PART THREE: ENTRANCE TO THE WAY OF THE ONE VEHICLE: The Entrustment Section.
[Entrustment]
At that time, the World Honored One entered the Jeta Grove to report to Senior Elder Ananda, and by his thinking of Deva Sakra, Sakra responded at the time together with his retinue and, then suddenly just like that, arrived to abide in front of the Buddha.
At that time The World-Honored One faced Deva Sakra and Senior Elder Ananda and comprehensively articulated this sutra.
After articulating it, to tell Sakra he declared, “You should receive, maintain, read, and recite this Sutra, Kauśika. Good sons and good daughters, for eons [as many as] the sands of the Ganges, cultivate the practice of awakening and practice the Six Paramitas (crossings-over). Again, if good sons and good daughters hear, receive, read, and recite it, as long as they hold firmly the scrolls of the Sutra, there are blessings aplenty, and how more extensive for people who articulate it to others? Indeed, for this reason Kauśika, you should read and recite this Sutra for those in the Heaven of the Thirty-Three to differentiate it and extensively articulate it.”
Again, he told Ananda, “Likewise, it is for you to receive, maintain, read and recite it for the four assemblies to extensively articulate it.”
At the time Deva Sakra stated to the words of the Buddha, “World Honored One, what should we forthwith call this Sutra?” Also, he said, “How [should we] honor and maintain it?”
The Buddha told Sakra, “This Sutra brings to perfection immeasurable endless virtuous-merits to all listener-disciples and the causally-awakened ones who are unable to observe, know, and see the Ultimate. Kauśika, you should know the extremely profound, wonderfully subtle, and great virtuous-merit of this Sutra. Now I shall outline and articulate its names for you. Listen carefully, listen carefully, ponder it well and remember it.”
At the time, Deva Sakra and Senior Elder Ananda addressed the Buddha declaring, “Excellent! World Honored One. Yes, just so, we receive the teaching.”
The Buddha declared, “This sutra Praises the Virtuous Merit of The Tathagata’s True Reality and Primary-Meaning, and thus is to be received and maintained;
[praises] The Inconceivably Great Proclamations, and thus is to be received and maintained;
[praises] The Great Resolutions That Embrace All Resolutions, and thus is to be received and maintained;
Articulates The Inconceivable Acceptance Of The Real Dharma, and thus is to be received and maintained;
Articulates The Entrance To The One Vehicle, and thus is to be received and maintained;
Articulates The Endless Noble Truths, and thus is to be received and maintained;
Articulates The Inner-Tathagata, and thus is to be received and maintained;
Articulates The Dharma-body, and thus is to be received and maintained;
Articulates The Concealed True Reality Of The Meaning Of Emptiness, and thus is to be received and maintained;
Articulates The One Truth, and thus is to be received and maintained;
Articulates The One Support That Is Always Dwelling
Tranquilly Secluded, and thus is to be received and maintained;
Articulates The Inversions Of True
Reality, and
thus is to be received and maintained;
Articulates The Concealment Of The Clear And Pure Mind Of One’s Own Nature, and thus is to be received and maintained;
Articulates The Tathagata’s True Children, and thus is to be received
and maintained; and
Articulates The Lion’s Roar Of Queen Srimala, and
thus is to be received and maintained.
“Furthermore, Kauśika, this sutra actually Articulates the Severance Of All Doubts, the Certainty Of The Clear Meaning, and the Entrance To the Way Of the One Vehicle.
“Kauśika, now by means of these articulations The Sutra of Queen Srimala’s Lion’s Roar is handed over as told to you. The Dharma abides for as long as you receive, maintain, read, and recite it to comprehensively differentiate and articulate it.”
Sakra addressed the Buddha and declared, “Excellent! As the World Honored One touches the crowns of our heads, we receive the honored teaching.”
At that time, Deva Sakra and Senior Elder Ananda, as well as the various great associations of Devas, Asuras, Gandharvas, and the like, heard that which the Buddha articulated and joyously respected and practiced it.
~###~
[End of Post 9 and End of the Translation Installments.]
Final comments:
As noted in the Post 2 Introduction, this Entrustment Section provides the titles for the Sutra, the three parts, and the 15 Sections. They are listed in reverse order with the 15 Section titles indicated first, followed by the 3 subtitles for the 3 parts, and lastly the title of the whole Sutra. I’ve stated the subtitle of the Sutra by combining the 3 subtitles of the 3 parts of the Sutra.
