Edward White : Buddhist Apocrypha: 佛說眼明經 The Bright-Eye sutra spoken by the Buddha

佛說眼明經 The Bright-Eye sutra spoken by the Buddha

Continuing in this blog's series on Buddhist apocrypha, here is a positively tiny "sutra", the Fo shuo Yanguangming Jing: The Bright-eye sutra spoken by the Buddha Just a hundred characters long, it might be more properly characterised as an incantation which cures eye trouble.

The sutra seems to be relatively popular. There are at last two copies of the sutra online http://www.boder.idv.tw/fsumj.htm and https://simple.taolibrary.com/category/category50/c50126.htm, and the sutra appears in the otherwise solidly canonical collection of sutras called 五經合刊 (A collection of Five Sutras) published by 和裕出版社 in Taiwan (See appendix 1). What makes this surprising, is that from a preliminary search, a sutra of this name does not appear in any of the Buddhist canons, even as an apocryphon. I have yet to find the sutra's true origin. It does not seem to appear in the Chanmen Risong (Zen daily recitations) which otherwise contains numerous apocrypha, that have been translated elsewhere on this blog

However, it appears elsewhere, as for example appended to a copy of the Surangama Mantra that I possess. (see appendix 2). The text also appears in a book entitled 九品高王觀音經 (Nine Sutras including the High King Guanyin Sutra) by 佛經堂 (hall of buddhist sutras), which I have scanned on Archive, and is accessible here https://archive.org/details/fojingtang/page/n13/mode/2up. This is a collection of numerous Guanyin-related sutras, and the text of the sutra in that book has been reproduced as appendix 3. This sutra is followed by a "Mantra to give brightness to the eyes" 眼光明咒

To confuse matters, there is another scripture of the same title 佛說眼明經 , but is somewhat longer. This sutra is associated with the True Buddha School(the sect of Lu Sheng-yen). A translation of the sutra into English has been made here http://lotuschef.blogspot.com/2016/06/clear-vision-sutra_27.html as the "Clear Vision Sutra". These two sutras have little in common with one another. For starters, the Clear Vision Sutra begins by invoking Guanyin, and then ends by invoking Mahamayuri.

For more discussion about these two sutras in Chinese see https://ch.tbsn.org/dynamics/detail/494 and http://www.gelupa.org/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=19843&extra=&page=1

UPDATE: 16 April 2026: Rearranged introduction to make it clearer; added additional source of the scripture

佛說眼明經The Bright-Eye sutra spoken by the Buddha

佛說眼明經　兩眼似金燈　

舍利金山塔　蓮花滿座香
The Bright-Eye sutra spoken by the Buddha:

[My] Two eyes are like golden lamps,

Saria, [or] a Gold-hill pagoda.

Lotuses fill [my] seat, perfuming it.

千手千眼童子王　兩眼依舊燄燄光　

文殊菩薩騎獅子普賢菩薩騎象王　
Thousand-handed, thousand-eyed Eye-lad king,
[May] my two eyes be glowing, glowing brilliantly as before!

Manjushri Bodhisattva, with a lion mount!
Samantabhadra Bodhisattva, the Elephant-mounted king!

護羅那　眼羅那　

眼中惡　血盡消磨
Protect! Luona! Eyes! Luona!

All evils in the eyes, [all] blood, be ground and dispersed!

有人誦得眼明經　生生世世眼光明　

每日清晨誦七遍勝過萬卷經
If a person can chant this bright-eye sutra,

For life after life, incarnation after incarnation, their eyes will be bright.

Chanting this sutra seven times at dawn daily,

Is better than a myriad scrolls of sutras.

諸尊菩薩摩訶薩　摩訶波若波羅蜜

唵　呵噠唎耶　娑婆訶

All Venerable Bodhisattva Mahasattvas, Mahaprajnaparamita,

Om! He da li ye, Svaha!

（註：若覺得自己眼睛不太靈光，遠視、近視、眼疾⋯⋯等等，可以每日誠心恭誦佛說眼明經，久而久之必能改善。當以真誠之心恭敬奉行，而非以找碴懷疑的心態去做，因為兩者的效果相去甚遠。）

Note: If you feel that your eyes are not as bright as they were, or are afflicted with myopia, nearsightetness, or any suchlike eye disease, you can daily chant the Bright-eye sutra spoken by the Buddha, and they will slowly recover. You must do this with utmost sincereity, and without an attitude of finding fault or harboring doubts, because the results of these two [attitudes] would bring you far from the desired result.

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Appendix 1: the Sutra as presented in 五經合刊

Note that the Scripture here reverses the order of the last two lines: