in Full was no doubt a work in progress over several centuries before it finally settled into the form that we know today. It appears to have enjoyed a certain popularity in India, and it also had significant influence in several other Asian regions. In the Gandharan art of the period in which The Play in Full emerged, the themes of the text are widely represented in temple art, and even as far away as the Borobudur Temple complex in Indonesia this sūtra provided inspiration for the elaborate artwork adorning sections of the temple structures. Versions of The Play in Full were translated into Chinese in the fourth century by Dharmarakṣa and in the seventh by Divākara.
We also have a very beautiful and accurate Tibetan translation of the text. This was produced in the ninth century
In the West, the first mention of The Play in Full may have been the chapter-by-chapter summary by Robert Lenz published serially (in French) in 1836. A few years later, in 1839, Alexander Csoma de Kőrös published his own summary in Analysis of the Mdo (Calcutta, pp. 288–96). Eugène Burnouf also mentioned this text in his Introduction à l’histoire du Bouddhisme Indien published in 1844. In 1847, Phillipe Édouard Foucaux published an edition of the Tibetan, and his initial French translation, made from the Tibetan but with reference to the Sanskrit (the first ever translation of The Play in Full) appeared in 1848. An edition of the Sanskrit by Rajendralal Mitra began to appear over two decades starting in 1853, and in 1874 Salomon Lefmann published a partial translation into German. An English translation by Mitra began to appear in 1881, and in 1882 Lefman published his edition of the Sanskrit. Shortly thereafter in 1884, Foucaux published his second French translation, this time from the Sanskrit, followed by a further volume of notes in 1892. Almost a hundred years later, Gwendolyn Bays, who based her work on Foucaux’s translation with reference to the original Sanskrit and Tibetan, published a complete translation in English. More recently still, the Japanese scholar Hokazono Kōichi has published a new and improved Sanskrit edition (accompanied by extensive ancillary material in Japanese and a Japanese translation).
This present translation builds on, and benefits from, the considerable efforts of these previous scholars. Unlike earlier translations, however, we have based our translation on the Tibetan text as found in the Degé Kangyur (Toh 95), with reference to the other available Kangyur editions. In addition we have compared the Tibetan translation line by line with the Sanskrit (Lefmann 1882), and we have revised the translation on numerous occasions where the Sanskrit clarified obscure passages in the Tibetan version or represented a preferred reading.
It is fair to say, then, that this translation as it stands is an equal product of the Tibetan and the Sanskrit. Although some scholars may have preferred a translation from the Sanskrit alone, we believe that the present approach is justified, since a comparative study of the available manuscripts makes it clear that several strands of manuscripts were extant in India, sometimes with significant differences in wording and content. Moreover, as the Tibetan translation predates the existing Sanskrit manuscripts by centuries, the Tibetan may indeed represent an earlier stratum that merits attention apart from merely complementing the Sanskrit.
In producing this translation, we have sought to incorporate the best of both manuscript traditions through a diplomatic approach that does not give preference to either language a priori. Since there are literally thousands of differences between the Sanskrit and the Tibetan manuscripts when all levels of variance are considered, we have avoided annotating each individual reading preference in the translation. Our motivation for this has been to present a translation that the general reader can enjoy without getting distracted by numerous philological discussions and annotations that would interest but a few scholarly specialists. Instead, for those who would like to study the translation together with the original manuscripts, we have included references to the page numbers of both the Sanskrit and the Tibetan manuscripts, providing the specialist with an easy means for comparative textual studies. In this way it is our hope that both the general reader and the specialist may find the present translation to be of benefit and inspiration.
Homage to all buddhas and bodhisattvas!
Thus did I hear at one time. The Blessed One was staying in Śrāvastī, in Jeta’s Grove, Anāthapiṇḍada’s Park, along with a great saṅgha of twelve thousand monks.
Among them were the venerable Ājñātakauṇḍinya, the venerable Aśvajit, the venerable Bāṣpa, the venerable Mahānāma, the venerable Bhadrika, the venerable Yaśodeva, the venerable Vimala, the venerable Subāhu, the venerable Pūrṇa, the venerable Gavāṃpati, the venerable Urubilvā Kāśyapa, the venerable Nadīkāśyapa, the venerable Gayākāśyapa, the venerable Śāriputra, the venerable Mahāmaudgalyāyana, the venerable Mahākāśyapa, the venerable Mahākātyāyana, the venerable Mahākapphiṇa, the venerable Kauṣṭhila, the venerable Cunda, the venerable Pūrṇamaitrāyaṇīputra, the venerable Aniruddha, the venerable Nandika, the venerable Kampila, the venerable Subhūti, the venerable Revata, [2] the venerable Khadiravaṇika, the venerable Amogharāja, the venerable Mahāpāraṇika, the venerable Vakkula, the venerable Nanda, the venerable Rāhula, the venerable Svāgata, and the venerable Ānanda.
