藥師琉璃光如來本願功德經 供養守護與聞名信受

Offering Has Its Stages

The offering taught here works inward, one stage at a time.

Goods come first: the image made, the seat spread, flowers scattered, incense burnt, pennants and banners set up — visible things, and things that can be paid for.

Right practice comes next: seven days and seven nights of the eight-precept fast, pure food, bathing, new garments; and the real content of this stage is the even mind of loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity raised toward every being. By now the offering is no longer in front of a buddha but inside one’s own mind. What the passage before said miserliness and envy block is exactly these four — one passage names the obstruction, the other the cultivation, and the terms are the same.

Last come the three deeds: drums, music, hymns, circumambulation to the right; reciting the sūtra, pondering its meaning, expounding it — body, speech, and mind all engaged.

Outward inward. No stage is said to be dispensable.

What Is Wanted, What Is Loathed, What Is Feared

What is gained also falls into three.

First what is wanted: long life, wealth, office, children. The four things people actually go after; the sūtra strikes out none of them and is shy of none.

Then what is loathed: bad dreams, ill omens, strange birds, a hundred prodigies — all of it vanishing away, unable to trouble.

Then what is feared: water, fire, sword, poison, precipices and savage beasts, venomous snakes and scorpions, and invasion from another country, and bandits in revolt.

The list starts where desire starts and stops where fear stops.

The Buddha Turned Round and Asked

More than half the sūtra told, the Buddha turns back to Ānanda: this is the very deep field of practice of the buddhas, hard to understand and hard to fathom — do you believe it?

Ānanda answers with a simile that concedes a great deal: these orbs of sun and moon could be made to fall, the king of mountains could be made to topple, and still what the buddhas say would not be otherwise.

Give away the hardest thing in the world first, and then name something less movable still.

Then he speaks the doubt for another sort of person, and speaks it bluntly: some will hear this and calculate — how should reciting the name of one buddha gain so great a benefit as that?

One name; how could it be worth so much.

That is the doubt the earlier “briefly heard” leaves behind. With a threshold that low, a person will mutter. Nothing is evaded: the sentence is allowed to stand in full.

Low Enough to Do, High Enough to Baffle

Two answers are given.

The first: for one who receives and keeps it whole-heartedly and does not doubt, falling into an evil destiny is simply not a case that arises.

The second admits the difficulty — śrāvakas, pratyekabuddhas, and bodhisattvas who have not ascended the grounds cannot believe and fathom it as it is; only the bodhisattva bound by one more birth can.

Doing it asks no more than a brief hearing; understanding it is beyond a bodhisattva not yet on the grounds.

One and the same sūtra, with its entrance as low as an entrance goes and its comprehension out of reach of śrāvakas. That is no contradiction — three difficulties follow at once: a human body is hard to obtain, faith and reverence toward the Three Jewels are hard to obtain, and hearing this buddha’s name is harder still.

And the hardest of the three is the one that needs no prior understanding to occur.

Hence the Buddha’s word that Ānanda’s being able to receive it now is the awesome power of the Tathāgata — belief is not reasoned into place; it is held up.

The closing sentence fixes the measure: a kalpa runs out; that buddha’s practices and vows and skilful means do not.

Xuanzang’s translation, T14n0450, from “At that time the youth Mañjuśrī said to the Buddha” to “that buddha’s practices and vows and his skilful means have no end.” The figures in parentheses at the head of each segment give the Taishō page, register, and line.

〔1 · Mañjuśrī’s pledge〕（0406b22）At that time the youth Mañjuśrī said to the Buddha: World-Honored One! I pledge that in the age when the Semblance Dharma turns I will by every kind of skilful means cause good sons and good daughters of pure faith to hear the name of the World-Honored Bhaiṣajyaguru Vaiḍūryaprabha Tathāgata, and will even in their sleep waken their ears with the Buddha’s name.

〔2 · How this sūtra is to be received and kept〕（0406b25）World-Honored One! If any receive and keep and recite this sūtra, or expound and disclose it for others; if they copy it themselves or teach others to copy it; if they revere and honor it, making offerings to it with all manner of flowers and incense, perfumed unguents, powdered incense and burning incense, flower-garlands and necklaces, banners and canopies, and music; （0406b29）if they take silk of five colors and make a bag to hold it in; if they sweep and sprinkle a clean place, spread out a high seat, and set it there.

