Introduction

i.1Bouquet of Flowers is set in Rājagṛha, at Vulture Peak Mountain, where the Buddha is dwelling together with a large monastic assembly. Śāriputra rises from his seat and asks, “Blessed One, how many blessed buddhas are there now, dwelling alive and well and teaching the Dharma?” In response to this question, the Buddha describes a vast array of wondrous, far-away world systems inhabited by countless buddhas. The multiplicity of buddhas in the present, one of the main themes accompanying the rise of Great Vehicle Buddhism, is thus the foremost theme of this sūtra. In this respect, Bouquet of Flowers has a strong affinity with sūtras connected to the Pure Land Buddhist traditions of East Asia. Jan Nattier’s definition of Pure Land Buddhism as “the set of all ideas and practices related to Buddhas who are presently living in the world systems other than our own,” corroborates this association.

i.2Contrary to the usual tendency in Buddhist Pure Land literature, however, Bouquet of Flowers does not emphasize rebirth in a pure land where one can swiftly progress towards unexcelled, perfect and complete awakening. Instead, this sūtra focuses on simply hearing the names of the buddhas that inhabit different world systems, and extols the many benefits that derive from hearing and reciting these names and giving rise to faith in the buddhas. The extremely long distances between our world system and those world systems, always measured in terms of buddhafields, is not a hindrance for those buddhas to positively influence the devout in their spiritual quests. The fruition of these buddhas’ past aspirations, the sūtra states several times, is powerful enough to impact beings regardless of such vast spatial divides.

i.3This emphasis on the spiritual efficacy of faith, aspiration, and the hearing and recitation of names is yet another feature that connects Bouquet of Flowers with Pure Land literature. In the same way that, for instance, the aspirations Akṣobhya made while traversing the bodhisattva path shaped his pure land Delightful in its physical form and spiritual potencies, the aspirations of these buddhas during their bodhisattva careers infuse their names with the power to place the devout irreversibly on paths towards freedom from saṃsāra and, eventually, the attainment of complete awakening. In this sense, hearing the name of these buddhas brings something of the general framework that characterizes pure lands, namely an environment extremely conducive to the attainment of awakening, into the presence of the devout in this world system. As Nattier reminds us, the significance of pure lands is related not so much to their physical attributes as to the opportunity they bring to encounter buddhas and live in their presence. Right at the beginning of Bouquet of Flowers we have a sense of how this can be accomplished by hearing the names of buddhas. We are told there that through hearing the name of the buddha Foremost Sublime Jewel, who dwells in the world system Endowed with Jewels, “a buddha will appear here.” We are beckoned, then, to extend this idea to the other buddhas inhabiting countless world systems.

i.4It is indeed this sense of the immediate presence of buddhas that hearing their names brings to the devout. This sense of presence can be understood, in some respects, as a reenactment of the seminal moment in a bodhisattva’s career, namely the encounter with a buddha and the inspiration that ensues from it. We are told by the Great Vehicle Buddhist tradition that all bodhisattvas in their progress towards awakening have to follow the same course of action as the Buddha Śākyamuni. Hence, it is possible to say that Bouquet of Flowers concerns the starting point of this course‍—the event of meeting a buddha‍—which in the case of this sūtra happens through hearing his name. In Bouquet of Flowers, this seminal moment is thus reenacted over and over again, expanding and enchanting as a result how the devout understand the cosmos.

i.5Moreover, because hearing the names of buddhas leads to a sense of their presence powered by their past aspirations it can be seen as vital substitute for directly meeting a buddha. In the sūtra, the Buddha seems to imply as much when he tells Ajita, another of his interlocutors, that he himself “turned away from saṃsāra after a hundred trillion eons based on hearing the name of that thus-gone one [All-Conquering Vajra] from the clairvoyant thus-gone one Dīpaṅkara.” The Buddha continues, “Ajita, had I not heard the name of that thus-gone one from the thus-gone one Dīpaṅkara, I would not have fully and perfectly awakened to unexcelled, perfect and complete awakening as I have.” Hence, Bouquet of Flowers presents hearing the names of buddhas not only as a desirable event, but as a necessary condition for the attainment of awakening.

