Introduction

i.1The setting for this sūtra is Āmrapālī’s Grove in Vaiśālī, where the Buddha Śākyamuni taught and performed miracles. The Lord Buddha visited Vaiśālī several times. First, in the fifth year after his enlightenment, he spent the rainy season there; later, he laid down various rules of the Vinaya at Vaiśālī, as well as giving other important discourses. On his last visit he announced his approaching parinirvāṇa. In addition, one hundred years after the Buddha’s parinirvāṇa, it was the site of the second Buddhist Council.

i.2This sūtra relates the story of a monk who has been seduced by a prostitute and is deeply remorseful for his actions. Mañjuśrī takes him to seek the counsel of the Buddha. What is interesting is the way in which the Buddha deals with monastic discipline and the ethical impairment of the monk’s vows, contrasting the view of emptiness, or the lack of intrinsic nature of phenomena, and morality. Here, the view of emptiness trumps the code of monastic discipline as explained in the Vinaya. From the point of view of the monk’s vows, sleeping with a woman is a disaster; however, this moral discourse takes the point of view of emptiness. This is an example of how the codes of monastic discipline are sometimes subordinated to the ultimate view of emptiness. Although the Vinaya is practiced in all vehicles, including the Vajrayāna, it is given different priorities. For example, in the Mahāyāna, if a monk holds the bodhisattva vows, certain exceptions can be made to his monastic vows, such as the one that prohibits touching a woman, when he is employing skillful means. Here in this text, however (although it is a Mahāyāna sūtra), the emphasis is not on any such skillful means, but on the metaphysical view of emptiness.

i.3The Degé Kangyur version of this sūtra was compared to those in the Stok Palace Kangyur and Lhasa Kangyur; discrepancies and remarks are indicated in the endnotes. This text was translated solely on the basis of the Tibetan versions, as a Sanskrit original has not been found. When the names of individuals are generally known in Sanskrit, e.g. Mañjuśrī, they are presented here in Sanskrit. In the case of many other personal names, however, it is difficult to establish from the Tibetan translation an unquestionable rendering back into Sanskrit; these names are therefore translated into English instead.

i.4The Sanskrit title of the work, as transcribed in the Degé and most other recensions of the Kangyur, is‍—shorn of its honorific elements‍—Karmāvaraṇa­viśuddha­sūtra, which could be translated as “purified of karmic obscurations.” However, the sūtra is mentioned in Śāntideva’s Śikṣā­samuccaya with the title Karmāvaraṇa­viśuddhi­sūtra (which is also the spelling given in the Narthang Kangyur), and we have followed most modern catalogers of the Kangyur in taking this spelling as the probable original version, rendering it as Purification of Karmic Obscurations.

i.5According to the colophon, the sūtra was originally translated from Sanskrit into Tibetan by the Indian preceptors Jinamitra and Prajñāvarman, and by the principal editor-translator (lo tsā ba), Bandé Yeshé Dé (ban de ye shes sde), and others. Jinamitra was a Kaśmīri of around the late eighth to early ninth century who travelled to Samyé Monastery in Tibet during the reign of the Dharma king Trisong Detsen (khri srong lde btsan) to engage in translation; he and Yeshé Dé collaborated on the translation of many hundreds of works. The translation of this text is listed in the Denkarma (ldan dkar ma) catalog, compiled in 824, and was thus most likely prepared in the early ninth century.