〔3 · The gods guard it, and there is no untimely death〕（0406c01）Then the four great heavenly kings, together with their retinues, and measureless hundreds of thousands of other gods, will all come to that place to make offerings and to guard it. （0406c03）World-Honored One! Wherever this jewel of a sūtra circulates, if any are able to receive and keep it, then by the original vow and merits of the World-Honored Bhaiṣajyaguru Vaiḍūryaprabha Tathāgata and by the hearing of his name, （0406c04）know that in that place there will be no more untimely death; nor will evil ghosts and spirits rob them of their vital essence; and should it already have been robbed, it will be restored as before, and body and mind will be at ease.

〔4 · The Buddha confirms what he has said〕（0406c07）The Buddha said to Mañjuśrī: Thus it is! Thus it is! It is as you have said.

〔5 · The method of making offerings〕（0406c08）Mañjuśrī! If there are good sons and good daughters of pure faith who wish to make offerings to that World-Honored Bhaiṣajyaguru Vaiḍūryaprabha Tathāgata, （0406c09）they should first make and set up an image of that buddha, spread a clean seat and place it there; scatter all manner of flowers, burn all manner of incense, and adorn that place with all manner of pennants and banners; （0406c11）for seven days and seven nights receive and keep the eight-precept fast, eat pure food, bathe until fragrant and clean, and put on new clean garments; （0406c12）they should give rise to a mind without stain or turbidity, a mind without anger or harm, and toward all sentient beings raise up benefit and ease, and the even mind of loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity; （0406c14）with drums and music and hymns of praise, circumambulate the buddha-image to the right. （0406c15）They should further call to mind the original vow and merits of that Tathāgata, recite this sūtra, ponder its meaning, and expound and disclose it.

〔6 · Whatever is sought is granted〕（0406c16）Whatever they wish for and vow, all of it will be granted: seeking long life, they gain long life; seeking wealth, they gain wealth; seeking office, they gain office; seeking a son or a daughter, they gain a son or a daughter.

〔7 · Bad dreams and ill omens all vanish〕（0406c18）Suppose again there is one who suddenly has bad dreams and sees ill omens, or strange birds come and gather, or in his dwelling a hundred prodigies appear; （0406c20）if this person with a wealth of fine goods reverently makes offerings to that World-Honored Bhaiṣajyaguru Vaiḍūryaprabha Tathāgata, then the bad dreams and ill omens and all that is inauspicious will vanish away and be unable to trouble him.

〔8 · Release from every terror〕（0407a02）Or there may be the terrors of water, fire, sword, poison, precipices and dangerous places, savage elephants, lions, tigers, wolves, bears and brown bears, venomous snakes and evil scorpions, centipedes and millipedes, mosquitoes and gadflies; （0407a04）if one is able with a whole heart to call that buddha to mind and to make reverent offerings, he will be released from every terror. （0407a05）And if another country invades and harasses, or bandits rise in revolt, then whoever calls that Tathāgata to mind and reveres him will likewise be released.

〔9 · One who has transgressed his precepts, recollecting single-mindedly, does not fall into the evil destinies〕（0407a07）Further, Mañjuśrī! Suppose there are good sons and good daughters of pure faith （0407a08）who to the end of this life serve no other god but with one mind take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Saṅgha, and who receive and keep the restraining precepts — whether the five precepts, the ten precepts, the four hundred bodhisattva precepts, the two hundred and fifty bhikṣu precepts, or the five hundred bhikṣuṇī precepts; （0407a11）and if among the precepts they have received there is some transgression, and they dread falling into an evil destiny, then if they are able single-mindedly to recollect that buddha’s name and to make reverent offerings, they will assuredly not undergo birth in the three evil destinies.

〔10 · Ease in a difficult birth〕（0407a12）Or there may be a woman who at the time of childbirth undergoes extreme suffering; if she is able with a whole heart to invoke the name, to bow and praise, and to make reverent offerings to that Tathāgata, all her sufferings will be removed. （0407a14）The child born to her will be complete in the parts of the body, upright in form and color, a joy to those who see him, keen of faculty and clever, at peace and little ill, and no non-human will rob him of his vital essence.

