Learning the Gaṇḍavyūha Sūtra:
The Array of Heroes

About the Gaṇḍavyūha Sūtra

Introduction

This is a website version of handout guides that were prepared for a sūtra reading group in 2019. It is part of a series on the Navagrantha, the nine most sacred texts of Mahāyāna Buddhism which can be found by clicking the prior hyperlink. Page numbers correspond to the 1993 translation by Thomas Cleary in The Flower Ornament Scripture.

Context

The Gaṇḍavyūha Sūtra is a stand-alone sūtra which also serves as the final chapter of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra. The translation we will be reading by Thomas Cleary is the only English translation, but Sanskrit and Tibetan translations exist—a translation is ongoing from Tibetan as part of the 84,000 project. The original Avataṃsaka Sūtra in Sanskrit is no longer extant, only sections exist, such as the Daśabhūmikā (Ten Stage Sūtra) and the Gaṇḍavyūha—both of which form a part of the nine-text core Mahāyāna canon in Nepalese Buddhism, known as the Nāvagrantha, or Nine Sacred Texts.

According to Chinese sources, there were six variations of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra in Sanskrit. The longest one was 100,000 lines long, and the shortest one was 36,000 lines long. In Chinese, the first translation was from one of the shorter versions—this translation, by Buddhabhadra, was completed in 421 CE, and only contained a very short version of the Gaṇḍavyūha Sūtra at the end. The second translation, by Śikṣānanda, was completed in 704 CE, and included the full Gaṇḍavyūha Sūtra. The third translation was specifically focused on the Gaṇḍavyūha Sūtra and was completed by the monk Prajñā in 798 CE. The most popular and definitive translation in Chinese was that of Śikṣānanda, and it is what Cleary’s translation is based off. In Śikṣānanda’s translation, which is probably from one of the middle-length Sanskrit versions, the Gaṇḍavyūha Sūtra is the 39th and final chapter. There is also a Newar translation of the sūtra.

While in Sanskrit it is divided into sections, in Chinese, it is not. This reading group, however, will read the sūtra according to those divisions, in order to break it up into readable chunks. In short, to explain why it is a part of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, the Avataṃsaka Sūtra features the Buddha gradually teaching celestial beings and bodhisattvas starting from the site of awakening and up to the highest Brahmā heaven, and then back down to earth. He does this because humans were not yet able to hear the full significance of his entire realisation. Thus, he preached to those for whom it was easier first. Even in the Gaṇḍavyūha Sūtra, the final section, he is in Anāthapiṇḍada’s park, but the only humans he teaches are awakened bhikṣus and world rulers who had served past buddhas. This can signify the grandeur of this awakening, and need not be tied to a literal understanding of an historical event. In this way, also, we can see that the Avataṃsaka Sūtra is essentially an anthology of texts with similar themes.

Significance

The teachings of the Gaṇḍavyūha Sūtra emphasise bodhicitta, spiritual friends, and the quest for buddhahood, all of which feature heavily in all forms of Mahāyāna Buddhism. However it became an important part of the formation of the doctrines of the significant Chinese sect focused on the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, called the Huáyán sect. This also became one of the first sects in Japan, where it is known as the Kegon sect. To this sect belongs the famous 15-metre-tall Mahāvairocana Buddha at Tōdaiji temple in Nara, built by Emperor Shōmu in the 8th century.

D.T. Suzuki, who edited the first Sanskrit edition of the text, summarises the importance of this sūtra as follows, as found in the leaflet on the Shambala website for this sūtra:

“As to the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, it is really the consummation of Buddhist thought, Buddhist sentiment, and Buddhist experience. To my mind, no religious literature in the world can ever approach the grandeur of conception, the depth of feeling, and the gigantic scale of composition, as attained by the sutra. Here not only deeply speculative minds find satisfaction, but humble spirits and heavily oppressed hearts, too, will have their burdens lightened. Abstract truths are so concretely, so symbolically represented here that one will finally come to a realization of the truth that even in a particle of dust the whole universe is seen reflected-not this visible universe only, but a vast system of universes, conceivable by the highest minds only.”

Title

The term gaṇḍa can mean “hero,” or “massive.” (Osto, 2019) Vyūha means “array,” as in an array of soldiers or a flock of people in a crowd. Thus the title can mean either an “array of heroes” or a “grand array.” Douglas Osto suggests “Supreme Array.”

The Chinese and Japanese title, from which Cleary gets the “Entry into the Realm of Reality” is 續入法界品 (Xu ru fajie pin; Zoku nyū hokkai bon), or “Chapter on the Entry into the Dharmadhātu,” or “Dharma Realm.” Thus, one feature of Cleary’s translations that may prove an obstacle of sorts at times may be his use of translations that give different terms for concepts that we are already familiar with by different names, such as “Dharma Realm,” which he calls the “Realm of Reality.”

