Introduction

i.1The Teaching of the Armor Array takes place in Veṇuvana, the famous “Bamboo Grove” monastery on the outskirts of the ancient city of Rājagṛha, where the Buddha Śākyamuni and his community of monks took up residence during several rainy season retreats. This grove was offered to the Buddha by Bimbisāra, the king of Magadha, and it is a location where the Buddha is said to have taught numerous discourses. As is customary in sūtra literature, the Buddha delivers his Dharma teaching at the request of someone who poses a particular question. In this sūtra, the questioner is a bodhisattva named Anantamati, who asks the Buddha numerous questions about the Great Vehicle path, most notably about a type of metaphorical armor called the great armor. In his reply, the Buddha explains that donning the great armor has two dimensions: (1) a constant diligence in bodhisattva conduct in service to beings over countless eons, and (2) the relinquishment of any forms of objective fixation upon or apprehension of phenomena. As such, the great armor has both relative and ultimate aspects, a fact that various Tibetan commentators have also highlighted. Still, the great armor is primarily described as signless, formless, nonconceptual, and indescribable. It is precisely by virtue of not apprehending phenomena, the Buddha explains, that the great armor is able to shield its bearer. Given that it lies outside the limitations of conditioned existence, it offers protection from all conditioned forms of harm. Nevertheless, to describe its protective power, the Buddha draws significantly on various military analogies.

i.2Apart from the great armor, the sūtra also discusses the Great Vehicle and what it terms the great path. The Buddha emphasizes that the Great Vehicle can accommodate all beings easily due to its absolute nature, which accords with the realm of phenomena. As for the great path, it is likewise due to the absence of any apprehension of phenomena that it can be traversed. Thus, as with the great armor, the ultimate nature of the Great Vehicle and the great path is emphasized. It is precisely because of their relationship to the ultimate truth, namely that they rely and depend on nothing, that they can accommodate and transport all beings on the relative plane. To illustrate the value of the great armor, the Great Vehicle, and the great path, the Buddha recalls a past eon in which a universal monarch named Sarvārthasiddha renounced his kingdom to receive and accomplish these teachings. The sūtra concludes with the Buddha describing in detail how bodhisattvas should be free from conceptual activity to carry out unlimited conduct. He explains that only by observing nothing and relying on nothing will bodhisattvas be in accord with the realm of phenomena, and thus don the great armor.

i.3The Teaching of the Armor Array is the seventh sūtra among the forty-nine titles included in the Heap of Jewels (Skt. Ratnakūṭa) collection in the Degé Kangyur. Only a few of the texts contained in the Heap of Jewels are extant in Sanskrit, and this scripture is not one of them. The Tibetan translation, which we have rendered into English here, was completed in the early translation period and is listed in the early ninth-century Denkarma (Tib. ldan dkar ma) catalog. However, unlike most of the sūtras translated at the time, this text was translated from Chinese rather than Sanskrit. While the Degé edition of the Kangyur does not specify a translator, the Narthang edition states that it was translated from the Chinese by Gö Chödrup (ca. 755–849), who was a prolific Sino-Tibetan translator active in the Dunhuang region during the ninth century. Besides rendering The Armor Array into Tibetan, he also translated many other sūtras and dhāraṇīs from Chinese. The Chinese canon contains only one translation of The Armor Array (Bei jia zhuangyan hui, 被甲莊嚴會, Taishō 310 [7]), constituting the seventh text in the full Chinese translation of the Heap of Jewels, which was produced during the early eighth century ᴄᴇ by Bodhiruci (d. 727), a renowned translator from South India (who is not to be confused with another famous Indian translator of the same name who was active in China two centuries earlier). This Bodhiruci is responsible for translating much of the Heap of Jewels collection, among other texts, into Chinese.

i.4In Tibet, The Armor Array has been cited by several Tibetan masters in their presentations of the six perfections. For example, Longchen Rabjam (1308–64) refers to The Armor Array as scriptural evidence that liberation comes swiftly when skillful means is merged with insight into the nature of phenomena. Pawo Tsuklak Trengwa (1504–66) cites the sūtra in his renowned commentary on the Bodhi­caryāvatāra as part of his explanation of armor-like discipline. The text was also cited by Dakpo Tashi Namgyal (1511–87) as an Indic source of Mahāmudrā teachings. Although the sūtra has been cited by Tibetan scholars of many traditions, to our knowledge the text has not previously received any attention in modern scholarship.

i.5This English translation has been produced based on the Degé block print with reference to the Comparative Edition (Tib. dpe bsdur ma). Subsequently, the translation and the Tibetan sources were compared with the Chinese translation and the English translation was edited in light of this comparison.