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The
Sanghāta is one of
a special set of Buddhist sutras called dharma-paryāyas,
or ‘transformative teachings,’ that function to
transform those who hear or
recite them in particular ways. One very powerful benefit is that at
the time
of death, any person who has recited the Sanghāta
will have visions of Buddhas
who come to comfort them during the death process. A further benefit is
that
wherever the Sanghāta Sūtra
is established, the Buddhas are
always present, as explained in the text itself. As such, the
recitation can
bestow a powerful blessing on the place where it is recited.
In
general, the recitation of Mahāyāna sutras is one of the six virtuous
practices specifically recommended
for purification, and the recitation of this sutra in particular has
far-reaching karmic consequences that last for many lifetimes, as the Sanghāta Sūtra itself explains in detail. Within the
sutra, the Buddha
provides numerous descriptions of the ways in which the sutra works on
those
who recite it to clear away their seeds of suffering, and to assure
their
future happiness all the way up enlightenment. The sutra also includes
some
forceful teachings on death and impermanence, including a teaching on
the
physical and mental processes that occur at the time of death.
For
many centuries, the Sanghāta Sūtra was among the most widely read and
copied of all Mahāyāna
sutras. In the 1930s, an archeological excavation conducted in northern
Pakistan under British colonial rule, unearthed a library of Buddhist
texts.
This archeological dig was extremely important for historians, in that
it
yielded a large cache of manuscripts written in the fifth century CE, a
much
earlier period than other Buddhist texts from anywhere in India itself.
Among these
many
important manuscripts, the text of which we find the largest number of
copies
was the Sanghāta Sūtra,
more even than the Lotus
Sutra, the Diamond Cutter Sutra or
the Perfection of Wisdom sutras
that
nowadays are far more familiar to us. However, among all these texts,
there
were
more copies of the Sanghāta Sūtra than
any of these other better known texts. For many centuries the Sanghāta Sūtra seems
to have
fallen out of active use. There are no known surviving commentaries to
this
precious
text in any language.
As
the word of the Buddha, the Sanghāta was
preserved
in the
canonical collections of the Chinese Tripitaka and Tibetan
Kagyur,
as well as in Sanskrit manuscripts. However, it seems that
people
had stopped reading the sutra, for many centuries, until
recent
times, when Lama
Zopa Rinpoche encountered the Sanghāta Sūtra
while
staying at Geshe
Sopa
Rinpoche’s monastery in Madison,Wisconsin in 2002.
At that time,
Lama Zopa Rinpoche began to copy the sutra by hand in gold to place
inside the
500-foot Maitreya statue in India. Rinpoche has asked his
students to recite
the
text on numerous occasions. On the anniversary of September 11,
Rinpoche
requested that all his students worldwide recite the sutra as many
times as
possible in order to prevent further attacks. To read more about how
the Sanghāta Sūtra was
re-introduced to the world, click
here.