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Pratyutpanna Samādhi Sūtra / Seeing Buddhas Face to Face in the Present

DESCRIPTION

The Pratyutpanna-samādhi-sūtra is generally thought to be a work of Pure Land Buddhism. Certainly it has been much used by followers of that school in China and Japan, as well as by adherents of other sects. The great Chinese monk Huiyuan (334–416), founder of the White Lotus Society dedicated to the worship of Amitābha and to rebirth in the paradise of Sukhāvatī, was well acquainted with the text, as his correspondence with Kumārajīva (344–413) shows. Other Buddhist thinkers who cited the Pratyutpanna-samādhi-sūtra in their writings include such luminaries as the Tiantai patriarch Zhiyi (538–97), Daochuo (562–645), Shandao (613–81), and Jiacai (fl. c. 627–49) on the Chinese side, and Genshin (942–1017) and Hōnen (1133–1212) in Japan, where the Pratyutpanna-samādhi Sūtra is still regarded as an important text by various branches of the Jōdo sect. However, to call the Pratyutpanna-samādhi-sūtra a Pure Land sutra is a radical oversimplification, for it is certainly not at all like the other great sutras of that school, the larger and smaller Sukhāvatīvyūhasūtras and the so-called Amitāyurdhyāna-sūtra. Whereas these texts glorify the compassionate action of the former bodhisattva Dharmākara and show the faithful the way to rebirth in Sukhāvatī, the glorious buddha field of Amitābha/Amitāyus Buddha, the Pratyutpanna-samādhi-sūtra follows a different agenda. As its name indicates, it propounds a particular samādhi, or meditation, called the pratyutpanna-buddha-saṃmukhāvasthita-samādhi, “the meditation in which one is brought face to face with the buddhas of the present” or “the meditation of direct encounter with the buddhas of the present.” This meditation is a developed form of the earlier practice of buddhānusmṛti, “calling the Buddha to mind” (Ch. nianfo; Jp. nembutsu). The object of this “calling to mind” or visualization may accordingly be all or any of the myriad buddhas of the present, and although the text of the Pratyutpanna-samādhi-sūtra mentions Amitābha by name, he is merely adduced as an example, as the buddha of the present par excellence. The practitioner of the meditation might just as well visualize the buddha of the east, Akṣobhya, in his buddha field Abhirati. If, therefore, Pure Land Buddhism is understood as relating only to Amitābha and Sukhāvatī, then the Pratyutpannasamādhi Sūtra was not originally a Pure Land text as such, even though it deals with many key features of Pure Land belief and practice.

Translations

Except for one small fragment, the original Sanskrit text of the Pratyutpanna-samādhi-sūtra has been lost. The most reliable extant translation is undoubtedly the Tibetan ’Phags-pa da-ltar-gyi sangs-rgyas mngon-sum-du bzhugs-pa’i ting-nge-’dzin ces-bya-ba theg-pachen-po’i mdo, produced at the beginning of the ninth century by Śākyaprabha and Ratnarakṣita. Although it represents a later form of the text, the Tibetan version is indispensable for elucidating obscurities in the Chinese translations, of which four survive (T. vol. 13, nos. 416–419).

  • The 般舟三昧經 in three volumes (juan), which is now ascribed to Lokakṣema, exists in two separate redactions. Redaction A appears in the Tripiṭaka Koreana, and was taken as the base text for the Taishō edition (T. 418). Redaction B appears in the Song, Yuan, and Ming printings of the Chinese canon, and its readings are given in the footnotes to the Taishō shinshū daizōkyō edition. Redactions A and B differ substantially only up to halfway through Chapter IV (the end of Chapter VI in the Tibetan version); after that point they are basically the same text. In other words, Redaction A proper, which is distinguished primarily by its prose translations of Sanskrit verses, is partial, comprising somewhat less than the first third of the text. Only Redaction A can be ascribed unreservedly to Lokakṣema; Redaction B is, in part at least, the work of a later hand, a revision of the translation most probably carried out by one of Lokakṣema’s disciples in the year 208, entailing, among other things, a retranslation of the Sanskrit verses into Chinese verse. It is possible that Lokakṣema himself had only the first third of the sutra at his disposal, and that the enlarged Sanskrit text was brought to China soon after 179 C.E. This supposition is given added weight by the existence of an incomplete Chinese version of the Pratyutpanna-samādhi-sūtra, the 拔陂菩薩經 (T. 419), which must have appeared by the middle of the third century. The 拔陂菩薩經 also ends abruptly at the same point as that at which Redaction A of the 般舟三昧經 merges with Redaction B. All this might lead us to hypothesize a shorter ur-text of the Pratyutpanna-samādhi-sūtra, were it not for the fact that all the prose passages of Redaction B bear the stamp of Lokakṣema’s style.
  • Next we must account for the 般舟三昧經 in one volume (T. 417), which is also ascribed to Lokakṣema, and which has been accorded such a high place in Japan. Despite all assertions to the contrary, this text is not in fact an independent translation of the Pratyutpanna-samādhi-sūtra at all, but merely an abridged pastiche of Redaction B of the 般舟三昧經 in three volumes.
  • Finally, the least problematic of the Chinese versions of the Pratyutpannasamādhi-sūtra is the 大方等大集經 xianhu fen (T. 416; i.e., the “Bhadrapāla Section” of the Mahāvaipulya-mahāsaṃnipāta-sūtra) in five volumes, produced by Jñānagupta, et al., in 595 C.E. The text differs in certain respects from that translated by Lokakṣema, and it is also interesting to note that by this time the Pratyutpanna-samādhi-sūtra was regarded as part of the massive compendium of Mahayana sutras known as the Mahāsaṃnipāta.

A complete English translation was made by Paul Harrison and published in 1998.