Along with these monks were thirty-two thousand bodhisattvas, all of whom had only a single birth remaining and were adept in all the perfections of the bodhisattvas. They enjoyed all the superknowledges of the bodhisattvas and had attained all the dhāraṇīs and all the confidence of the bodhisattvas. They had completed all the aspirations of the bodhisattvas, understood and realized all discriminating knowledges of the bodhisattvas, and gained mastery over all the absorptions of the bodhisattvas. They had obtained all the powers of the bodhisattvas and dwelt with all the patience of the bodhisattvas. Indeed each of them had completed all the bodhisattva grounds.
Foremost among them were the bodhisattva great being Maitreya, the bodhisattva great being Dharaṇīśvararāja, the bodhisattva great being Siṃhaketu, the bodhisattva great being Siddhārthamati, the bodhisattva great being Praśāntacāritramati, the bodhisattva great being Pratisaṃvitprāpta, the bodhisattva great being Nityodyukta, and the bodhisattva great being Mahākaruṇācandrin.
At that time the Blessed One dwelt in the city of Śrāvastī, where he was revered by his fourfold retinue, as well as by kings, princes, royal ministers, vassal kings, and attendants. Likewise his followers among the military, the priests, the merchants, the householders, and the royal court revered him. Both city dwellers and those who lived in the countryside, as well as the adherents of extremist philosophies, ascetics, priests, logicians, and wandering hermits, also revered him. He was treated as their master and showed great respect.
Presented with offerings, the Blessed One received abundant savory food and drink, robes, alms bowls, [3] bedding, healing medicines and remedies, and other appropriate necessities. Yet the great wealth and renown he enjoyed were like drops of water rolling off the petals of a lotus flower. The Blessed One remained detached and untainted by it all.
As the Blessed One’s fame spread throughout the world, he became known by various names and epithets, such as the Blessed One, the Worthy One, the Perfectly and Completely Awakened One, He Who Is Both Wise and Virtuous, the Well-Gone One, the Knower of the World, the Peerless Guide Who Tames Beings, the Teacher of Gods and Men, and the Blessed Buddha.
Endowed with the fivefold vision, the Blessed One taught the inhabitants of this and other worlds, each with its gods, Māra, Brahmā, monks, nuns, and priests. To all these beings, gods and humans alike, he taught what he himself had realized, and what he had thereby actualized and accomplished.
The teachings he gave were virtuous in the beginning, virtuous in the middle, and virtuous in the end. Sublime in both word and meaning, the Dharma he taught was at once distinct, complete, pure, and wholesome. He taught all these beings how to live a life of purity.
One evening during his midnight session, the Blessed One entered a state of deep absorption known as the array of the Buddha’s adornments. The moment he entered into this state of absorption, the ray of light known as the light of wisdom free from attachment that arouses the memory of the buddhas of times past shone forth from his head’s crown extension. Illuminating all the pure realms, the light attracted Maheśvara and innumerable other gods. From the mass of light that radiated from the Thus-Gone One, the following verses of exhortation arose:
Struck by the light of wisdom free from attachment, which arouses the memory of the buddhas of times past, the gods of the pure realms were inspired by these verses and immediately arose from their tranquil absorptions. Through the power of the Buddha, they recalled the blessed buddhas of innumerable and incalculable eons, remembering the qualities of the buddha realms of each blessed buddha, as well as the retinue that surrounded the buddhas and the teachings they gave.
That night, just as people went to bed, the gods of the pure realms visited the Blessed One. Among them were Īśvara, Maheśvara, Nanda, Sunanda, Candana, Mahita, Praśānta, Praśāntavinīteśvara, and many other gods of the pure realms. With their brilliant colors, they illuminated the entirety of Jeta’s Grove with a divine light. They prostrated to the Blessed One, placing their heads at his feet, and then stood to one side, supplicating him with the following words:
“Blessed One, there is an extensive collection of discourses on the Dharma that bears the name Lalitavistara (The Play in Full). This teaching illuminates the basic virtues of the bodhisattvas, showing how the Bodhisattva descended from the sublime palace in the Heaven of Joy, intentionally entered the womb, and sojourned in the womb. It shows the power of the place where he was born to a noble family, and how he surpassed others through all the superior special qualities that he demonstrated through his actions as a youth. It shows his many unique qualities, such as his skills in arts, crafts, writing, arithmetic, calculations, astrology, fencing, archery, feats of physical strength, and wrestling, demonstrating his superiority to all other beings in these areas. It shows how he enjoyed his retinue of consorts and the pleasures of his kingdom. [5]
“This teaching proclaims how he attained the result brought about by the concordant cause of all the bodhisattva activities, showing how he manifested as a bodhisattva and destroyed the legions of Māra. It explains the ten powers, the four fearlessnesses, and the other innumerable qualities of a thus-gone one, and presents the infinite teachings taught by the thus-gone ones of times past, including the blessed Padmottara, Dharmaketu, Dīpaṃkara, Guṇaketu, Mahākara, Ṛṣideva, Śrītejas, Satyaketu, Vajrasaṃhata, Sarvābhibhū, Hemavarṇa, Atyuccagāmin, Prabālasāgara, Puṣpaketu, Vararūpa, Sulocana, Ṛṣigupta, Jinavaktra, Unnata, Puṣpita, Ūrṇatejas, Puṣkara, Suraśmi, Maṅgala, Sudarśana, Mahāsiṃhatejas, Sthitabuddhidatta, Vasantagandhin, Satyadharmavipulakīrti, Tiṣya, Puṣya, Lokasundara, Vistīrṇabheda, Ratnakīrti, Ugratejas, Brahmatejas, Sughoṣa, Supuṣpa, Sumanojñaghoṣa, Suceṣṭarūpa, Prahasitanetra, Guṇarāśi, Meghasvara, Sundaravarṇa, Āyustejas, Salīlagajagāmin, Lokābhilāṣita, Jitaśatru, Sampūjita, Vipaśyin, Śikhin, Viśvabhū, Krakucchanda, Kanakamuni, and the Thus-Gone One, the Worthy One, the perfectly and completely awakened Kāśyapa.