〔11 · The Buddha asks Ānanda whether he believes〕（0407a17）At that time the World-Honored One said to Ānanda: As I have extolled all the merits of that Buddha, the World-Honored Bhaiṣajyaguru Vaiḍūryaprabha Tathāgata — this is the very deep field of practice of the buddhas, hard to understand and hard to fathom. Do you believe it?

〔12 · Ānanda answers that he does not doubt〕（0407a19）Ānanda said: Great and virtuous World-Honored One! Toward the sūtras that the Tathāgata has spoken I give rise to no doubt or perplexity. Why? Because the deeds of body, speech, and mind of every Tathāgata are without exception pure. （0407a22）World-Honored One! These orbs of sun and moon could be made to fall, the king of mountains, Sumeru the Wondrously High, could be made to topple, but what the buddhas say is never otherwise.

〔13 · Those wanting in the faculty of faith turn to slander〕（0407a23）World-Honored One! There are beings wanting in the faculty of faith who, hearing of the very deep field of practice of the buddhas, think thus: how should merely reciting the name of one buddha, the Bhaiṣajyaguru Vaiḍūryaprabha Tathāgata, gain so great a benefit of merit as that? （0407a26）Through this unbelief they turn instead to slander; and through the long night they lose great benefit and joy, fall into the evil destinies, and revolve there without end.

〔14 · The Buddha answers that one who receives and keeps it will not fall〕（0407a28）The Buddha said to Ānanda: As for these beings — that any of them should hear the name of the World-Honored Bhaiṣajyaguru Vaiḍūryaprabha Tathāgata, receive and keep it with a whole heart, give rise to no doubt or perplexity, and yet fall into an evil destiny, there is no such case.

〔15 · Hard to believe and to fathom — save the bodhisattva bound by one more birth〕（0407b01）Ānanda! This is the very deep practice of the buddhas, hard to believe and hard to fathom; that you are able to receive it now, know that it is all the awesome power of the Tathāgata. （0407b02）Ānanda! All śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas, and the bodhisattvas who have not yet ascended the grounds, are none of them able to believe and fathom it as it is — save only the bodhisattva bound by one more birth (the one dwelling in the position of succession).

〔16 · The three difficulties〕（0407b04）Ānanda! A human body is hard to obtain; faith, reverence, and honor toward the Three Jewels are also hard to obtain; and to hear the name of the World-Honored Bhaiṣajyaguru Vaiḍūryaprabha Tathāgata is harder still than these.

〔17 · Practices and vows without end〕（0407b06）Ānanda! That Bhaiṣajyaguru Vaiḍūryaprabha Tathāgata has measureless bodhisattva practices, measureless skilful means, measureless vast and great vows; （0407b07）were I to speak at length for a kalpa, or for more than a kalpa, the kalpa might swiftly be exhausted, but that buddha’s practices and vows and his skilful means have no end.

The passage before wrote of five kinds of person delivered by hearing the name — the name of the Medicine Buddha, the Tathāgata of beryl radiance. This passage first teaches how to make offerings, and at its close turns out a question nobody could have looked for — the Buddha asks Ānanda himself: do you believe it?

Ancient Traces on the Sūtra of the Original Vows of the Medicine Buddha, composed by the śramaṇa Taehyŏn of Ch’ŏnggu, reads this long passage as “the gate of exhorting people to benefit,” divided below into five gates. This passage holds the first three: the pledge that wakens, the Tathāgata’s confirmation, and the loss and gain of slighting or believing; the last two (setting up the image and the aids to it, and question, answer, and the resolving of difficulties) belong to the passage following.

First a Man Makes a Pledge of His Own

The opening is not the Buddha speaking. It is Mañjuśrī making a vow: “I pledge that in the age when the Semblance Dharma turns,” by every kind of skilful means, to cause people to hear this name — “and will even in their sleep waken their ears with the Buddha’s name.”

