Triskandhakasūtra/Full text
From Bodhicitta
त्रिस्कन्धकसूत्र
Triskandhakasūtra
The Sūtra of the Three Heaps (84000)
FULL TEXT
Description
The Sūtra of the Three Heaps (Skt. Triskandhakasūtra; Tib. 'Phags pa phung po gsum pa zhes bya ba theg pa chen po'i mdo, Toh 284) is a Mahāyāna liturgical sūtra set at hermitage called chos kyi dbye dgon pa. Its first part is an extended practice in which the practitioner offers homage, makes offerings, confesses all obscuring karma, rejoices in the virtue of all beings, exhorts the buddhas to turn the wheel of Dharma, and supplicates them not to pass into nirvāṇa. The practitioner then takes all roots of virtue as their own, dedicates them to awakening, and generates bodhicitta on the model of past buddhas and bodhisattvas. In the second part, Mañjuśrī teaches the bodhisattva Sarvadharmapratijñāsthita the "irreproachable" heaps of confession, rejoicing, exhortation, supplication, and dedication, understood in the light of emptiness and non-apprehension.
This text should be distinguished from the popular confession liturgy addressed to the thirty-five buddhas, widely recited as the "Three Heaps" or Bodhisattva's Confession of Downfalls. That liturgy circulates under the same Tibetan title, 'Phags pa phung po gsum pa zhes bya ba theg pa chen po'i mdo, but its content is an excerpt from the Upāliparipṛcchā (Toh 68), which itself calls the practice the "Dharma discourse of the Three Heaps." It is the Upāliparipṛcchā passage, not Toh 284, that Śāntideva quotes in the Śikṣāsamuccaya (ch. 8) and prescribes for recitation three times by day and three times by night in the Bodhicaryāvatāra (5.98).
| Reference | triskandhakasūtra [त्रिस्कन्धकसूत्र]. 'phags pa phung po gsum pa zhes bya ba theg pa chen po'i mdo [འཕགས་པ་ཕུང་པོ་གསུམ་པ་ཞེས་བྱ་བ་ཐེག་པ་ཆེན་པོའི་མདོ]. [The Sūtra of the Three Heaps (84000)]. Kangyur, RKTSK 284 http://www.rkts.org/cat.php?id=284&typ=1. |
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| People | Yeshe De |