Titles
An interesting feature of the text is that the main titles do not appear in the body of the text but rather in the entrustment section, which lists the titles sequentially identifying the contents, in what may seem like reversed sequencing, by first naming the 15 topic sections, then naming the titles for the 3 parts, and lastly naming the main title for the whole sutra.
Section Titles
In the Entrustment, the Lord of Heaven, Sakra Kauśika, asks,
“World Honored One, what should we forthwith call this Sutra?” and the Buddha
says, “Now I shall outline and articulate its names for you.” The Buddha then
gives an outlined list of 15 titles, each followed by the phrase “and
thus is to be
received and maintained” (如是受持). By convention at least since the time of
Gunabhadra’s translation, Queen Srimala’s Sutra has been divided into sections (or
chapters) with titles that have been taken from this list of 15 names. However,
the exact location for inserting the titles is not indicated in the text, so
there has been some variation by the various translators choosing for
themselves where the most appropriate point of insertion seems to be for each
of the 15 section titles.
When translating the section titles inserted into the text, I’ve
chosen to stick strictly to the wording in the entrustment
section without changes. This means that even when using Gunahhadra's test, the section
titles herein differ somewhat from Guṇabhadra’s titles, because he
edited the text taken from the final section when inserting them as titles into
the main body of the Sutra. And of course, the titles as translated from
Gunabhadra's final section differ somewhat from the titles generated from the
final section of the other Chinese text and the Tibetan.
It is important to note that this list at the end of the Sutra
designating the various topics that are articulated within the Sutra does not
literally designate separate chapters or sections in the modern sense of being separate
sections of independent argument of propositions or points. It is for this
reason that I use the term sections rather than chapters. The concluding section only lists the names of
the sectional topics that are articulated in the Sutra in what is self
evidently the order that each topic first appears in the sutra. Therefore, the
titles should not be taken as literally designating a chapter in the usual literary
sense of an independent chapter containing a complete discussion of a specified
topic. Instead the section titles merely indicate where the specifically
mentioned topic is first formally introduced and begins to be articulated
within the whole, so that one articulated topic is often carried forward
through several of the following sections after the inserted titles of those
sections. This applies especially and particularly to chapters 6 through 15
which vary greatly in length.
The subtitles in brackets within the larger sections (primarily 4 & 5) are wholly the creation of your translator and are inserted for the convenience of the reader to be able to outline the discussion wihin the section.
Main Subtitle as Revealing the Titles of the Three Parts
The main subtitle also comes from the entrustment where, after listing the 15 specific topics, the Buddha adds in a 16th statement, “Furthermore, Kauśika, this sutra actually articulates the severance of all doubts, the certainty of the clear meaning, and the entrance to the Way of the One Vehicle.”
In addtition to having a different opening phrase, this concluding description is not followed by the Buddha saying the phrase “and thus is to be received and maintained,” so in that way the text shows that it is not a part of the immediate previous list of 15 sections. This final descriptive statement of what is contained in the sutra as a whole is a combination of the three general topic areas that may be taken as the primary categorical divisions (chapters or parts) of the 15 articulated topics just listed. In other words, the whole sutra should be seen as having three parts or chapters with 15 sections, or alternatively, as having three parts with 15 chapters or sections. To avoid ambiguity, I have chosen not to use the word "chapter" and instead to designate the structure as 3 parts consisting of 15 sections, and have titled the 3 parts in the order given by the Buddha’s concluding summation in the 16th pronouncement quoted above, as there is no basis to view the order differently and that order is entirely consistent and congruent with the contents of the sections contained within each part.
When seen in this manner the “Severance Of All Doubts” is the summary subdivision title of sections 1, 2, and 3; the “Certainty Of The Clear Meaning” is the subdivision for the subject taken up in section 4; and the “Entrance To The Way Of The One Vehicle” is the subdivision of the main import of the sutra that is taken up in the remaining sections 5 through 15. Section 5 is the core of the sutra’s articulation of the entry to the One Vehicle, and is followed by sections 6 thru 15 that then provide descriptions of how a person who has entered the One Vehicle, i.e., Queen Srimala, views such Buddhist teachings as the Four Noble Truths (caturaryasatya), Emptiness (sunyata), the Dharma-body (dharmakaya), the Inner-Tathagata (tathagatagarbha), etc..