“Blessed One, please teach this now to benefit the multitude of beings. Teach it to bring them happiness. Teach it out of compassion for the world, to benefit a great multitude of beings, gods and humans alike. Teach it to be our doctor and to bring us happiness. Teach it to propagate this Great Vehicle. Please teach it to defeat our opponents and overpower all demonic forces; to instruct all the bodhisattvas and inspire all those who follow the Bodhisattva Vehicle to arouse diligence; to embrace the true Dharma and ensure the continuity of the Three Jewels. [6] Please teach it to illuminate all the enlightened activities of the Buddha.”
Out of compassion for these gods, and indeed for the entire world including the gods, the Blessed One remained silent, thereby offering his consent. Seeing that this silence indicated the Blessed One’s consent, the gods were overjoyed and content. With happiness and delight, they prostrated at his feet and circled him three times, scattering sandalwood powder, aloeswood powder, and māndārava flowers. Then they vanished.
At dawn the next day, the Blessed One proceeded to a circular bamboo grove. Surrounded by the assembly of bodhisattvas, and with the saṅgha of listeners gathered before him, he sat down on the seat they had prepared and addressed the monks:
“Monks, this evening a group of gods from the pure realms came before me. Among them were Īśvara, Maheśvara, Nanda, Sunanda, Candana, Mahita, Praśānta, Vinīteśvara, and many others.”
The Blessed One then continued to recount the events of the previous evening, up to the point where the gods disappeared. Bowing before the Blessed One with palms joined, the bodhisattvas and great listeners then made the following request:
“Blessed One! Please grant us the teaching entitled The Play in Full. Please teach this now to benefit the multitude of beings and bring them happiness. Please teach it out of compassion for the world and to benefit the myriad of beings, gods and humans alike. Please teach it to benefit the bodhisattva great beings of the present as well as the future. Please teach it to bring benefit and happiness.”
Out of compassion for the great bodhisattvas, for the great listeners, for gods, humans, and demigods, and indeed for the entire world, the Blessed One remained silent, thereby offering his consent. He then addressed the assembly: [7]
This concludes the first chapter, on the setting.
Now, monks, what is this extensive discourse on the Dharma known as The Play in Full?
Monks, the Bodhisattva dwelt in the supreme realm of the Heaven of Joy, where he was honored by offerings, received consecration, and was praised and revered by one hundred thousand gods. [8] He had achieved his goal and was elevated by his former aspirations. His intelligence was such that he had attained the entire range of the Buddhadharma. Indeed his eye of wisdom was at once both vast and utterly pure. Radiating with mindfulness, intelligence, realization, modesty, and joyfulness, his mind was extremely powerful. He had mastered the perfections of generosity, discipline, patience, diligence, mental stability, knowledge, and skillful means, and was adept in the fourfold path of Brahmā: great love, great compassion, great joy, and great equanimity. With great awareness, he was free of obscurations and had manifested the vision of wisdom free from attachment. Likewise he had perfected each and every quality of awakening: the applications of mindfulness, the thorough relinquishments, the bases of miraculous power, the faculties, the powers, the branches of awakening, the path, and the factors of awakening.
Sublime signs and marks, indicating his boundless accumulation of merit and wisdom, beautifully adorned the body of the Bodhisattva, who had engaged in proper conduct for a long time. Acting in perfect accordance with his words, his unerring statements were always genuine. At once honest, straightforward, and free of guile, his mind was invincible. Free of pride, conceit, arrogance, fear, and timidity, he was impartial toward all beings.
The Bodhisattva had paid homage to countless awakened beings, to billions upon billions of buddhas. His loving gaze was revered by billions upon billions of bodhisattvas. Likewise Śakra, Brahmā, Maheśvara, the guardians of the world, gods, nāgas, gandharvas, demigods, garuḍas, kinnaras, and yakṣas, in their multitudes, rejoiced in his glory.
Having perfectly discerned their every word, the Bodhisattva’s learned understanding of the teachings was at once unimpeded, discerning, and perfect. He was an unerring vessel of mindfulness, able to recall the teachings of all the buddhas. The number of dhāraṇīs he had received was infinite. The Bodhisattva was the great captain of the vessel of the Dharma, which he had perfectly accomplished through the applications of mindfulness, the thorough relinquishments, the bases of miraculous power, the faculties, the powers, the branches of awakening, the path, the perfection of knowledge, the precious quality of skillful means, and merit. With the intention to travel beyond the four rivers, he conquered Māra, subdued hostile forces, and defeated all of his opponents. Indeed he set himself at the frontlines and destroyed the enemy hordes of the afflictions with the firm vajra weapon of supreme wisdom.
