The Sutra on Transmigration Through Existences

In The Sutra on Transmigration Through Existences (Skt. Bhavasaṅkrāntisutra; Tib.སྲིད་པ་འཕོ་བའི་མདོ , Wyl. srid pa ‘pho ba’i mdo) King Bimbisara of Magadha approaches the Buddha and asks him how a past action can appear before the mind at the moment of death. The Buddha presents the analogy of a sleeping person who dreams of a beautiful woman and on waking foolishly longs to find her. He cites this as an example of how an action of the distant past, which has arisen from perception and subsequent afflictive emotions and then ceased, appears to the mind on the brink of death. The Buddha goes on to explain how one transitions from the final moment of one life to the first moment of the next, according to the ripening of those actions, without any phenomena actually being transferred from one life to another.

Thus, in this sutra, the Buddha provides a fundamental explanation for how transmigration between lives occurs in conformity with the view that there is no self—as an unchanging entity not consisting of parts—that goes from this life to the next. The Buddha concludes with a set of seven verses that offer a succinct teaching on emptiness, focusing on the two truths and the fictitious nature of all nominal designations.

This early Mahayana sutra holds an important place in the tradition as one of the earliest statements on the two truths and was used by both the Madhyamaka and early Yogachara schools as a scriptural authority on the ultimate truth.

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The Tibetan translation of this sutra can be found in the General Sutra section of the Tibetan Kangyur, Toh 226

• English translation: The Sutra on Transmigration Through Existences