Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra
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Description
The Kannon-gyo is chapter 25 of the Lotus Sutra, and its focus is the bodhisattva of compassion, Avalokiteshvara, known in China as Guanyin, and in Japan as Kannon or Kanzeon. The text describes the many ways in which calling out the bodhisattva’s name—Namu Kanzeon Bosatsu—can relieve suffering.
Most schools of Zen Buddhism, and especially the Soto school, eschew such practices as chanting the names of buddhas and bodhisattvas, along with venerating such figures.
The eminent Soto Zen master Kosho Uchiyama Roshi, however, while doing hard physical labor early in his career, could not practice zazen—that is, formal sitting meditation. He came to appreciate the Kannon-gyo and the practices related to it. In particular, he took to reciting Kannon’s name, as recommended in the text of the Kannon-gyo.
Later in life, Uchiyama Roshi suffered from illness that again prevented him from practicing formal Zen, so he returned to the Kannon-gyo and the practice of chanting. He went so far as to assert that chanting Kannon’s name is completely equivalent to zazen, that the two practices are simply two sides of the same coin—a revolutionary idea seemingly at odds with Zen.
Chanting practice is especially accessible, as it can be done while working, traveling, or suffering from illness, and other activities that would ordinarily get in the way of formal Zen practice.
With these practices, the Kannon-gyo, and Kannon herself as a backdrop, Uchiyama Roshi muses about the purposes of religion, the goals of religious practice, and the meaning of enlightenment—and their relation to suffering itself. (Source: Wisdom Publications)
Fragments 1–2 are small, irregularly shaped pieces too damaged to yield a coherent sense or textual identification; Fragment 1 is tentatively judged the oldest of the set on paleographic grounds.
Fragment 3 is rhomboid, in a slanting Gupta script, and represents a discourse between the Buddha and Kāśyapa on the four classes of "false ascetics" (duḥśīlaśīlavatpratirūpakāḥ), correlated with dhūtaguṇa lists in the Dharmasaṃgraha and Mahāvyutpatti.
Fragment 4 is a complete leaf, badly damaged, containing a metrical portion (verses 8–16) dealing with bodhisattvas adorned with the four dharmas, with a partial parallel noted in Mahāvastu II; the prose section on the reverse could not be matched to a known text.
Fragment 5 is identified as a portion of the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka, corresponding to the printed text pp. 40¹⁶–41¹⁴, with the fragment's readings differing only slightly from the edition.
Fragment 6 (Plates III–IV) is identified as a portion of the Suvarṇaprabhāsa, corresponding to parivarta 14 and to p. 68⁹ ff. of Rai Sarat Chandra Śāstri's 1898 edition (Buddhist Texts Society of India, Calcutta). Reuter transcribes and restores the fragment's stanzas (numbered 27–32 in the source), comparing its readings against Śāstri's printed edition line by line and noting divergences in wording, meter, and vocabulary.
Fragment 7 (Plate V) corresponds to a passage in the Śatasāhasrikāprajñāpāramitā, 11th parivarta, but the fragment distributes the same text over two differently-numbered parivartas and shows enough divergence from the printed edition to suggest it belongs to a different manuscript recension, possibly related to Fragment 8.
Fragment 8 (Plate VI) is a complete leaf (numbered 147) closely allied to the Śatasāhasrikāprajñāpāramitā, opening with the bodhisattva Subhūti's questions to the Buddha on the "dream-like" and "illusion-like" nature of phenomena, and possibly forming part of the same textual tradition as Fragment 7, though not the same manuscript.
Fragment 9 (Plate VII) could not be identified with any known text; its general argument concerns the invincibility of an irreversible (avaivartika) bodhisattva's mind against the hosts of Māra, illustrated by the simile of a lapis lazuli gem placed amid glass beads, whose luster the glass cannot eclipse.
Fragment 10 (Plate I) is a small, bilingual Sanskrit-Khotanese piece, difficult to read, containing scattered decipherable words in both languages.
Fragment 11 (Plates VIII–IX) is a Khotanese-language piece naming the otherwise rare bodhisattva Bhaiṣajasena, offering philological comparanda with other known Khotanese Buddhist manuscripts (the Stein collection and the Godfrey manuscripts), and providing material for Reuter's discussion of Khotanese numerals, loanwords from Sanskrit, and verb morphology.
