Introduction

i.1The Teaching by the Child Inconceivable Radiance presents the remarkable account of an abandoned child who is discovered calmly sitting alone in a derelict dwelling in the town of Śrāvastī, licked and nuzzled by wild animals while the townsfolk gawk. The Buddha Śākyamuni, who is in residence nearby, sends Ānanda to investigate, although he knows that the child is an incarnation of a great bodhisattva whose remaining karmic obscurations are now on the verge of exhaustion. The Buddha’s action triggers a chain of events that completes this purification and launches the bodhisattva to the next great stage of his spiritual path. This is therefore a story of the bodhisattva’s spiritual journey that spans countless eons.

i.2This sūtra also serves as a framework for various types of Dharma instruction. When he first meets the child, the Buddha’s blessings, coupled with the child’s own merit and wisdom gathered in previous lifetimes, spur a polemical dialogue in metered verse in which the child challenges the Buddha to reconcile his realization of emptiness with his compassionate teaching activity. The child adopts a nihilistic viewpoint as a rhetorical strategy for eliciting an explanation from the Buddha of the relation between ultimate and relative truth. The Buddha responds that it is the buddhas’ realization of how things truly are, which produces spontaneous and nonconceptual compassionate activity for others because the buddhas respond to the suffering of sentient beings’ confused misapprehension of how things truly are. A buddha knows that appearances are not real, while sentient beings do not. A sentient being’s perception of appearances is compared to clouds in the sky and characterized as imaginary imputation, since the luminous, profound stillness that is mind’s true nature is not realized. This exchange is therefore a pithy elucidation of the core principles of the Mahāyāna Buddhist teachings: the view of emptiness suffused with compassion that inspires one to produce boundless teaching activity that in turn instills that same view in others.

i.3Shortly after this exchange Śakra appears, drawn by lights that radiate from the child’s body throughout the universe, and offers the child a set of divine clothes to cover his naked body. A sermon from the child follows, in which he explains to Śakra all the fine qualities that adorn bodhisattvas such that no further superficial covering of their physical forms is required. With this show of miracles and moving sermon, the child is proclaimed by all present to be an advanced bodhisattva who is inconceivably radiant, and he is so named with great rejoicing.

i.4The next episode in this account takes place in the home of the child’s mother, where the Buddha has escorted him. At first the child’s mother is ashamed to face the Buddha, but the child respectfully urges his mother to make offerings to the Buddha and generate the resolve for awakening before him, and she proceeds to do so. This act on both their parts completely purifies the residual negative karma they shared.

i.5King Prasenajit of the state of Kośala, one of the Buddha’s principal sponsors, then comes to visit him at his monastic compound outside of town, having heard of the child’s miraculous feats. Upon first seeing the child, the king wonders what kinds of deeds he must have performed in the past to have such a perfect physical form. Inconceivable Radiance, through the power of the Buddha and his own past roots of virtue, knows clairvoyantly what King Prasenajit has realized about him, which prompts him to teach the king about how pure actions result in a pure physical form. The king then asks the Buddha to explain how the child, with obvious great virtues and merit, could end up in the unfortunate situation of being abandoned by his unwed mother. The Buddha responds by telling the story of a previous life, long ago, when this bodhisattva (then named Earth) insulted and cursed his mentor in retaliation for being chastised for weakness in his practice, and how the very words of this curse continued to ripen for Earth in lifetime after lifetime, until this very life. Throughout his many lifetimes of being orphaned, abandoned, and eaten by wild predators, the bodhisattva Earth nonetheless never renounced the awakening mind, until finally his positive merit led him to the auspicious circumstances that unfold, with the Buddha’s guidance, in this account.

i.6In response, the king demonstrates his understanding to the Buddha by offering his own homily about how one should serve a spiritual master and lead a virtuous life, and the benefits that will ensue. The Buddha confirms that the king has spoken truthfully, meaning that the king has spoken Dharma with his blessing.

i.7Finally, prompted by the child Inconceivable Radiance, the Buddha presents his own teaching on five sets of four dharmas (here meaning spiritual qualities, practices, or realizations) that bodhisattvas must possess in order to awaken to buddhahood by virtue of gaining acceptance of even the most profound Dharmas. In other words, bodhisattvas should practice the ability to face the profound truth of emptiness without fear, the third and most difficult component of the transcendent virtue of acceptance within the schema of six or ten transcendent virtues.

i.8At the conclusion of this teaching, Ānanda kneels down, joins his palms together, and, singing a hymn of praise to the Buddha, requests an explanation of this auspicious encounter with the child Inconceivable Radiance. The Buddha then prophesies the child’s eventual full awakening as the buddha bhagavān Inconceivable Radiance at the end of a future dark age in which no other buddha has ever appeared. The Buddha’s final counsel is that no higher virtue exists than retaining, applying, realizing, and sharing with others this noble account of Dharma of the child Inconceivable Radiance.

i.9The Tibetan canonical version of the sūtra, translated by the Indian paṇḍita Surendrabodhi and the Tibetan translator Yeshé Dé (ye shes sde), has come down to us in two generally homologous recensions, one titled ’phags pa khye’u snang ba bsam gyis mi khyab pas bstan pa zhes bya ba’i chos kyi rnam grangs, and the other ’phags pa snang ba bsam gyi mi khyab pa bstan pa zhes bya ba’i chos kyi rnam grangs. Though this translation is not listed in the imperial period Tibetan catalogs, Surendrabodhi and Yeshé Dé were frequent collaborators on translations recorded therein, so we can reasonably date their translation to the early ninth century. The English translation presented here is based on a comparison of several versions of the canonical Tibetan translation representing both the Tshalpa (tshal pa) and Thempangma (them spangs ma) recension groups, with the Degé version taken as the primary witness. Substantial variation between the versions was minimal, and such instances have been noted below.

i.10There is also a unique version of the sūtra preserved among the cache of manuscripts discovered at Dunhuang. Bearing the title The Scripture of Inconceivable Radiance (snang ba bsam du med pa zhes bya’i chos kyi gzhung), the manuscript contains a different translation than is found in the Kangyur, one that appears to be based on a different recension of the sūtra. Unfortunately, the final folios of the manuscript are missing and with them the colophon that would provide more precise information on the manuscript’s textual and translation history. We can, with some confidence, date the manuscript, if not the translation it contains, to a period between the mid-eighth and mid-ninth centuries, the time when Dunhuang was under Tibetan control. The translation was certainly completed prior to the eleventh century, when the manuscript depositories at Dunhuang were sealed. Because it is an entirely different translation from the canonical version taken as the basis here, only the most significant variations have been noted.

i.11There is no extant version of this text available in Sanskrit, but the sūtra was translated into Chinese by Kumārajīva in the early decades of the fifth century. The Chinese translation was consulted to clarify difficult points in this translation. There are no known Indian or Tibetan commentaries on this sūtra, and the text seems not to have been frequently cited by either Indian or Tibetan masters, so little is known about the circulation and popularity of the text in South Asia and Tibet. Western scholarship has similarly taken little notice of this sūtra, and there are no previous English translations available.