Shakra (deity)

Taishakutens statue, 11th century, Tokyo National Museum

Shakra ( Sanskrit शक्र śakra ; Pāli Sakka ; Chinese 帝釋 天 Dishitan ; Japanese 帝 釈 天 Taishakuten ) is the ruler of Trayastrimsa , a heaven of Buddhist cosmology in Buddhism .

Shakra is a less warlike adaptation of the god Indra from Hinduism , which also appears in Jain scriptures. In Buddhist scriptures such as the Pali Canon and the Mahayana Sutras , he appears as the king of the devas (śakro devānām indra) of the Trayastrimsa. Twenty-five sutras of the samyutta nikaya deal with him alone.

Though he has great power and a long life, like all living beings he is subject to death and rebirth ; in several suttas Buddha the advantages are described to be regenerated as Shakra. He is described as the deva who cared for the Buddhas and his disciples the most, in that he descended from his heaven and answered questions and was also otherwise helpful to the Buddha. He appears both in the Vessantara Jataka , in which the early life of the later Buddha Gautama is described, and in reports about his time as Prince Siddhartha Gautama . In one story, Siddharta Gautama cuts off his hair, tosses it in the air and explains that if they did not fall back to the ground, he would assume the life of an ascetic . Shakra takes this hair and keeps it in a shrine in Trayastrimsa. When Buddha went to Trayastrimsa to meet his mother Maya , who was incarnated there , Shakra provided him with a ladder to return to Jambudvipa . Shakra often visited the earth disguised as a brahmin to test the Buddha's disciples and to give benefits to those who passed the test.

literature

• Robert E. Buswell Jr., Donald S. Lopez Jr .: Śakra . In: The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey 2013, ISBN 978-0-691-15786-3 , pp. 739-740. ( limited preview in Google Book search).

Remarks

1. ↑ See Sakkapañha Sutta