i.6Another important condition for the attainment of awakening connected to the existence of a myriad of pure lands is the opportunity to generate merit by directly making offerings in the presence of buddhas. In Nattier’s words, “for a bodhisattva-in-training the possibility of meeting with an endless series of Buddhas‍—in the course of ‘traveling from Buddha-field to Buddha-field,’ as so many early Great Vehicle sūtras put it‍—is not merely optional but required, for there is simply no other way to attain the vast quantities of merit required in order to become a Buddha oneself.” Bouquet of Flowers addresses the issue of generating merit in several instances, always extolling the superiority of hearing the buddhas’ names even compared to making offerings to them directly. One example early in the text describes the primacy of hearing the buddhas’ names in the characteristic exuberance of the Great Vehicle sūtras:

“Śāriputra, the heap of merit generated by completely filling the trigalactic megagalactic world system with the seven kinds of precious substances and offering it every day to the blessed buddhas for as many eons as there are grains of sand in the Ganges River does not approach even a hundredth part of the heap of merit generated by hearing the name of the thus-gone one Sublime Jewel , giving rise to faith, and joining palms. Neither does it permit of any calculation, reckoning in fractions, analogy, or comparison.” (1.­9)

i.8In light of the two main aspects of the sūtra discussed so far‍—namely, the actualization of buddhas in the present and the incalculable heap of merit generated by hearing their names and becoming inspired‍—Bouquet of Flowers could also be read for the distinctive path to awakening it delineates. Unlike the practices of visualization, or the recollection of visual features that a number of the sūtras connected to the Pure Land literature prescribe, the spiritual practice emphasized by Bouquet of Flowers is based on the act of hearing. Nowhere in the sūtra do we find much by way of visual descriptions of the more than one hundred world systems inhabited by buddhas that it names. Yet despite its emphasis on hearing over seeing or envisioning, the path of practice it outlines is nonetheless structurally similar to the practices of visualization. Hearing and visualizing buddhas both involve buddhānusmṛti, a practice that Paul Harrison calls “one of the basic features of Pure Land practice.” Harrison tells us that “various forms of anusmṛti (literally, ‘recollection’, ‘remembrance’, and, by extension, ‘calling to mind’, ‘keeping in mind’; cf. smṛti, commonly translated as ‘mindfulness’) had been part of general Buddhist practice since earliest times, and are amply attested in the Pāli Nikāyas and the Chinese translation of the Sanskrit Āgamas.” The rise of the Great Vehicle extended this early Buddhist practice to the “idea of many Buddhas, not only in the past and future (Hīnayāna) but in the present as well.”

i.9In Bouquet of Flowers, the names of buddhas reflect their main qualities, which in turn they have acquired through the aspirations they made during their bodhisattva careers. These included aspirations that beneficial, liberating outcomes ripen for all who hear their names. Hearing these names, becoming inspired by them, and sometimes expressing this inspiration or devotion outwardly can thus be considered a practice of buddhānusmṛti in relation to both the physical presence of those buddhas and their qualities. In this respect, we can also compare the kind of practice that seems to animate this sūtra to another kind of practice commonly associated with Pure Land Buddhism: reciting the name of Buddha Amitābha with the aim of being reborn in his pure land Sukhāvatī. Amitābha, also referred to as Amitāyus in the sūtra, figures among the last few of the many buddhas mentioned in the text (1.­138). The possibility of being reborn in his pure land can be granted, according to the sūtra, through merely hearing his name, experiencing great joy, and genuinely longing for his hundreds of thousands of attributes. It should be reiterated, however, that rebirth in these pure lands is not Bouquet of Flowers’ main concern, but only one of the many benefits that can result from hearing the names of a buddha; the idea of rebirth in a buddha’s pure land appears only a few times. Another feature of this text that connects it with Sukhāvatī-related literature is the notion that women who hear the names of buddhas are reborn as men, “superior” physical forms with which to continue their spiritual journeys. Although the Buddha invokes this notion several times in Bouquet of Flowers, he punctuates the lengthiest and most misogynistic instance with a trenchant deconstruction of reifying labels of gender and sex. He exposes both man and woman as false constructs empty of inherent existence, and even criticizes those who would hear the buddhas’ names in order to change their sex as obsessive.

i.10In terms of structure, the sūtra divides into three distinct sections marked by changes in interlocutor, content, and form. The first of the Buddha’s interlocutors is Śāriputra. The discourse the Buddha puts forth while addressing him constitutes the bulk of the text (1.­2–1.­141). In this section, the Buddha presents a long list of buddhas and their world systems together with the benefits of hearing their names and giving rise to faith. He often punctuates these promises with the horrific outcomes that await those who hear the names and do not give rise to faith. Warnings about the risks of spending long eons in the hells due to having no faith in these names or being critical of their efficacy point toward a self-defensive posture, common to several Great Vehicle sūtras, that express the ongoing dialogue in India between proponents and detractors of the Great Vehicle.

