Sutra of the Questions of an Old Lady

The Sutra of the Questions of an Old Lady (Skt. Mahallikāparipṛcchāsūtra, Tib. བགྲེས་མོས་ཞུས་པ།, Wyl. bgres mos zhus pa’i mdo). This sutra contains teachings given by the Buddha to a 120-year-old woman in the city of Vaiśalī. Upon meeting the Buddha, she asks him questions concerning the four stages of life, the aggregates, the elements and the faculties. In response, the Buddha gives her a profound teaching on emptiness, using beautifully crafted examples to illustrate his point.

After hearing these teachings her doubts are dispelled and she is freed from clinging to the perception of a self. Ānanda asks the Buddha why he has given such profound teachings to this woman. The Buddha reveals that the woman has been his mother five hundred times in previous lifetimes and that he had generated the root of virtue for her to become enlightened. Because of her own strong aspirations, after dying, she would be born in the buddha field of Sukhāvatī; and after sixty-eight thousand eons she would finally become the buddha Bodhyaṅgapuṣpakara.

Tibetan Text

• Derge Kangyur, vol. 59 (mdo sde, ba), folios 310b–314a

Translations

• The Sutra of the Questions of an Old Lady