This great being was like a lotus. Having a stem of great compassion deeply rooted in the mind of awakening, this lotus was born of superior intention. It was sprinkled with the water of profound diligence and had skillful means as its center, branches of awakening for its anthers, and mental stability for its stamen. This lotus arose from an immaculate ocean of a vast accumulation of virtues. Its blossoming petals, illuminated by moonlight free from the torment of pride and arrogance, were pristine. Emitting the scent of discipline, study, and conscientious speech unhindered throughout the ten directions, this lotus was foremost throughout the world in terms of knowledge, [9] yet untainted by the eight worldly concerns. It radiated the sweet fragrance of the accumulation of merit and wisdom, while the sunlight of knowledge and wisdom warmed it, causing the hundred petals of its pure vision to blossom.
The Bodhisattva was a lion among men. Swift and strong were his four bases of miraculous power, just as the claws and fangs of the four noble truths were extremely sharp. He bared the fangs of the four communions with Brahmā and gathered others through the four ways of attraction with his head. With a well-proportioned body, due to having understood the twelve links of dependent origination, and a flowing mane of the complete perfection of the thirty-seven factors of awakening, along with awareness and wisdom, his mouth opened with the three gateways to liberation, while his eyes indicated the utter purity of tranquility and insight. He dwelt in the mountain caves of mental stability, complete liberation, absorption, and deep meditation. Born of the jungles of the four activities and discipline, he was endowed with the ten powers, the fourfold fearlessness, and perfect might. The hairs on his body did not bristle with the fear of creation and destruction, nor did his valor ever diminish. He subdued the masses of extremists, who are like rabbits and deer, letting out the great lion’s roar of no self.
As the sun of great beings, light rays of knowledge radiated from the orb of his liberation and concentration, dispelling the light of the swarms of extremists, who are like fireflies, and eliminating the darkness and obscuring film of ignorance. Indeed, with brilliant strength and diligence, the radiant majesty of his merit shone brightly among gods and humans.
As the light of the moon, there was no darkness within him; he perfectly embodied all that is wholesome. The sight of him was beautiful to behold and pleasing to the mind, and his eye faculty was unobstructed. Adorned by the constellations of one hundred thousand gods, the moonlight of the soothing branches of awakening radiated from this sphere of concentration, liberation, and wisdom, causing the lilies among humans and gods to bloom.
The Great Bodhisattva was followed by a fourfold retinue, like the moon by the four continents, and he was endowed with the jewels of the seven branches of awakening. He engaged all beings equally and possessed an unimpeded analytical capacity. His intention was enhanced by the sublime and perfectly complete austerities and spiritual practices that he observed on the path of the ten virtuous activities. As the king of Dharma, he turned the precious wheel of the supreme Dharma without hindrance, having been born into a line of universal monarchs.
Filled with all the precious teachings, including that of dependent origination, so profound and difficult to fathom, he never tired of study. Thus his boundless wisdom had become vast and all-encompassing. His discipline was beyond measure as well. Indeed his mind was as vast as the oceans and the earth. Equal to earth, water, fire, and air, [10] his mind was as firm and unmoving as Mount Meru. He was free from attachment and aversion, with a mind as pristine and open as the center of space; it was vast and unlike any other. His superior intent was utterly pure. His acts of generosity were done well, as were his previous endeavors and his superior deeds.
He sought out all basic virtues and had formed positive habitual tendencies. Ascertaining the basic virtues, he practiced all such virtues for seven incalculable eons. He practiced the seven forms of generosity and engaged in the five types of action that create merit, just as he tread the path of the ten virtues—the three physical, the four verbal, and the three mental wholesome actions—and practiced the forty kinds of correct application. Likewise did he make the forty kinds of correct aspiration, immerse himself in the forty kinds of right intention, perfect the forty kinds of liberation, and erect the forty kinds of right interest.
He took ordination with four million buddhas and presented five and a half million buddhas with offerings. Similarly the Bodhisattva served 1,540 million solitary buddhas. Establishing innumerable sentient beings on the paths to the higher realms and liberation, he desired to become perfectly and completely awakened, to attain supreme, genuine, and complete awakening.
With only one lifetime remaining, he passed away and was reborn in the supreme realm of the Heaven of Joy as a supreme divine child named Śvetaketu. The assembly of gods showed him great reverence, honoring him as one who would leave their midst and take birth in the human world, where before long he would become the Buddha, attaining perfect, complete, and unexcelled awakening.
