Introduction

i.1The Accomplishment of the Sets of Four Qualities: The Bodhisattvas’ Prātimokṣa is a sūtra significant for its wide-ranging discussion of the various attitudes, deeds, pursuits, and insights that constitute the practical discipline‍—the prātimokṣa ‍—engaged in by bodhisattvas. The sūtra presents a dialogue between Śāriputra and the Buddha Śākyamuni at Vulture Peak near Rājagṛha, the capital of the former kingdom of Magadha (present-day Bihar). Śāriputra opens the conversation by asking the Buddha, “What are the deeds related to the aspects of the bodhisattvas’ truth?” The Buddha responds by expounding on a wide variety of qualities that bodhisattvas cultivate on their journey to awakening. These include, but are not limited to, expositions on the importance of generosity and diligence. The qualities are generally presented in groups of four and relate to vastly different themes.

i.2One of the sets of four, for example, is patience, unimpeded wisdom and vision, undivided wisdom and vision, and unattached wisdom and vision, for which the Buddha says that bodhisattvas will be praised. In another set of four, the Buddha teaches that bodhisattvas will remember their past lives once they have perfected their training so that their acts are in accord with their words, their words are in accord with their acts, they have abandoned aggression, and they rely on wisdom. The Buddha also teaches that bodhisattvas will remember their past lives when they transcend and acquire virtuous qualities, establish others in virtue, seek the Dharma devotedly, and teach the Dharma extensively. Bodhisattvas will be joyful, the Buddha explains, when their search is meaningful, they have the treasure of learning, they possess insight based on that learning, and they give the gift of the Dharma. Many other such sets of four qualities are presented with brief explanations. Thus, The Accomplishment of the Sets of Four Qualities: The Bodhisattvas’ Prātimokṣa provides a concise synoptic view of the many positive qualities to be cultivated by bodhisattvas on the path to awakening. The altruistic motivations, active pursuits, and more subtle insights promoted in the sūtra form a mosaic of what it means to train in the prātimokṣa of the vehicle of the bodhisattvas as opposed to the prātimokṣa of the vehicles of the śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas.

i.3It is a common feature of Buddhist canonical literature to organize doctrinal terms and items in numbered lists. In some cases, those numbered lists are presented as a series in ascending numerical order. One of the early scriptural collections (Skt. āgama; Pali nikāya), The Numerical Discourses, organizes individual discourses in this way. The first chapter contains discourses that focus on a single item, the second chapter discourses that focus on two items, and so on up to the eleventh chapter, which contains discourses focused on groups of eleven items. Within the body of Great Vehicle discourses, there are those that present lists of items in ascending numerical order‍—one item, two items, three items, and so on‍—as well as those, such as the present discourse, that contain presentations of multiple sets of the same number of items. Among discourses in the A Multitude of Buddhas (Skt. Buddhāvataṃsaka; Tib. sangs rgyas phal po che) section of the Kangyur, for example, one typically finds sets of ten items. Even more common, however, are those Great Vehicle discourses that present multiple sets of four items, often but not always in terms of “four dharmas that bodhisattvas possess” (Tib. chos bzhi dang ldan). In the part of the Degé Kangyur in which the present discourse has been placed, the four discourses that follow it are also based on one or more sets of four factors or qualities and have titles that indicate this central feature, one of them a variation on The Accomplishment of the Sets of Four Qualities. These are The Sūtra Teaching the Four Factors (chos bzhi bstan pa’i mdo, Toh 249); The Four Factors (chos bzhi pa’i mdo, Toh 250); The Noble Mahāyāna Sūtra on the Four Factors (chos bzhi pa’i mdo, Toh 251); and The Fourfold Accomplishment (bzhi pa sgrub pa, Toh 252).

i.4The Bodhisattvas’ Prātimokṣa was a sūtra known during the period of the early diffusion of Buddhism in Tibet, since it is cited on several points, and in places at considerable length, by Śāntideva in his influential compendium of the sūtras known as the Śikṣāsamuccaya, which was translated in the early period. However, it seems that the Sanskrit source text of the sūtra was unavailable in Tibet at that time. The Denkarma (ldan dkar ma) imperial catalog lists a text with an identical title among the sūtras translated into Tibetan from Chinese. What appears to be the same text is also listed with the shorter title Bodhisattva­prātimokṣa (Tib. byang chub sems dpa’i so sor thar pa) in the Phangthangma (’phang thang ma) catalog. However, the Tibetan version of this discourse as found in the Kangyur is not that text but a later translation, since the colophon states clearly that it was translated, presumably from Sanskrit, by the renowned Bengali master Atiśa Dīpaṅkaraśrījñāna (982–1054), along with his Tibetan associates Śākya Lodrö (shAkya blo gros; ca. eleventh century) and Gewé Lodrö (dge ba'i blo gros; ca. eleventh century). This would date the translation to sometime between Atiśa’s arrival in Tibet in 1040 and his death there fourteen years later. Atiśa attested to the text’s importance by quoting it at length seven times in his Mahā­sūtra­samuccaya. Since that time, however, the scripture does not seem to have received much attention. No version of the text has survived in Sanskrit, and although the Denkarma indicates that there was at one time a version of the text in Chinese, “no trace of the sūtra itself has been identified in Chinese.”

i.5This translation is based on the Tibetan translation of the text as preserved in the Degé edition of the Kangyur in consultation with the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma) of the Kangyur and the Stok Palace Kangyur.