Mark where this sentence stands. The twelve vows before were the Buddha’s and the benefits of hearing the name were the Buddha’s to relate; here one of those who has been listening takes up a pledge of his own.

And what he pledges is exceedingly concrete: even a sleeping person is to have that name reach his ear. Not waiting for anyone to come and ask, but sending it in while a person is off his guard.

The reading handed down names this gate one that “wakens” — a warning that reminds, an awakening that rouses. Here the name is not an object recited; it is the sound that wakes someone.

The second thing he pledges concerns how this sūtra itself is to be treated: received, kept, and recited, expounded for others, copied by oneself or by others taught to copy; offered to with flowers and incense, banners and canopies; and further, “take silk of five colors and make a bag to hold it in,” with a clean place swept and sprinkled, a high seat spread, and the sūtra set upon it.

What a sūtra is to be treated as, the sūtra states for itself. Not shelved, but given a bag, a seat, a place.

And what answers to this follows at once: “at that time the four great heavenly kings, together with their retinues” and measureless hundreds of thousands of gods all come to that place to make offerings and to guard it. Wherever the sūtra circulates, “know that in that place there will be no more untimely death” — and even vital essence robbed away by evil ghosts is restored as before.

What is guarded is not the person but the place. This section answers to the pledge of the twelve generals later on: at one end the gods guarding where the sūtra is, at the other the yakṣas guarding whoever holds the name.

Offering, Worked from the Outside Inward

After the Buddha confirms it, the method of offering is taught. And the method has stages; the commentators divide it into three layers.

The first layer is goods: making and setting up the image, spreading a clean seat, scattering flowers and burning incense, adorning with pennants and banners. This layer can be seen and handled, and it can be paid for.

The second layer is right practice: “for seven days and seven nights receive and keep the eight-precept fast,” eating pure food, bathing, putting on new clean garments; and then the one sentence that matters most — “toward all sentient beings raise up benefit and ease, and the even mind of loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity.”

At this layer the offering is no longer before the buddha but upon one’s own mind. And the four things to be raised up are precisely the four that the passage before said miserliness and envy block. One passage speaks of the obstruction, the other of the cultivation, and the names are the same set.

The third layer is the three deeds: “with drums and music and hymns of praise, circumambulate the buddha-image to the right,” reciting this sūtra, pondering its meaning, expounding and disclosing it — body, speech, and mind all put to use.

The three layers come down from the outward inward: set it out first, then change the mind, then bring body, speech, and mind all in. The sūtra does not say that the first layer may be omitted, nor that finishing the first layer is enough.

Reading a method of offering, one is inclined to read only the first layer — the most concrete, and the easiest to make into a rite. But the sentence in the middle of the three is the pass to be got through: a mind without stain or turbidity, a mind without anger or harm. However grand the display, if that sentence is not got past the offering stops at the first layer.

And the third layer is called “the three deeds” because at that point even “expounding and disclosing” counts as an offering — to teach this sūtra to another is the same thing as burning incense and scattering flowers, done another way.

Everything Sought Is Granted — and Then?

Next comes the benefit. Its first sentence is written very plainly: “whatever they wish for and vow, all of it will be granted: seeking long life, they gain long life; seeking wealth, they gain wealth; seeking office, they gain office; seeking a son or a daughter, they gain a son or a daughter.”

Long life, wealth, office, children — four things that people in the world actually want. The sūtra strikes out none of them and is shy of none of them.

Nor does the benefit stop there. The commentators divide it into three layers: after what is sought being granted comes what is loathed being extinguished — bad dreams, ill omens, strange birds, a hundred prodigies, all of which “will vanish away and be unable to trouble him”; water, fire, sword, poison, precipices and savage beasts, venomous snakes and evil scorpions, and even 「若他國侵擾，盜賊反亂」—“if another country invades and harasses, or bandits rise in revolt” 〔T14n0450 0407a05〕, which the commentator gathers into this same layer. Third comes parting from the suffering of broken precepts — those who have taken the five precepts, the ten, the bodhisattva precepts, the precepts of monk and nun, and 「於所受中或有毀犯，怖墮惡趣」—“among what they have taken have broken some, and dread falling into the evil destinies” 〔T14n0450 0407a10〕; and 「或有女人，臨當產時，受於極苦」—“a woman about to give birth, undergoing extreme pain” 〔T14n0450 0407a12〕.

