The Sūtra in Buddhist Practice
As mentioned above, recitation of the Tsédo a specified number of times has historically been—and is still nowadays—prescribed as a practice to people in poor health or facing other difficulties, and to practitioners more generally in order to ensure longevity, and so on. Recitation by the monks or nuns in a monastery is also commissioned for the same reasons. According to the Padma Kathang, the eighth century Tibetan king, Trisong Detsen, was advised to recite this text37 daily (along with the other works known as the “ten royal sūtras”), as a result of which the king’s life is said to have been prolonged by thirteen years beyond the limit predicted by astrological reckoning.
The sūtra itself particularly emphasizes the beneficial effects of writing it out or causing it to be written out, and there is ample evidence that this recommendation was taken seriously in the form of the very large number of commissioned copies, mostly in Tibetan and Chinese and dating to the eighth and ninth centuries, found in the Dunhuang caves by Stein and Pelliot in the early years of the twentieth century. Many of them appear to have been commissioned in the name of the Tibetan king Ralpachen, who reigned in the early ninth century and was the grandson of Trisong Detsen. Among the bundles acquired by the two explorers for the British and French governments, there are over a thousand copies of the sūtra now in the British Library in London, and a similar number in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. Some five hundred further copies remain in libraries in China, many have found their way to Japan, and there are some two hundred in St. Petersburg.38
In the context of tantric practice, the Tibetan canonical literature contains a number of sādhanas of Aparimitāyurjñāna, particularly among the higher levels of tantra. One example is the liturgy composed by the tenth-century Jetāri, one of the principal teachers of Vikramaśīla Monastery, which was known for its promulgation of higher tantras. That practice was introduced into Tibet by Bari Lotsawa Rinchen Drak (mentioned above), and thereby became a part of the Sakya tradition.39
There are also five Aparimitāyurjñāna texts in the Tengyur that were composed by Siddharājñī, a female guru active in India in the beginning of the twelfth century, from whom Rechungpa, pupil of the famous Milarepa, received transmissions that Marpa had not been able to bring back to Tibet. At least three if not all of these Siddharājñī texts were translated into Tibetan by Varacandra,40 another of Rechungpa’s teachers, together with the Tibetan Lenchung Darma Tsultrim (glan chung dar ma tshul khrims), about whom little is known other than this translation work with Varacandra. Rechungpa introduced the practice into Tibet, where it spread from his own lineage, the Rechung Kagyü or Rechung Nyengyü, to other Kagyü traditions. These tantric Aparimitāyurjñāna practices are based upon the five-family system of the higher tantras, and they involve an elaborate visualization of oneself as a red Aparimitāyurjñāna, wearing the saṃbhogakāya costume and holding a vase of amṛta, with an entourage of deities within a palace, and the visualization of channels within the body. As Aparimitāyurjñāna is auspicious for long life, his empowerment is given as a long life blessing.41
Within the indigenous Tibetan literature, a very large number of Aparimitāyurjñāna sādhanas have been created over the centuries within all the lineages and schools. The Nyingma tradition of rediscovered treasure texts (gter ma), too, has produced many Aparimitāyurjñāna revelations, from Nyangral Nyima Ozer (nyang ral nyi ma ’od zer, 1136–1204) onward. The importance that Aparimitāyurjñāna assumed in tantric practice may be one of the reasons why this Aparimitāyurjñānasūtra was classified in most Kangyurs as a tantra rather than as a sūtra.
We are delighted to have translated and published this version of The Sūtra of Aparimitāyurjñāna, a popular and widely used text, for the benefit of readers everywhere.