He dwelt in a celestial palace with 32,000 floors, adorned with verandas, domes, architraves, skylights, cool pavillions, multiple stories, and courtyards. This palace was filled with parasols, flags, and streaming banners; it was covered by canopies of tiny jeweled bells and strewn with māndārava and mahāmāndārava flowers. The songs of millions upon millions of celestial maidens could be heard throughout. [11] Its enchanting, even grounds were covered with golden canopies and filled with various trees, such as mountain ebonies, campakas, trumpet vines, orchids, muchalindas, mahāmuchalindas, aśokas, banyans, persimmon trees, narras, karṇikāras, kesaras, sāls, and coral trees. In every direction there were flowered canopies, overflowing with jyotiṣ, mālikas, barasikas, taraṇīs, sumanas, bali, kotaranis, and other sweet-smelling flowers. Likewise there were danukari flowers, celestial flowers, blue lotuses, pink lotuses, water lilies, and white lotuses. Various birds flew through the air, singing out their beautiful melodies. Among them were parrots, śārikas, cuckoos, geese, peacocks, ducks, pheasants, snipe, partridge, and many others.
Millions upon millions of gods turned their eyes toward the palace and gazed at it in awe. The great and vast Dharma was proclaimed throughout, and thereby the force of their enthusiastic desire subdued all the afflictions, eliminating pride, conceit, arrogance, aggression, rage, and anger, and bringing about happiness, well-being, joy, and mindfulness on a vast scale.
The Bodhisattva dwelt comfortably in this great celestial palace, where a discourse on the genuine Dharma emerged amid a symphony of 84,000 musical instruments. From their sound, the following verses of inspiration arose, telling of the many virtuous deeds that the Bodhisattva carried out in times past:
This concludes the second chapter, on the inspiration.
Monks, in this way the Bodhisattva was exhorted that the time for the Dharma had come. Emerging from that great celestial palace, the Bodhisattva went to the great Dharmoccaya Palace, where he taught the Dharma to the gods in the Heaven of Joy. In the palace, he seated himself upon a lion throne known as Sublime Dharma. He was joined in the palace by a group of gods whose good fortune equaled that of the Bodhisattva, and who had entered the same vehicle. Bodhisattvas with similar conduct to the Bodhisattva gathered from throughout the ten directions. Retinues with equally pure intentions accompanied the gods, without the assembly of divine maidens and even without ordinary gods. Altogether a retinue of 680 million entered the palace, each sitting on a lion throne according to rank.
The Bodhisattva then said, “Monks, in twelve years the Bodhisattva shall enter the womb of his mother.”
At that time the gods from the pure realms ventured to Jambudvīpa. Hiding their divine forms, they took on the guise of priests and taught the Vedas to other priests. They made it known that one who entered the womb in this manner [14] would be a great being possessed of thirty-two marks:
“Someone with such marks would become one of two things. There would be no third option,” they said. “If such an individual were to live as a householder, he would become a universal monarch with a fourfold army. He would become a conqueror, a righteous Dharma king. Such a king would have the seven treasures: the precious wheel, the precious elephant, the precious horse, the precious jewel, the precious wife, the precious steward, and the precious minister.
“How is it that a universal monarch comes to possess the precious wheel? Such a wheel can only belong to a king who has been properly consecrated by sprinkling his head. On the fifteenth day of the lunar month, while observing a poṣadha fast, the king will first wash his head and then go to the top terrace of the palace, surrounded by the women of the female quarters. Then a precious, divine wheel with one thousand spokes will appear from the east. As high as seven tāla trees, the wheel, which is not made by a smith, is round with a central hub and made entirely of gold.
“This precious, divine wheel will now belong to the king, who is appointed to the highest rank of the ruling class. As he sees it, he will think to himself, ‘I have heard that if a precious, divine wheel appears from the east when a king, who has been appointed to the highest rank of the ruling class, ascends to the top floor of the palace surrounded by a gathering of women while observing a poṣadha fast on the fifteenth day of the lunar month, then he shall become a universal monarch. Since I can now clearly perceive this precious, divine wheel, I must certainly be a universal monarch!’
“The king appointed to the highest rank of the ruling class will then draw his cloak back from one shoulder and lower his right knee to the ground. Turning the precious, divine wheel with his right hand, he will proclaim, ‘Precious wheel, noble and divine, please turn in harmony with the Dharma, rather than that which is not the Dharma.’
“The precious, divine wheel, set in motion by the king appointed to the highest rank of the ruling class, will magically travel through space to the east, followed by the universal monarch and his four army divisions. Wherever the wheel comes to rest, [15] there the king appointed to the highest rank of the ruling class and his four army divisions will set up their camp.
“As he travels, the provincial kings of the eastern lands will come to greet him, carrying silver vessels filled with gold dust, and gold vessels filled with fragments of silver. ‘Welcome, lord,’ they will say. ‘Please come. This kingdom is yours. It is extremely vast and prosperous. With bountiful harvests, it is both delightful and populous. Indeed it is filled with people. Now that you have arrived in this land, lord, it is yours. We beseech you to stay.’
“Replying to the provincial kings, the king appointed to the highest rank of the ruling class will respond, ‘May you rule your respective kingdoms according to the Dharma, and not by what is not Dharma. Do not take the lives of living beings, do not take what is not given, and do not engage in sexual misconduct. Likewise you should refrain from telling lies, sowing discord, speaking harshly, and talking frivolously. Do not let your mind be overcome by covetousness, malice, or misguided beliefs. Do not befriend those who take life or those with misguided beliefs. Should non-Dharma arise in my dominion, do not applaud those who practice it.’ In this way the king, who is appointed to the highest rank of the ruling class, will conquer the east.
