Introduction
i.1The Gold Sūtra presents a very brief but meaningful teaching on the mind of awakening, the aspiration to attain the unsurpassed and perfect awakening of a buddha for the benefit of all beings. It consists of the Buddha’s answer to a single question posed by Venerable Ānanda about how the mind of awakening should be viewed. The Buddha declares that the mind of awakening is like gold because it is pure, and he gives the analogy that just as a smith may shape gold into various forms, yet the nature of the gold itself does not change, so too the mind of awakening appears with various unique attributes, yet the nature of the mind of awakening itself does not change. The Buddha then proclaims a single four-line verse that succinctly articulates the nature of the mind of awakening and the way to practice it.
i.1《黃金經》呈現了關於菩提心的簡潔而深刻的教導，即為利益一切眾生而發心成就佛陀的無上圓滿菩提。這部經是佛對尊者阿難所提出的一個問題的回答，阿難問的是應當如何看待菩提心。佛宣說菩提心如同黃金一樣是純淨的，並給出了這樣的比喻：正如工匠可以將黃金塑造成各種不同的形狀，但黃金本身的本質不變，同樣地菩提心顯現出各種獨特的特性，但菩提心本身的本質不變。佛然後宣說了一首四句偈頌，簡潔地闡明了菩提心的本質和修習方式。
i.2Gold is used as an analogy to illustrate the noble and precious nature of awakening itself in a number of canonical texts. Notably, of the nine famous analogies set out in the Tathāgatagarbhasūtra for the nature of awakening or “buddha-nature” (tathāgatagarbha) that is innate in sentient beings but concealed by different layers of adventitious obscurations, at least two—a piece of gold that has been discarded by mistake in a heap of filth, and an image cast in gold but still enclosed within its clay mold—explicitly mention gold. The analogy of pure gold whose nature does not change, despite being worked by a smith into different forms, is also found in Vidyutprāpta’s Questions (Vidyutprāptaparipṛcchā, Toh 64), but there illustrates the single nature of the dharmadhātu rather than that of awakening. However, gold as an analogy for the mind of awakening (bodhicitta), rather than for awakening itself, seems to be unique to the present text.
i.2在許多經典中，黃金被用作比喻來說明覺悟本身的崇高和珍貴的性質。值得注意的是，在《如來藏經》中列舉的九個著名比喻中，這些比喻說明了內在於眾生的覺悟或「佛性」（如來藏）的性質，但卻被不同層次的客塵煩惱所遮蔽，其中至少有兩個比喻明確提及黃金——一塊被誤棄在污垢堆中的黃金，和一座用黃金鑄造但仍封閉在泥模中的形像。純金的比喻，儘管被匠人打造成各種形式，其性質卻不改變，這個比喻也出現在《電光所問經》（Toh 64）中，但那裡是用來說明法界的單一性質，而非覺悟的性質。然而，將黃金作為菩提心的比喻，而非作為覺悟本身的比喻，似乎是本經文獨有的特點。
i.3As far as we can tell, no Sanskrit or Chinese version of The Gold Sūtra exists. As there is no colophon at the end of the sūtra, we have no information on when or by whom it was translated into Tibetan. The sūtra is not listed in either of the two inventories of translations completed during the early, imperial period, and it appears to be found only in Kangyurs of the Tshalpa line of transmission. There is a recent English translation of the sūtra, along with helpful notes, in Peter Skilling’s 2021 anthology, Questioning the Buddha: A Selection of Twenty-Five Sutras.
i.3據我們所知，《黃金經》不存在梵文或漢文版本。由於經文末尾沒有譯者記錄，我們無法得知它何時被翻譯成藏文，也不知道由誰進行的翻譯。該經不在早期帝王時期完成的兩份翻譯清單中，似乎僅出現在薩迦傳承系統的甘珠爾版本中。彼得·斯基林在2021年出版的文選《質疑佛陀：二十五部經典選集》中提供了該經的近期英文翻譯及有益的註釋。
i.4The present translation is based on the version in the Degé (sde dge) Kangyur, with reference to the Comparative Edition (dpe sdur ma).
i.4本翻譯以德格甘珠爾版本為基礎，並參考對勘版進行校譯。