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Sanghata Sutra
The Sanghata Sutra is a Mahayana sutra containing stories illustrating the power of the bodhisattva wish and the power of past and present actions to produce expansive results. Imbued with the blessings of Shakyamuni Buddha’s prayer, recitation of this sutra produces a great mass of positive karma that can quickly ripen, even in this life. Print copies of the sutra are available through the Foundation Store until December 31, when the store goes digital-only.
“Probably I don’t need to tell you what the text says about how much merit you collect each time you hear this sutra,” Lama Zopa Rinpoche remarks. “Each time you hear it, how much merit do you collect? First of all, one buddha has completed the merit of wisdom and the merit of virtue—there is nothing more to collect … and then how many buddhas? The number of buddhas equaling the number of sands of grain in the Ganga River times twelve. And these sand grains are not ordinary grains of sand. It is explained in the teachings, in the great enlightened Phabongkha Rinpoche’s notes, that these grains are made of extremely subtle atoms. There are seven kinds of subtle atoms, water atoms, earth atoms, and so forth. These sand grains are much, much finer than what we usually think.
“In addition to that, when it comes to talking about the benefits of bodhichitta, or the benefits of the Arya Sanghata Sutra, the Ganga does not refer to the Indian River Ganges. It refers to the Pacific Ocean. Now, that many numbers of buddhas times twelve. The merit of just one set of buddhas equaling the number of sand grains in the River Ganga, even just one set—how much merit that is … is beyond words, unimaginable. Even just the merit that one buddha has collected is beyond words. So, now, beyond that, the merit that you collect every time you hear the Arya Sanghata Sutra is equal to twelve times the merit of the number of buddhas as there are sand grains in the River Ganga.
“So, that is just by hearing it. This means that anyone hearing it—animals, frogs, birds, so no question about pets like your beautiful cat, your darling cat, even spirits—collects that much merit. Can you imagine? It is like an impossible thing in the life that happens. When those animals, your cat and other animals, hear you recite Buddha’s teachings, it definitely makes them to receive higher rebirth and to meet Dharma.
“The very minute you hear it, the five uninterrupted negative karmas—the extremely heavy negative karmas that right after death, immediately without interruption of another life, you get born into hell; you get reborn in the lowest hot hell, which has the heaviest suffering of the lower realms, of which the life span lasts for one intermediate eon—those get completely purified. This happens even for the sentient beings who hear the sutra, the minute they hear the sutra. …”
Find the Sanghta Sutra in the Foundation Store:
https://shop.fpmt.org/Sanghata-Sutra-English-_p_603.html
Learn more about the Sanghata Sutra on FPMT.org:
https://fpmt.org/education/prayers-and-practice-materials/sutras/
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