“Having conquered the east, the precious wheel will then move toward the eastern seas. Crossing over them, it will travel magically through space to the south, accompanied by the universal monarch and his four army divisions. As before he will conquer the south, and then move on to conquer the west and the north.
“Once the king has conquered the north, the wheel will move toward the northern seas and, traveling magically through the sky to the royal palace, it will come to rest unharmed at the entrance to the quarters of the queen’s retinue. In this manner the king appointed to the highest rank of the ruling class comes to possess the precious wheel.
“How is it that a universal monarch comes to possess the precious elephant? The precious elephant of the king appointed to the highest rank of the ruling class appears in the same way that the precious wheel appeared. Completely white in color, the precious elephant has four limbs, two tusks, and a trunk. Its head is ornamented with gold, and it bears a gold victory banner. Likewise it is bedecked with gold ornaments and covered with gold netting. [16] Its magical powers enable it to fly through the sky and transform itself. This king of elephants is known as Bodhi.
“When the king appointed to the highest rank of the ruling class wishes to examine the precious elephant, he will mount it at daybreak and travel throughout this great earth, which is surrounded by oceans. After returning to the royal palace, he will fondly resume his governance. In this manner the universal monarch comes to possess the precious elephant.
“How is it that a universal monarch comes to possess the precious horse? The precious horse of the king appointed to the highest rank of the ruling class appears just as before. The precious horse has a blue body and a black head with a braided mane. It is bridled, bearing a gold victory banner and gold ornaments, and it is covered with gold netting. With its magical powers, it can fly through the sky and transform itself. This king of horses is known as Bālāhaka.
“When the king appointed to the highest rank of the ruling class wishes to examine the precious horse, he will mount it at daybreak and travel throughout this great earth, which is surrounded by oceans. After returning to the royal palace, he will fondly resume his governance. In this manner the universal monarch comes to possess the precious horse.
“How is it that a universal monarch comes to possess the precious jewel? The precious jewel of the king appointed to the highest rank of the ruling class appears just as before. It is a lapis lazuli gem of pure blue color, with eight facets and very fine craftsmanship. With the light emitted from the precious jewel, the entirety of the female quarters are bathed in light.
“When the king appointed to the highest rank of the ruling class wishes to examine the precious jewel, then, at midnight, in complete darkness, he will affix it to the tip of a victory banner and venture out in the gardens [17] to observe the sublime grounds. The light emitted by the precious jewel will illuminate the surrounding area for an entire league, including all four divisions of the king’s army. The people who dwell in the vicinity of the precious jewel will be illuminated by its radiance. Seeing and recognizing each other, they will say to one another, ‘Wake up, friends. Start your work and get to the market. The sun is up and the day has begun.’ In this manner the universal monarch appointed to the highest rank of the ruling class comes to possess the precious jewel.
“How is it that the universal monarch appointed to the highest rank of the ruling class comes to possess the precious wife? The precious wife of the king appointed to the highest rank of the ruling class appears just as before. In accord with tradition, the precious wife has been born into the warrior class. She is not too tall or short, too fat or thin, too dark or fair. Indeed she is beautiful in form, pleasant in manner, and pleasing to the eye. She is in the full bloom of life, and every pore of her body gives off the scent of sandalwood, while from her mouth wafts the fragrance of utpala flowers. Her body is as soft to the touch as kācilindika cloth; in cold weather her body is warm to the touch, and in warm weather it is cool. Her mind, let alone her body, desires no one other than the universal monarch. In this manner the universal monarch comes to possess the precious wife.
“How is it that the universal monarch appointed to the highest rank of the ruling class comes to possess the precious steward? The precious steward of the king appointed to the highest rank of the ruling class appears just as before. Learned, lucid, and intelligent, the precious steward’s divine sight will enable him to perceive treasures—both those that are owned and those that are not—in the surrounding area for up to an entire league. With those treasures that do not belong to anyone, he will cater to the material needs of the universal monarch. In this manner the universal monarch comes to possess the precious steward. [18]
“How is it that the universal monarch appointed to the highest rank of the ruling class comes to possess the precious minister? The precious minister of a king who has been properly consecrated by sprinkling his head appears just as before. The precious minister is learned, lucid, and intelligent. The universal monarch merely has to think of commissioning an army and it is done. In this manner the universal monarch comes to possess the precious minister. The universal monarch thus possesses these seven treasures.
“The universal monarch will also have one thousand sons. Brave, heroic, and supremely able in body, these sons will attain nothing but victory over the forces that oppose them. Without resorting to punishment or acts of violence, the king will rule with the Dharma, bringing peace and order to the entire vast kingdom that extends all the way to the oceans.
“If, however, he leaves his family behind and becomes a monk, he will become a buddha. Relinquishing the attachment of desire, and without relying on anyone else as a guide, he will become the teacher of gods and humans.”
With these words, the gods inspired the priests to recite the Vedas.
In a similar manner, other gods arrived in Jambudvīpa to exhort the solitary buddhas. “Noble ones,” they said. “Give up this buddha realm. In twelve years’ time, the Bodhisattva will enter the womb of his mother.”
