Cariyāpiṭaka


The Cariyapitaka is a Buddhist scripture, part of the Pali Canon of Theravada Buddhism. It is included there in the Sutta Pitaka's Khuddaka Nikaya, usually as the last of fifteen books. It is a short verse work that includes thirty-five accounts of the Buddha's former lives when he as a bodhisattva exhibited behaviors known as "perfections," prerequisites to buddhahood. This canonical text, along with the Apadana and Buddhavamsa, is believed to be a late addition to the Pali Canon and has been described as "hagiographical."

Overview

In the first story, the Buddha says he will illustrate his practice of the perfections by stories of his past lives in this current age. The text contains 35 such stories, spanning 356 to 371 verses.
The body of the Cariyapitaka is broken into three divisions, with titles correlated to the first three of the ten Theravada pāramitā:
  • Division I : 10 stories for the perfection of offering
  • Division II : 10 stories for the perfection of conduct
  • Division III : 15 stories distributed among five other perfections, as follows:
  • * renunciation : five stories
  • * resolute determination : one story
  • * truth : six stories
  • * loving-kindness : two stories
  • * equanimity : one story
The three remaining Theravada perfections — wisdom, energy, patience — are mentioned in a closing stanza but no related Cariyapitaka stories have come down to us. Horner suggests that these latter three perfections are "implicit in the collection," referenced in both story titles and contexts.

Translations

  • "The collection of the ways of conduct", in Minor Anthologies of the Pali Canon, volume III, 1st edition, tr B. C. Law, 1938
  • "Basket of conduct", in Minor Anthologies III, 2nd edition, tr I. B. Horner, 1975, Pali Text Society, Bristol
  • Tr Bhikkhu Mahinda, Cariyāpiṭaka: Book of Basket of Conduct, Bilingual Pali-English First Edition 2022, Dhamma Publishers, Roslindale MA; .