The Main Title of the Sutra
After giving the list of the 15 sections followed by stating the three major subdivisions, the Buddha gives the title of the whole sutra by saying, “Kauśika, now by means of these articulations the Sutra of Queen Srimala’s Lion’s Roar is handed over as told to you.”
Thus, the proper title of the sutra can be rendered variously as “Queen Srimala’s Lion’s Roar Sutra,” “The Sutra of Queen Srimala’s Lion’s Roar,” or “The Sutra of the Lion’s Roar of Queen Srimala,” etc., depending on how the possessive "'s" or "of" are used.
The source for Gunabhadra’s lengthy title, A Comprehensive Sutra Of The Great Skillful-Means Of The One Vehicle Of Śrīmālā’s Lion’s Roar (勝鬘師子吼一乘大方便方廣經, Śrīmālā-siṃhanāda-ekayana-mahaupaya-vaipulya-sūtra), does not seem to be known. It’s possible, but not likely, that this was the title of the Sanskrit copy of the Sutra that he was working from (which was different than the Sanskrit text of the Ratnakuta that Bodhiruci was working from). However, while that title is fully descriptive of the Sutra, it is overly ornate and not consistent with the Buddha’s own words describing the title when handing over the Sutra to Kausika and Ananda in the final section.
However, it is important to note that Gunabhadra was plainly recognizing and affirming the essential importance of the One Vehicle as the proper characterization for the subject matter and context of the sutra. The titles of many sutras in the Chinese canon include the term “comprehensive” (vaipulya, 方廣) and designate those sutras that were generally taken to be delivered in the Third Turning of the Wheel of the Dharma, thus indicating they were the sutras teaching the most comprehensive view of the Buddha Dharma, i.e.., the One Vehicle. It may be significant that the abbreviated single character term for “comprehensive” 廣 appears at the beginning and end of the entrustment section and suggests one reason that Gunabhadra used the term in his title.
In his commentary on the Sandhinirmocana Sutra, another One Vehicle sutra, Woncheuk cites Queen Srimala’s Sutra several times for authority on his observations on the One Vehicle and also quotes the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, another One Vehicle sutra, to explain, “Again, in fascicle twenty-seven it says: ‘The Lion’s Roar is called the definitive statement: all sentient beings without exception possess the Buddha-nature’.” This is the One Vehicle’s stance on the meaning of the Buddha’s Lion’s Roar.
Likewise, Bodhiruci’s title Queen Srimala, the 48th
Assemblage, is simply too terse and leaves out the important designation of
the sutra as a “Lion’s Roar.” The
subtitle “the 48th Assemblage,”
doesn’t actually refer to Queen Srimala’s Sutra but is added to the Sutra to
indicate that it is the 48th of the 49 Sutras assembled together for
the sutra collection titled The Sutras of the Collection Of
Great Jewels (大寶積經,
Mahāratnakūṭa-sūtra). Unfortunately, because of the ambiguity of
the singular or plural as the meaning of the term “sutra” 經 in the
title, the Ratnakuta has been,
and still is, often mistaken in discussions as a large single sutra, rather
than a collection of smaller individual sutras.
Locations for the Insertion of the Section Titles.
I have mostly followed Gnabhadra's location for inserting the Section Titles. The only exception is the location of the Section 15 title which I have moved down one paragraph since the preceding paragraph was still talking about the True Children of the Tathagata and so fits with Section 14 better. The Sutra’s manner of using the titles to indicate the introduction of a topic, rather than the full explication of a topic, explains why translators like the Waymans have found the text sections to not fit exactly with the titles and therefore have in many cases inserted the titles in different locations than Gunabhradra has put them. It also explains why the Waymans have combined several of the sections to form different sections in their attempt to mitigate confusion for the reader. However, by doing so, I feel they have created more confusion than they have removed. Since I see the titles as designating where discussion of a topic begins, and not as a designation of a discrete section containing all the discussion of the topic, I don’t accept or expect that it is either necessary or appropriate to combine sections as the Waymans have done or to reorder the titles, which only alters the structure and order of the subject titles found in the actual text at the end of the Sutra.
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