Monks, at that time there was a solitary buddha named Mātaṅga who dwelt on Mount Golāṅgulaparivartana in the city of Rājagṛha. Hearing the exhortation of the gods, he became as still as mud resting upon a boulder, then rose up into the sky to the height of seven tāla trees. Merging with the fire element, like a torch he passed into nirvāṇa. His bile and phlegm, ligaments and bones, and flesh and blood were completely consumed by fire, leaving nothing but a few relics on the ground. Even today, they are known as ‘the footprints of the sage.’
Monks, at this same time five hundred solitary buddhas were assembled in a deer park outside Vārāṇasī. They too heard the exhortation of the gods, rose up into the sky to the height of seven tāla trees and, turning into fire, passed into nirvāṇa like a torch. [19] Their bile and phlegm, ligaments and bones, and flesh and blood were completely consumed by fire. Nothing was left behind, save a few relics that fell to the ground. From this point on, the area came to be known as Ṛṣipatana, or the Hill of the Fallen Sages. The area also came to be known as Mṛgadāva, or the Deer Park, since deer frolicked there without fear.
Monks, in this manner the Bodhisattva dwelt in the supreme realm of the Heaven of Joy, where he engaged in four great examinations. What were these four? He examined the time of his birth, the continent of his birth, the country of his birth, and the family of his birth.
And why, monks, did the Bodhisattva examine the time of his birth? Because a bodhisattva does not enter his mother’s womb at the beginning of time when sentient beings are evolving. Rather it is when the world has formed and when birth, old age, sickness, and death have become known that a bodhisattva enters his mother’s womb.
And why, monks, did the Bodhisattva examine the continent of his birth? Because a bodhisattva is not born in an outlying continent, nor is he born on the eastern continent of Pūrvavideha, on the western continent of Aparagodānīya, or on the northern continent of Uttarakuru. Rather a bodhisattva is born on the southern continent of Jambudvīpa.
And why, monks, did the Bodhisattva examine the country of his birth? Because a bodhisattva is not born in outlying lands where people are as stupid as sheep, with dull faculties, ignorant, and incapable of distinguishing right from wrong. Rather a bodhisattva is born in a central land. [20]
And why, monks, did the Bodhisattva examine the family of his birth? Because a bodhisattva is not born into an inferior family, like a family of outcastes, flutemakers, cartwrights, or servants. A bodhisattva is only born into one of two families—a priestly family or a family of the ruling class. When the priestly families are dominant in the world, the bodhisattva is born into a priestly family. When the ruling-class families are dominant in the world, the bodhisattva is born into a ruling-class family. Thus, monks, at this time the ruling-class families were dominant in the world, so bodhisattvas were born into such families.
For this reason, the Bodhisattva engaged in these four great examinations as he dwelt in the supreme realm of the Heaven of Joy. Having examined these points, he remained silent. [B2]
Monks, the gods and bodhisattvas then asked one another, “Into what precious family will the Bodhisattva be born? In what mother’s womb will he be conceived?”
Some said, “The Vaideha family in the land of Magadha is wealthy, prosperous, and happy. This is a fitting place for the Bodhisattva to be conceived.”
“This is not a worthy place for the Bodhisattva to be conceived,” others responded, “for the mother’s family is not pure, nor is the father’s. The family’s fortunes have come about from little merit, not a vast store of merit. They are impetuous, unstable, and fickle. The surrounding environs of their land are like a desert, with few groves, lakes, and ponds. This is a primitive land, like a remote village. Hence this is not a worthy place for the Bodhisattva to take birth.”
Some said, “The Kośala family has a large retinue, many mounts, and great wealth. This is a fitting place for the Bodhisattva to be conceived.”
“This is not a worthy place, either,” others replied. “The Kośala family descends from outcastes. Neither the father’s nor the mother’s families are pure. Their interests are base and their line is ignoble. Moreover, they have no limitless store of wealth and treasures. Hence this is not a worthy place for the Bodhisattva to take birth.” [21]
Some said, “The family of the king of Vatsa is wealthy, prosperous, and happy. This is a fitting place for the Bodhisattva to be conceived.”
To this, others replied, “This is not a worthy place. The family of the king of Vatsa is base, violent, and lacking in nobility. They are illegitimate by birth, and their accomplishments have not resulted from the noble deeds of their parents. The king is a nihilist. Hence this is not a worthy place for the Bodhisattva to take birth, either.”
Some suggested, “The city of Vaiśālī is wealthy, prosperous, and happy. Delightful and teeming with people, it is like a heavenly palace, with terraces, balconies, architraves, skylights, cool pavilions, multistoried buildings, and palaces. This city is filled with blooming flowers, ringed with gardens, and encircled by forests. This is a worthy place for the Bodhisattva to be conceived.”
“This is not a worthy place, either,” others replied. “They do not speak to one another with decorum. They have no Dharma practice, nor do they respect their superiors, elders, leaders, or those in between. Each thinks that he is king, never taking on the role of a student or accepting the Dharma. Hence this city is not worthy of the Bodhisattva, either.”
