Bulseoljangsumyeoljoehojedongjadaranigyeong Sutra

This sutra teaches that sentient beings who, bound by the five desires and seven emotions, commit all manner of sinful deeds and suffer for them can eliminate their sins and attain long life free of illness if they meet a good spiritual guide, repent of what they have done, and vow never to commit such deeds again. It has been continuously published since the Goryeo period and has had a considerable influence on ordinary people. The Bulseol Daebo Bumo Eunjunggyeong (Sutra on the Profound Kindness of Parents), bound together at the back of this volume, sets out the kindness of parents under ten specific headings: the kindness of carrying and protecting the child in the womb; the kindness of enduring the pain of childbirth; the kindness of forgetting all worry once the child is born; the kindness of swallowing what is bitter and spitting out what is sweet to feed the child; the kindness of lying in the wet spot and giving the child the dry one; the kindness of nursing and raising the child; the kindness of washing the child clean until one's hands and feet are worn; the kindness of worrying over a child gone on a distant journey; the kindness of even doing wrong for the sake of the child; and the kindness of pitying and loving the child to the very end. As a concrete way of repaying such kindness, people were encouraged to make offerings to the Three Jewels — the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha — on behalf of their parents on Baekjung Day, the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month, and to have this sutra published and widely distributed, elevating the practice, in the Mahayana spirit, into an act of accumulating merit by spreading the teaching among the people. Most copies of the Bulseoljangsumyeoljoehojedongjadaranigyeong Sutra are bound together with the Bumo Eunjunggyeong; this is presumably because repenting in order to escape sinful karma and repaying an unfulfilled debt to one's parents were understood to share a common meaning — that a person attains great freedom by ceasing sinful acts and instead repaying that debt through filial devotion extended to all beings. Both sutras are known to be apocryphal, yet both circulated widely among ordinary people; this edition, published in the 15th century, is a valuable source for understanding the form taken by popular Buddhist faith at the time. It is a woodblock print with a single-line border on all four sides, no ruled lines between columns, seven lines of fifteen characters to the half-leaf, no fish-tail motif, and a frontispiece illustration; the centre-fold titles read 'Jang' and 'Eun'. At the end of the Bulseoljangsumyeoljoehojedongjadaranigyeong Sutra the printing record reads 'carved at Hwaamsa Temple, Bulmyeongsan Mountain, Jeolla-do, on a day in the sixth month of the gapjin year, the twentieth year of the Chenghua reign [1484]'. The colophon to the Bulseol Daebo Bumo Eunjunggyeong is dated 'a day in the month of the gapjin year, the twentieth year of the Chenghua reign', and at the end of that sutra the printing record reads 'carved at Hwaam, Gosan, Jeolla-do'. The holding copies comprise the Bulseoljangsumyeoljoehojedongjadaranigyeong Sutra and the Bulseol Daebo Bumo Eunjunggyeong.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Goyang, Gyeonggi

Designation

Provincial Tangible Heritage · 시도유형문화유산