Trading Power for Authority: An Intertextual Reading of the <i>Concentration of Heroic Progress</i> and the <i>Precious Banner</i>

In his 1965 study and translation of the Sūtra of the Concentration of Heroic Progress (Sanskrit [Skt.] Śūraṃgamasamādhisūtra; hereafter, the Concentration), a well-known early Mahāyāna Buddhist text, Étienne Lamotte noted that the Concentration shares thematic features with another Mahāyāna text called the Sūtra of the Precious Banner Incantation of the Great Assembly (Skt. Mahāsaṃnipātaratnaketudhāraṇīsūtra; hereafter, the Precious Banner), pointing particularly to the narrative episodes centered on “the conversion of Māra and his daughters.” This essay follows up on this note toward two ends. It first strengthens Lamotte’s claim by showing that the Precious Banner knows the Concentration, so to speak. Second, it argues that the Precious Banner differentiates itself from the Concentration by taking a narrative of Māra from the latter, inverting it, and redeploying it in order to secure a distinct audience reception. I argue that whereas the Concentration presents itself as a source of unmediated soteriological power that confers future buddhahood on even disingenuous audiences by virtue of their mere exposure to the text itself, the Precious Banner exchanges “raw power” for status as a normative authority that promises to confer future buddhahood only on those audiences who cultivate a favorable disposition to the text. By developing these two perspectives in tandem, this investigation sheds light on the range of attitudes within Mahāyāna tradition regarding the relevance of intention for salvation as well as on some of the strategies by which these texts seek to condition their own reception.