Others said, “The Pradyota family in the city of Ujjayinī has a great army and many mounts. They have emerged victorious in battle over their foes. This is a fitting place for the Bodhisattva to be conceived.”
To this the response came, “This is not a worthy place, for these people are malicious and violent. They are uncivilized, wild, and impetuous, without any heed for the consequences of their actions. Hence this is not an appropriate place for the Bodhisattva to be conceived.”
Some said, “The city of Mathurā is rich, prosperous, and happy. It is populous, filled with people. [22] The royal palace of King Subāhu, who commands an army of brave warriors, is a fitting place for the Bodhisattva to be conceived.”
“This is not a worthy place,” others replied. “This king was born into a family with wrong views. Indeed he is like a savage, so it is inappropriate for the Bodhisattva to take his final existence in a family with wrong views. Hence this as well is not an appropriate place for the Bodhisattva to be conceived.”
Some suggested, “The king of the city of Hastināpura was born in the family descended from Pāṇḍu. This king is brave, courageous, and handsome. He has conquered opposing armies. Thus it is fitting for the Bodhisattva to be conceived in this family.”
To this, others responded, “This family is also not worthy of the Bodhisattva. Those born into the Pāṇḍava family have confused their genealogy. They say that Yudhiṣṭhira is the son of Dharma, that Bhīmasena is the son of Vāyu, that Arjuna is the son of Indra, and that Nakula and Sahadeva are the sons of the two Aśvins. Hence it is not proper for the Bodhisattva to be conceived in this family.”
Some said, “The city of Mithilā is extremely beautiful and prosperous. This is the land ruled by King Sumitra, who has many elephants, horses, chariots, infantry, and troops. He also has great material wealth, with great stores of gold, silver, jewels, pearls, beryl, conches, crystals, corals, fine gold, and many other riches and belongings. He is powerful, with an army unafraid of the kings from surrounding lands. He has many friends, and he delights in the Dharma. This family is a fitting place for the Bodhisattva to be conceived.”
“This is not appropriate,” others replied. “King Sumitra does indeed have these qualities. Yet he is extremely aged, so he does not even possess the ability to produce a son. Moreover, he already has many sons. It is not proper for the Bodhisattva to be conceived in this family.”
In this manner the bodhisattvas and gods observed all the illustrious royal families to be found throughout the sixteen kingdoms of Jambudvīpa, [23] and found them all to be inadequate.
As they considered this, a god named Jñānaketudhvaja, who was firmly established in the Great Vehicle and could not be turned away from awakening, spoke to the great assembly of gods and bodhisattvas: “Come, my friends. Let us go before the Bodhisattva himself and ask him what sublime qualities a precious family must have in order for a bodhisattva to take his final birth there.”
“Excellent!” they replied. With palms joined, they all went before the Bodhisattva and asked him, “Sublime Being, what sublime qualities must a precious family have for a bodhisattva to take his final birth there?”
Looking upon the great assembly of bodhisattvas and the great assembly of gods, the Bodhisattva then addressed the gathering: “Friends, the family into which a bodhisattva takes his final birth must have sixty-four excellent qualities. What are these sixty-four qualities?
“This family must be noble and it must be known by all. It must not be petty or prone to violence. It must be of a good caste and good clan. It must have excellent marital unions, with excellent marital unions in the past, and marital unions between individuals who are pure. These marital unions must be between people who are both pure, well-known by all, and renowned for their great power. This family must have many men and women. It must be fearless, not base or cowardly. It must not be greedy, but disciplined. It must be wise and watched over by ministers. This family must be creative and thereby enjoy worldly pleasures. This family should be steadfast in its friendships and safeguard the lives of all the beings throughout the animal kingdom. [24] They must have gratitude and know how to conduct themselves appropriately. They must not be moved by ambition, anger, ignorance, or fear. They must be afraid of engaging in negative deeds. They must not dwell in ignorance. This family must be benevolent and industrious. It must be inspired to give, be generous, and remember the kindness of others. They must be physically strong, with great power and strength, indeed supreme strength. They must make offerings to the sages, to the gods, and to stūpas, and also pay homage to their ancestors. They must not hold grudges.
“This family must be renowned throughout the ten directions and have a vast retinue. It must not be divided. It must be peerless. This family must be the most senior and the most illustrious among all families. It must be powerful, and renowned as such. They must respect their fathers, mothers, mendicants, and priests. They must have great stores of treasure and grain. They must have a great deal of gold, and many jewels, gems, pearls, lapis lazuli, conches, crystals, corals, fine gold, silver, and many other riches and belongings. They must have many elephants, horses, camels, oxen, and sheep. They must have many male servants, female servants, officials, and workers. This family must be difficult to defeat. It must accomplish all of its aims. It must be a family of universal monarchs. It must be aided, in great measure, by the root virtues accumulated in the past. It must be descended from a noble family, a family of bodhisattvas. [25] Indeed this family must be irreproachable when it comes to any accusations of faults related to one’s birth, such as those found in this entire world with its gods, demons, and brahmās, mendicants and priests. Friends, the family of a bodhisattva in his final existence must have these sixty-four qualities.