What is the Sanghata Sutra ?

Welcome to the Wondrous World of the Sanghāta
The Sangháta Sutra is a teacher,
manifesting in the form of a sage.

- Ārya Sanghāta Sūtra

The Ārya Sanghāta Sūtra is a Mahāyāna Buddhist scripture that promises to transform all those who read it.

Like other sutras, the Sanghāta records a discourse given by the Buddha, but unlike other sutras, Buddha tells us he himself had heard the Sanghāta from a previous buddha.

The Sanghāta is a text that talks about itself by name—and talks in great detail about what it will do to anyone who encounters it.

It is also an extraordinary literary adventure, full of stories of death, discovery and magical transformations.

It is about many things, but first and foremost, the Sanghāta is about what can happen to its readers. That is to say: Most of all, the Sanghāta is about you.

Although it was visited often and with great enthusiasm for centuries by Mahāyāna Buddhists in India and Central Asia, the wondrous world of the Sanghāta Sūtra was largely forgotten by Buddhist communities from the eleventh century onwards… until very recently.

In 2002, to be precise, the text was re-introduced to Buddhist practitioners by academic scholars in North America. In the three years that have passed since then, the Sanghāta has become the subject of intense activity: the text has been translated into seven languages (and counting), recited, studied and copied by thousands of Buddhists worldwide, due in large part to the efforts of Lama Zopa Rinpoche.

After over one thousand years of quiet slumber, this discourse of the Buddha has again taken a vibrant place at the center of the spiritual life of practicing Buddhists around the world.

The Sanghāta in its Many Forms

The Sanghāta was first written down in Sanskrit, and as with all other Buddhist sutras, is assumed to have circulated orally for quite a long time before it was committed to paper—or, in the case of the Sanghāta, to palm leaves and birch bark, the medium most manuscripts were written on in India and northwest India. Historical research indicates that the Sanghāta was a major text for Buddhist communities in the northwest of India and central Asia, until at least the 8th century.

However, until the 1930s, records of the Sanskrit Sanghāta were completely lost. Then, in 1931 and 1938, at least seven Sanskrit manuscripts were recovered from Gilgit in northern Pakistan. It was only after these Sanskrit manuscripts emerged and began to be studied by scholars that the Sanghāta began to attract more attention, quickly coming to the revered position it holds today for many Buddhists. (For more on the story of how the Sanghāta was rediscovered, click here.)

Word continues to trickle out of the discovery of additional Sanghāta manuscripts in Sanskrit. A manuscript was reportedly found in a cave in Afghanistan in which the Taliban had taken refuge, according to the Website of the Schøyen collection of Buddhist manuscripts. A second is mentioned in an art journal that describes the manuscript as a fifth-century Sanskrit version from Gandhara. Other Sanskrit manuscripts have been made available to scholars in Japan, and are described in scholarly journals.

Manuscripts of the Sanghāta have been recovered not only in Gilgit, but in Khotan, northern Pakistan, Dunhuang, Chinese Turkestan and other sites in central Asia along the silk route. The lack of substantial caches of Sanghāta manuscripts on the Indian subcontinent does not preclude their circulation there. India’s monsoon climate is notoriously hard on the palm-leaf and birch-bark on which manuscripts were written, and those Sanghāta manuscripts that have survived were all found in drier zones to the north.

Although the Sanghāta circulated first in Sanskrit, it was subsequently translated into all the major languages of Buddhist communities to the north, northwest and east of India: Khotanese, Chinese, Sogdian and Tibetan. This translation work took place over the course of the fifth through tenth centuries of the common era. The very first translation that we know of was from Sanskrit into Khotanese.

Sanghata Sutra and Translations

The PDF File to view and read:

The Arya Sanghatasutra Dharmaparyaya


Then, at that time, the Blessed One spoke these verses:

“How beings in the beings’ hell,
experience such sufferings
Greatly fearsome words like these
You find joyless just to hear.

Who does virtuous actions
That will become bliss.
Who does negative actions
That becomes only suffering.

Who knows not happiness’ cause,
Being born, will suffer evermore
Torment of death and bound to grief.
Who recalls the Buddha as supreme
These wise ones are happy.

Also who has faith in the Great Vehicle
Will not go to lower rebirth
Sarvashura, in this way, urged by previous karma
Having done even a small action,
Limitless results will be enjoyed.

In the Buddha field, the supreme field,
if one plants a seed, great will be the results.
Just as from planting a few seeds,
many results are enjoyed,
So those who take joy in the Conqueror’s teachings,
those skilled ones will be happy.

Negativities they will abandon,
And virtue too will greatly do.
As an offering to my teachings,
whoever offers even a mere hair
will for eighty thousand aeons,
have great possessions and much wealth too,
Wherever they are born,
they will always be generous.
In that way the Buddha, a deep place of giving,
has great results."

Then the bodhisattva, the great being, Sarvashura said this to the Blessed One:

“How is the Dharma that is taught by the Blessed One to be had? Blessed One, after hearing the Sanghata sutra dharma-paryaya, how are the roots of virtue to be firmly held?”

The Blessed One spoke:
“Sarvashura, the mass of merit of one who listens to this Sanghata sutra dharma-paryaya should be known as the same as someone who worships as many Tathagatas, Arhats,
fully enlightened Buddhas as the number of grains of sand in Ganges rivers, providing them with everything required for their happiness.”

The bodhisattva, the great being, Sarvashura says,
“Blessed One, how are the roots of virtue to be thoroughly completed?”

He asked this, and the Blessed One spoke to the bodhisattva, the great being, Sarvashura as follows: “These roots of virtue are to be understood to be equal to a Tathagata.”

“Those roots of virtue which are to be equal to a Tathagata, what are they?”

The Blessed One spoke: “The expounder of the Dharma is to be understood to be equal to a Tathagata.”

The bodhisattva, the great being, Sarvashura said, “Blessed One, who is an expounder of the Dharma?”

“Whoever recites the Sanghata sutra, that one is an expounder of the Dharma.”