Amitābha Sūtra

Lord Buddha statue in Japan

Japanese sutra book open to the Shorter Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra

Shorter Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra written in katakana, Siddhaṃ scripts and kanji. Published in 1773 in Japan.

The Amitābha Sūtra, (simplified Chinese: 佛说阿弥陀经; traditional Chinese: 佛說阿彌陀經; pinyin: Fóshuō Āmítuójīng; Taisho no. 366; Vietnamese: Phật Thuyết Kinh A Di Đà), also known as the Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra (Sanskrit, The Array of the Blissful, or Arrangement of Sukhāvatī) is one of the two Indian Mahayana sutras that describe Sukhāvatī, the pure land of Amitābha. This text is highly influential in East Asian Buddhism, including China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, and is listed as number 366 in the Taisho Tripitaka.

The original Sanskrit versions of the Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra and the Amitayus Sutra (sometimes called the Longer Sukhāvatīvyūha) were translated into English by Luis Gomez in The Land of Bliss.

History

The Sukhāvatīvyūha was translated from Sanskrit into Classical Chinese by Tripiṭaka master Kumārajīva in 402, but may have existed in India as early as the year 100 in Prakrit.

Content

Shorter Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra in Vietnam, 1600s

The bulk of the Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra, considerably shorter than other Pure Land sutras, consists of a discourse that Gautama Buddha gave at Jetavana in Śrāvastī to his disciple Śāriputra. The talk concerned the wondrous adornments that await the righteous in the western pure land of Sukhāvatī as well as the beings that reside there, including the Buddha Amitābha. The text also describes what one must do to be reborn there.

English translations

• Gomez, Luis, trans. (1996), The Land of Bliss: The Paradise of the Buddha of Measureless Light: Sanskrit and Chinese Versions of the Sukhavativyuha Sutras, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press

See also

• Longer Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra (Amitayus Sutra)
• Sukhavati
• Amitābha