The order of the three is worth watching: first what is desired is given, then what is disliked is taken away, and only last does it come to the one who has broken precepts and the woman in labour. It begins from what a person most wants and ends at what a person can least bring themselves to say.

From Five Precepts to Five Hundred

After the three layers of benefit the sūtra begins a new section, and those it reaches are people who have received precepts and have transgressed them.

Worth notice is the way it lists the precepts: “whether the five precepts, the ten precepts, the four hundred bodhisattva precepts, the two hundred and fifty bhikṣu precepts, or the five hundred bhikṣuṇī precepts” — from the five precepts of the layman all the way to the five hundred of a bhikṣuṇī.

One sentence takes in the householder and the renunciant, the newly received and the fully ordained. No station is excluded from the possibility of transgression, and therefore no station is excluded from this gate.

And what is promised is that one who “dreads falling into an evil destiny,” if he can single-mindedly recollect the buddha’s name and make reverent offerings, “will assuredly not undergo birth in the three evil destinies.”

This again is the matter of vow five. From the vow-text, to the benefits of hearing the name, to this place, the sūtra leaves a door open for the precept-breaker a third time; a thing that appears three times in one sūtra is not mentioned in passing.

The section that follows comes closer still to the body: “or there may be a woman who at the time of childbirth undergoes extreme suffering,” and if she can with a whole heart invoke the name, bow and praise, and make reverent offerings, all her sufferings are removed; and the child born to her is “complete in the parts of the body, upright in form and color, a joy to those who see him, keen of faculty and clever, at peace and little ill.”

The twelve vows wrote of the suffering of incomplete faculties; here is written the doorway of that matter — the very moment a child is born. The vow has come down into the birth-room.

Do You Believe It

At this point the passage turns.

The Buddha stops speaking of merits and turns to Ānanda with a question: “As I have extolled all the merits of that Buddha, the World-Honored Bhaiṣajyaguru Vaiḍūryaprabha Tathāgata — this is the very deep field of practice of the buddhas, hard to understand and hard to fathom. Do you believe it?”

A sūtra more than half told, and the speaker turns back to ask the listener whether he believes — this is uncommon in the sūtras.

Ānanda’s answer uses a very strong simile: “these orbs of sun and moon could be made to fall, the king of mountains, Sumeru the Wondrously High, could be made to topple, but what the buddhas say is never otherwise.”

The strength of the simile lies in its concession. He does not say that the Buddha’s word is immovable like sun and moon; he says that sun and moon may fall and Sumeru may topple — the hardest things in the world are given away first — and then says that there is something less movable still.

Someone Will Reason This Way

Ānanda then states the doubt on another sort of person’s behalf, and states it without any softening:

There are people wanting in the faculty of faith who, hearing this, will reckon it up — “how should merely reciting the name of one buddha, the Bhaiṣajyaguru Vaiḍūryaprabha Tathāgata, gain so great a benefit of merit as that?”

Reciting one buddha’s name — how could that be worth so much?

This is exactly the doubt left by the “briefly heard” of the passage before. With the threshold set that low, a person will naturally mutter to himself. The sūtra does not evade it; it lets Ānanda say the sentence out in full, and states the consequence as well: through this unbelief one turns to slander, and through the long night loses great benefit.

The Buddha’s answer has two faces. One is that for a person who receives and keeps it with a whole heart and gives rise to no doubt, “that he should fall into an evil destiny — there is no such case.” The other is an admission of difficulty: “all śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas, and the bodhisattvas who have not yet ascended the grounds, are none of them able to believe and fathom it as it is — save only the bodhisattva bound by one more birth.”

Śrāvakas, pratyekabuddhas, bodhisattvas not yet ascended the grounds: none of them can believe and fathom it as it is. Only one in the position of succession can.

The Gate of Practice Is Very Low, the Gate of Understanding Very High

Set these two things side by side and the most important thing in this passage comes out.

To do it takes only a brief hearing, only a whole-hearted recollection of one name; even the precept-breaker still has a door. To understand it, even a bodhisattva not yet ascended the grounds is not enough.