Themes

1. Quest for Awakening

The most significant aspect of this sūtra is that it tells the story of the merchant’s son Sudhana, who searches for the Dharma, starting with the advice of the Bodhisattva Mañjuśrī. Mañjuśrī successfully guides Sudhana to seek out numerous “good friends” or kalyāṇamitras, who each point him closer to realising the Dharma Dhātu. The sūtra insists, in this way, that realising our Buddha Nature, or Tathāgatagarbha, we must rely upon many spiritual friends. Finally, after finding Maitreya Bodhisattva, Sudhana is guided back to Mañjuśrī, who finally introduces him to Samantabhadra Bodhisattva, who teaches him the Vow of Noble Conduct, or Bhadracarī Praṇidhāna, whereby he may realise the Dharma Body, or Dharmakāya.

2. Importance of Spiritual Friends

This importance of spiritual friends is also insisted upon by the Perfection of Wisdom in 8000 Lines, which states, revealing multiple layers to this teaching, that

“A Bodhisattva who has set out with earnest intention and wants to win full enlightenment should from the very beginning tend, love and honour the good friends.

Subhūti: ‘Who are those good friends of a Bodhisattva?”

The Lord: ‘The Buddhas and Lords, and also the irreversible Bodhisattvas who are skilful in the Bodhisattva-course, and who instruct and admonish him in the perfections, who demonstrate and expound the perfection of wisdom. The perfection of wisdom in particular should be regarded as a Bodhisattva’s good friend. All the six perfections, in fact, are the good friends of a Bodhisattva. They are his Teacher, his path, his light, his torch, his illumination, his shelter, his refuge, his place of rest, his final relief, his island, his mother, his father, and they lead him to cognition, to understanding, to full enlightenment. For it is in these perfections that the perfection of wisdom is accomplished.’ (396–7)”

Similarly, the Gaṇḍavyūha Sūtra states,

“Think of yourself as crossing over to the other shore, and think of spiritual benefactors as boatmen; think of their instructions as a ford, and think of the practices as a boat. ... Think of yourself as a prince, and think of spiritual benefactors as the chief ministers of a spiritual king; think of their instructions as the precepts of kingship, and think of the practices as putting on the turban of truth adorned with the crest of knowledge and overseeing the capital of the spiritual sovereign.” (1450–1)

Focusing on spiritual friends in this way, the Gaṇḍavyūha Sūtra narrates the journey of Sudhana in meeting fifty-three different spiritual friends, who have learned different aspects of the Bodhisattva path. They are young and old, male and female, Buddhist and non-Buddhist, monks and laymen, of various classes, castes, and professions. None of them claim to be fully awakened in any way, but they each have attainments in specific qualities of awakening, each one of which teaches Sudhana another piece of the puzzle.

In this way, the sūtra teaches how spiritual friends may come to any place and be in any guise. They are bodhisattvas with a purpose, and guide beings to awakening according to their environments and abilities as a skilful means (upāya).

3. On Bodhicitta

While Sudhana, as we shall see, receives many teachings from his spiritual friends, several noteworthy ones deal with the matter of bodhicitta, or the aspiration to attain buddhahood for the benefit of all sentient beings. Note that Cleary translates bodhicitta as “the determination for enlightenment.”

For instance, Maitreya states, “The determination for enlightenment is the seed of all elements of buddhahood; it is like a field, growing good qualities in all beings; it is like the earth, being a support for all beings; it is like water, washing away all afflictions; it is like wind, unattached to all worlds; it is like fire, burning up the deadwood of clinging to views.” (1476)

In this way, Maitreya gives one hundred and seventeen similes for bodhicitta, where by Sudhana was made to visualise all buddhas in the three realms working for sentient beings.

4. Samantabhadra’s Ten Vows

The final and perhaps most influential section of the sūtra is Samantabhadra’s prayer of ten vows of bodhisattva conduct, known as the Vow of Noble Conduct, or Bhadracarī Praṇidhāna which forms an important part of recitation liturgy in both Nepalese and Tibetan Buddhism, and is the structure of practice recommended by many Indian masters, such as Śantideva and Atiśa. These ten vows are to:

i. Pay homage to all buddhas

ii. Praise the buddhas

iii. Make offerings

iv. Repent evil deeds

v. Rejoice in the merits of others

vi. Request the buddhas to turn the Dharma Wheel

vii. Request the buddhas to not pass into nirvāṇa but remain to teach

viii. Follow the teachings of the buddhas at all times

ix. Accommodate and benefit all beings

x. Transfer merits to the attainment of buddhahood for the benefit of all beings