Buddhist Apocrypha: 生天經(偽造) The Scripture on birth in the Heavens

 生天經(偽造)

The Scripture on birth in the Heavens  (APOCRYPHAL)

This is the third of a series of buddhist apocrypha from that are collected in this 1931 edition of Chanmen Risong: 禪門日誦 Zen Daily Recitations. For an introduction to what this book is, you should read this post about another apocryphon in the same collection, the Scripture of Wondrous Sand

Unlike the others, this rather short apocryphon has a moral dimension, describing immoral acts that one must abstain from to have a fortunate rebirth in the Heavenly Realm. However, like all the other apocrypha in this collection, it contains an incantation. It is my speculation that this incantation caused the scripture to remain in circulation, perhaps as a funerary text. as far as i can tell, however, it is not used as such today, and the scripture, like most of the others in this collection, have ceased to be recited or printed. 

The Scripture as presented in the Zen Daily Recitations. 

https://books.google.com/books?id=qObnAAAAMAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&pg=PP94#v=onepage&q&f=false

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 

Buddhist Apocrypha: 妙沙經 The Scripture of Wondrous Sand

妙沙經 (偽造)

Miao Sha Jing 

The scripture of Wonderous Sand: APOCRYPHAL 

The frontispiece to a Ming-dynasty (萬曆辛丑年=1601  copy of the Scripture, now kept in Tokyo. From  Open Museum 

This scripture will be a first in a series of apocryphal scriptures that are collected in this 1931 edition of Chanmen Risong: 禪門日誦 Zen Daily Recitations. The heart of this book are the Buddhist morning and evening services: collections of scriptures that are chanted in the mornings and evenings by buddhist monasteries, a practise that continues to this day. However, in addition to the morning and evening services, the book contains other material that would be useful to buddhists, like  hymns that would be sung before and after sutras were recited, essays on various aspects of buddhism, tables of religious festivals, mantras for various purposes, and finally, short sutras. 

This is where the current apocryphal text, the "Scripture of Wondrous Sand" Miaosha Jing 妙沙經  fits in. This extremely short scripture is an incantation, invoking hosts of buddhas. The scripture proclaims that reciting it would allow you to deliver yourself- and your ancestors- from hell. In that respect, it resembles things like the Eighty-Eight Buddhas Litany 八十八佛懺 or the Three Thousand Buddhas Repentance litany 三千佛洪名寶懺: Still-practised rites which consist of lists of buddhas's names (although these rites are based on non-apocryphal sutras). It is not inconceivable that this "sutra" started off life as a litany or hymn that eventually was ascribed magical powers. Indeed, as we shall see, all the apocrypha in the Zen Daily recitations have a common feature: Reciting them has magical power. 

 Unlike other scriptures in the collection, The compilers of this text clearly marked it as 偽造 FALSELY CREATED, or perhaps idiomatically "Apocryphal" But if it was marked as "false", why would it be included in such a collection in the first place?

This was probably because the scripture was probably very popular, The scripture is rather short, and easily memorised even by people of meagre ability, empowering them to take over the destinies of their ancestors and themselves. Indeed, as can be seen above, this popularity spread to elite circles. Emperor Shenzhong-- the Wanli Emperor-- commissioned a copy of the sutra written in gold characters.  Religious professionals could ill-afford to ignore the wishes of their lay clients, who placed trust in such scriptures. 

However, in the end, orthodoxy triumphed. As far as the author can tell, This scripture is no longer recited by modern-day buddhists. As such, this intriguing little incantation has no English translation, apart from what is presented below.