The Perfection of Wisdom (Schopen)

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The Perfection of Wisdom

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Śāntideva's Life and Cultural World

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Descriptionངོ་སྤྲོད།

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The rise of the movement referred to as the Mahāyāna, some four hundred years after the Buddha's death, is sometimes marked by the appearance of new sūtras that were called the 'perfection of wisdom' (prajñāpāramitā). Like many other Mahāyāna sūtras, the perfection of wisdom texts were not systematic treatises that set forth philosophical points and doctrinal categories in a straightforward manner. Instead, they strike the modern reader as having something of the nature of revelations, bold pronouncements proclaimed with certainty, rather than speculative arguments developed in a linear fashion. The perfection of wisdom that the sūtras repeatedly praised was often identified as the knowledge of emptiness (śūnyatā), and it was this knowledge that was required for all who sought to become buddhas. This emptiness was often presented in a series of negations, with statements like 'that which is a world system, that is said by the Tathāgata not to be a system. In that sense [the term] "world system" is used.' The precise meaning of such statements would be explored by generations of commentators in India, East Asia and Tibet.
      Many of the perfection of wisdom sūtras came to be known by their length, hence the Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Stanzas, the Perfection of Wisdom in Twenty-five Thousand Stanzas, the Perfection of Wisdom in One Hundred Thousand Stanzas, the Perfection of Wisdom in One Letter. Others had titles, the most famous of these being what has come to be known in the West as the Heart Sūtra and the text known as the Diamond Sūtra. Probably composed in Sanskrit sometime between the second and fourth centuries of the Common Era, the latter was to become one of the most famous, and most commented upon, of the Mahāyāna sūtras. Yet much of its meaning remains elusive, beginning with the title. In Sanskrit, it is Vajrac-chedikā Prajñāpāramitā. The Sanskrit term vajra refers to a kind of magical weapon, sometimes described as a thunderbolt or discus, and which is said to be hard and unbreakable, like a diamond. Thus, the title might be rendered into English as ‘The Perfection of Wisdom that Cuts like a Thunderbolt’.
      The present selection is from the manuscript of the sūtra unearthed at Gilgit, in modern Pakistan. It represents roughly the last half of the sūtra, often considered the more difficult half. The sūtra opens with the Buddha residing in the Jeta Grove with 1,250 monks and a large number of bodhisattvas. After returning from his begging round and eating his meal, the Buddha is approached by the great arhat Subhūti, who asks him about the practice of the bodhisattva. The Buddha says that a bodhisattva must vow to lead all beings in the universe into nirvana, with the knowledge that there are no beings to be led into nirvāṇa. 'If, Subhūti, a conception of a living being were to occur to a bodhisattva, a conception of a personal soul, or a conception of a person, he is not to be called "a bodhisattva".' This is one of many famous statements in the sūtra, regarded by commentators as setting forth the doctrine of emptiness (although the term śūnyatā or emptiness does not appear in the sūtra), that all phenomena are falsely imagined to have a self, a soul, an 'own-being', a reality which they, in fact, lack. Any meritorious deed, from the giving of a gift to the vow to free all beings, is not a deed of a bodhisattva if it is tainted with the misconception of self. The Buddha asks Subhūti whether the Buddha is to be seen by the possession of the thirty-two physical marks of a superman that adorn his body. Subhūti says that he is not, because what the Buddha has described as the possession of marks is in fact the possession of no marks. This formula of question and response, with the correct answer being ‘A is in fact not A, therefore it is called A’ is repeated throughout the text.
      But the sūtra is not simply a radical challenge to the ordinary conception of the world, of language and of thought. It is also a Mahāyāna sūtra, seeking, like others (see chapter 5 and 38), to declare its supremacy and to promise rewards to those who exalt it. It is noteworthy that here, as in many other perfection of wisdom sūtras, the Buddha’s interlocutor is not a bodhisattva, but an arhat, the wise Subhūti, suggesting that even those who have completed the path to nirvāṇa still have more to learn. The Buddha predicts that this sūtra will be understood far into the future, into the period of the last five hundred years that his teaching remains in the world. At that time, anyone who has even a moment of faith in this sūtra will be honoured by millions of buddhas. Indeed, even now, long before this point in the distant future, anyone who would teach just four lines of this sūtra to others would win incalculable merit. In a statement that appears in other perfection of wisdom sūtras, the Buddha declares, 'on whatever piece of ground one will proclaim this sūtra, that piece of ground will become an object of worship. That piece of ground will become for the world together with its devas, men and asuras a true shrine to be revered and circumambulated.' Scholars have seen in this statement the possibility that the perfection of wisdom sūtras were something of a 'cult of the book', in which the sūtra itself was worshipped, serving as a substitute for more traditional sites of worship, such as stūpas.
      And the sūtra suggests that such practices were not always condoned by others; the Buddha goes on to say that those who worship the sūtra will be ridiculed for doing so, but by suffering ridicule they will destroy the great stores of negative karma accumulated over many lifetimes. The Buddha's exhortations seem to have been taken to heart. The recitation and copying of the sūtra was widely practised and miracle tales of the benefits of so doing were told across Asia.
      The sūtra is, above all, a discourse on the wisdom that shatters our ordinary conceptions, returning again and again to the negation of the fundamental elements of the dharma, suggesting that it is the very absence of self that is their true nature. (Schopen, "The Perfection of Wisdom," 450 ff.)

Citation

Schopen, Gregory, trans. "The Perfection of Wisdom." In Buddhist Scriptures, edited by Donald S. Lopez Jr., 450–63. London: Penguin Books, 2004.

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Works related to this item

1 Full translation of

Vajracchedikāprajñāpāramitāsūtra [वज्रच्छेदिकाप्रज्ञापारमितासूत्र]. 'phags pa shes rab kyi pha rol tu phyin pa rdo rje gcod pa zhes bya ba theg pa chen po'i mdo [འཕགས་པ་ཤེས་རབ་ཀྱི་ཕ་རོལ་ཏུ་ཕྱིན་པ་རྡོ་རྗེ་གཅོད་པ་ཞེས་བྱ་བ་ཐེག་པ་ཆེན་པོའི་མདོ།]. [The Sūtra on the Perfection of Wisdom "The Diamond Cutter" (84000)]. Translated by Bodhiruci, Śīlendrabodhi, Ye shes sde, Kumārajīva, Paramārtha, Dharmagupta, Yijing, Xuanzang. Kangyur, RKTSK 16 http://www.rkts.org/cat.php?id=16&typ=1.

Classical WorksAbout this item

One of the most revered and recited scriptures of the perfection of wisdom genre (prajñāpāramitāsūtras), perhaps second only to the Heart Sūtra, both of which became especially popular in the East Asian Buddhist traditions. It is a crucial source for Mahāyāna tenets of selflessness and the emptiness of phenomena, and its discourse is framed as an explanation of how to enter into the vehicle of the bodhisattvas by developing and sustaining their enlightened perspective.