Suvarṇavālukopamā

Suvarṇavālukopamā (T. gser gyi bye ma lta bu གསེར་གྱི་བྱེ་མ་ལྟ་བུ།), or "Like Gold Dust," is a Mahayana sutra found in the Tibetan canon.

The Sakya Pandita Translation Team states:

This sūtra presents a short dialogue between Ānanda and the Buddha on the theme of limitlessness. In response to Ānanda’s persistent inquiries, the Buddha uses analogies to illustrate both the limitlessness of the miraculous abilities acquired by realized beings, and the limitless multiplicity of the world systems in which bodhisattvas and buddhas are to be found.

The Buddha then concludes his teaching with a further analogy‍—referenced in the sūtra’s title‍—to illustrate that although buddhas and bodhisattvas are innumerable, it is nevertheless extremely rare and precious to find a buddha within any given world system, or to find bodhisattvas who engage sincerely in bodhisattva conduct. To encounter such beings, he says, is as rare as finding a single grain of gold dust among all the sands of the ocean, or all the sands of the mighty river Gaṅgā.

Tibetan text

The Tibetan translation of this sutra can be found in the General Sutra Section of the Tibetan Dergé Kangyur, Toh 126

According to its colophon, the Tibetan translation of this text was made by the Indian masters Surendrabodhi and Prajñāvarman working with the Tibetan translator Yeshé Dé, indicating a translation made during the height of the Tibetan imperial patronage of Buddhism in the early ninth century ᴄᴇ.

No extant parallel versions of this text have been identified in either Sanskrit or Chinese.

English translations

• Sakya Pandita Translation Team (2024), Like Gold Dust , 84000 Collection
• Peter Skilling (2021), "Buddhas as Rare as a Grain of Golden Sand" in Questioning the Buddha: A Selection of Twenty-Five Sutras, Wisdom Publications. Publisher's page