i.11The next and much shorter section (1.­142–1.­150) has Ajita, the paradigmatic bodhisattva, as the Buddha’s interlocutor. Ajita wants to know if there is “some quality that a bodhisattva-mahāsattva can possess to ensure that he or she makes swift and irreversible progress toward unexcelled, perfect and complete awakening.” This question opens up the possibility of a metadiscussion in the sūtra, in which hearing the names of the buddhas is identified as precisely the “single quality” that a bodhisattva-mahāsattva should possess in order to make irreversible progress toward unexcelled, perfect and complete awakening. This is where we see the Buddha use his own personal story to illustrate this point.

i.12In the last section (1.­151–1.­288), it is Mahākāśyapa who enters the scene as the Buddha’s interlocutor. The Buddha addresses him multiple times, but Mahākāśyapa directly speaks to the Buddha only near the very end of the sūtra (1.­288). It is possible to infer from this detail that Mahākāśyapa is mostly in some kind of absorption while interacting with the Buddha. Indeed, this section of the text includes several allusions to the topic of meditative absorption, with the names of specific absorptions sometimes appearing in the names of the buddhas listed. The topic of emptiness is addressed here for the first time. Throughout this section, the Buddha breaks into verse, summarizing each prose passage in turn.

i.13In addition to its Tibetan translation, this text was also translated into Chinese, Korean, and Mongolian. This suggests that it enjoyed some popularity in India, although no Sanskrit version is currently extant. The title in Chinese is Ch’eng yang chu fo kung te ching (稱揚諸佛功德經, Taishō 434). The Chinese translation was made by Kiṃkārya in Pei-t’ai (北臺), in the second year of Yen Hsing (延興), Northern Wei Dynasty (元魏) (472 ᴄᴇ). The date of this Chinese translation does not suggest that this was a particularly early Pure Land sūtra.

i.14According to the colophon of its Tibetan translation, Bouquet of Flowers was edited and finalized by a translation team consisting of the Indian preceptor Jñānasiddhi, the chief editor-translator Dharmatāśīla, and others. Although the term translation is conspicuously missing from the colophon, Jñānasiddhi and Dharmatāśīla were both active in Tibet in the late eighth and early ninth centuries and also collaborated on the translation of the Aṣṭa­sāha­srikā­prajñā­pāramitā. In the Denkarma (ldan/lhan dkar ma) imperial translation record, compiled in the late eighth century, Bouquet of Flowers is listed as entry 129 and classified in the Assorted Sūtras (mdo sde sna tshogs) section among works numbering “ten or fewer bam po” (bam po bcu man chad la). In the Kangyurs belonging to the so-called Tshalpa (tshal pa) recension, the sūtra appears among similar-themed sūtras, grouped near the end of the Great Vehicle section of the General Sūtra (mdo sde) section, whose main focus is the merit of knowing and reciting the names of numerous buddhas and prostrating to them. These sūtras include The Sūtra on Liberation (mthar mdo, Toh 264), much recited in Tibetan Buddhism, and its extra chapter (Toh 265), as well as Calling Witness with a Hundred Prostrations (Toh 267), famous for having been one of the first Buddhist texts to appear in Tibet according to traditional histories. The purification of negative karma is also an important aspect of these sūtras, and some of them are used in confession rituals. This grouping appears to have been based on the Old Narthang catalogue, which was followed by Butön Rinchen Drup (bu ston rin chen grub, 1290–1364) for the arrangement of sūtras recorded in his History of Buddhism. Moreover, Butön also notes in his History that several sūtras preceding Bouquet of Flowers were likewise translated by Dharmatāśīla, suggesting that another organizing rubric may have also been operative. In the Kangyurs belonging to the so-called Thempangma (them spangs ma) recension, such as the Stok Palace manuscript version, along with other independent Kangyurs, such as the Shelkar (shel dkar) version, the Bouquet of Flowers appears with an entirely different set of sūtras. Moreover, neither grouping represents the logic of the imperial catalogues, where length seems to have been the organizing rubric.

i.15This English translation is based on the Degé version, in consultation with the Stok Palace manuscript and the notes recorded in the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma). The system of sigla used to record variant readings herein is drawn from the University of Vienna’s Resources for Kanjur and Tanjur Studies. All personal and place names were translated into English unless well attested in Sanskrit.