A Strand of Dharma Jewels as Advice for the King (Raja-parikatha-ratnavali) is a 500-stanza treatise on Mahayana right view, practice, and realization written by Arya Nagarjuna sometime in the late first quarter of the first millennium CE. Although it is presented in the form of a letter to a monarch setting forth advice on how best to achieve happiness and gain liberation while also governing for the highest good of both king and country, its intent extends far beyond that: it is a reasonably complete guide for those aspiring to Bodhisattva practice on how to understand the mind and the world, how to think and act in the world, and how to achieve the highest realization of mind in transcending the world, even while working all the while for universal good in the world.
This is Tripitaka Master Paramartha's earliest (ca 550 ce)
complete edition of Nagarjuna's Ratnavali. In it, Nagarjuna
presents both abstruse
teachings and practical advice to lay and monastic
practitioners while also describing in considerable detail the terrains
of the Bodhisattva Path. This very early edition is particularly
useful in shedding light on difficult passages in the much-later
Tibetan
"revised translation" edition, the only other complete edition
of this work.
Chinese and English