One sūtra, one matter: the place of entry as low as it can possibly be, the place of understanding so high that śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas cannot reach it.

These two ends are in fact two faces of one thing. Precisely because what is relied upon is not one’s own power of understanding, the place of entry can be that low; and precisely because it is not established by understanding, thinking it through is the hardest thing of all — to think it through would be to measure by understanding a thing that does not depend on understanding.

The sūtra does not urge anyone to grasp it first and practice after. It states the difficulty of belief in the open, and still leaves the door standing at “briefly heard.”

This is no contradiction. The sūtra goes on to state three difficulties: “a human body is hard to obtain; faith, reverence, and honor toward the Three Jewels are also hard to obtain,” and to hear this buddha’s name is “harder still than these.”

Three hard things, each harder than the last; and the hardest of them — hearing this name — is exactly the one that can happen without being understood first.

The order repays a pause. Common sense would rank them: hearing the name easiest, faith and reverence next, a human body hardest. The sūtra reverses it and puts hearing the name in the hardest place.

Where is the difficulty? Not in the reciting, but in the meeting. A human body, right faith, and hearing the name are three occasions, not three abilities. That this sūtra can be opened at all means the first two have already been passed.

So the Buddha says to Ānanda, “that you are able to receive it now, know that it is all the awesome power of the Tathāgata.” Being able to believe is not something one has reasoned out; it is something one has been held up in.

The last sentence sets the measure hard: that buddha’s practices and vows and skilful means cannot be told out in a kalpa or more than a kalpa — “the kalpa might swiftly be exhausted, but that buddha’s practices and vows and his skilful means have no end.”

The kalpa runs out; the vows do not. This sentence means the same as “I could not exhaust them” after the twelve vows, said again across the greater part of a sūtra.

Transmission — One Way Matches Gates, the Other Matches Rules

The above is the meaning of the passage itself. Below, two auxiliary eyes shine upon it from the side — a mirror is not the sūtra, only the same passage seen through two ways of reading.

Ancient Traces on the Sūtra of the Original Vows of the Medicine Buddha (composed by the śramaṇa Taehyŏn of Ch’ŏnggu) glosses Xuanzang’s recension. The five gates, the three offerings, the three benefits, and the division into four gates — the whole frame above comes from here. His reading of this passage is again analytic: he sets no simile and cites no treatise, only fitting the sūtra sentence by sentence into the gates. And the names of the gates he sets up are themselves adjudications: he calls Mañjuśrī’s section “the gate of the pledge that wakens,” and the section where the Buddha questions Ānanda “the gate of the loss and gain of slighting or believing” — the gain or loss of a whole passage hanging upon believing or not believing.

The anonymous commentary recovered at Dunhuang (T85n2767) glosses the Sui recension of Dharmagupta. Its outline-name for this passage agrees with that of Ancient Traces — likewise “second, the Tathāgata’s confirmation”; and under it he further sets up “second, showing the rules for it; the text divides into” four, matched expressly to the method of offering.

This is the second time the two run into the same thing: in the passage before, both houses divided it into five; in this passage, both name one gate alike. The recensions they gloss are different and their wording is different, and their readings come down in the same place.

As for the scroll that glosses the Consecration recension (T85n2766), its surviving text ends with the exegesis of the twelve vows; for this passage there is nothing. Searched and not found, and so recorded as not found.

And at the close of this passage there remains one matter on which the recensions differ, needing nothing said beyond the texts themselves: the base text of this passage has no spell. One canon inserts here a whole section of the Medicine Buddha dhāraṇī — entering samādhi, sending forth light, proclaiming the spell, spelling water and having the sick drink it. The content of that section is equivalent to the dhāraṇī section found in Yijing’s expanded recension of the Seven Buddhas; and the eye that glosses Xuanzang’s recension phrase by phrase nowhere glosses this dhāraṇī — where it writes the graph for “spell,” two places are restating the sūtra’s own second title, and the remaining five are all about the cursing arts by which people harm one another; not one of them is this spell.

The base text has no spell, another recension has one, and the mirror does not gloss it. The three matters stand recorded together, and none is adjudicated.