Lopez traces the many roles the Lotus Sutra has played in its travels through Asia, Europe, and across the seas to America. The story begins in India, where it was one of the early Mahayana sutras, which sought to redefine the Buddhist path. In the centuries that followed, the text would have a profound influence in China and Japan, and would go on to play a central role in the European discovery of Buddhism. It was the first Buddhist sutra to be translated from Sanskrit into a Western language—into French in 1844 by the eminent scholar Eugène Burnouf. That same year, portions of the Lotus Sutra appeared in English in The Dial, the journal of New England's Transcendentalists. Lopez provides a balanced account of the many controversies surrounding the text and its teachings, and describes how the book has helped to shape the popular image of the Buddha today. He explores how it was read by major literary figures such as Henry David Thoreau and Gustave Flaubert, and how it was used to justify self-immolation in China and political extremism in Japan.
Concise and authoritative, this is the essential introduction to the life and afterlife of a timeless masterpiece. (Source: Princeton University Press)
In his comprehensive study of the development of the tathāgatagarbha teaching, J. Takasaki also deals with the sūtra which bears the name of this Mahāyāna philosophical current.[1] The Tathāgatagarbhasūtra (TGS) has generally been referred to as the earliest expression of this doctrine and the term tathāgatagarbha itself seems to have been coined by this very sūtra. In this paper I intend to introduce the textual history and doctrinal content of the TGS and offer some speculations concerning the possible motivations lying behind its compilation. By pointing out some interesting parallels concerning the structure and formulations in the Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra (SP), I shall then suggest that the SP and the TGS carry a similar compositional line. Finally, I shall determine the position and role of the TGS in Mahāyāna Buddhism as a sūtra presupposing the doctrine of the SP and providing its metaphysical foundation. (Zimmermann, introductory remarks, 143–44)
Notes
- Jikidō Takasaki 高崎直道, Nyoraizō shisō no keisei (Formation of the Tathāgatagarbha Theory), Tokyo 1974 (Shunjū-sha): pp. 40–68.
The Lotus Sutra, arguably the most important Buddhist scripture in East Asia, contains a famous story about bodhisattvas (enlightening beings) who emerge from under the earth to preserve and expound the Lotus teaching in the distant future. The story reveals that the Buddha only appears to pass away, but actually has been practicing, and will continue to do so, over an inconceivably long life span.
Leighton traces commentaries on the Lotus Sutra from a range of key East Asian Buddhist thinkers, including Daosheng, Zhiyi, Zhanran, Saigyo, Myōe, Nichiren, Hakuin, and Ryōkan. But his main focus is Eihei Dōgen, the 13th century Japanese Sōtō Zen founder who imported Zen from China, and whose profuse, provocative, and poetic writings are important to the modern expansion of Buddhism to the West.
Dōgen's use of this sutra expresses the critical role of Mahayana vision and imagination as the context of Zen teaching, and his interpretations of this story furthermore reveal his dynamic worldview of the earth, space, and time themselves as vital agents of spiritual awakening.
Leighton argues that Dōgen uses the images and metaphors in this story to express his own religious worldview, in which earth, space, and time are lively agents in the bodhisattva project. Broader awareness of Dōgen's worldview and its implications, says Leighton, can illuminate the possibilities for contemporary approaches to primary Mahayana concepts and practices. (Source: Oxford University Press)
Fragments 1–2 are small, irregularly shaped pieces too damaged to yield a coherent sense or textual identification; Fragment 1 is tentatively judged the oldest of the set on paleographic grounds.
Fragment 3 is rhomboid, in a slanting Gupta script, and represents a discourse between the Buddha and Kāśyapa on the four classes of "false ascetics" (duḥśīlaśīlavatpratirūpakāḥ), correlated with dhūtaguṇa lists in the Dharmasaṃgraha and Mahāvyutpatti.
Fragment 4 is a complete leaf, badly damaged, containing a metrical portion (verses 8–16) dealing with bodhisattvas adorned with the four dharmas, with a partial parallel noted in Mahāvastu II; the prose section on the reverse could not be matched to a known text.
Fragment 5 is identified as a portion of the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka, corresponding to the printed text pp. 40¹⁶–41¹⁴, with the fragment's readings differing only slightly from the edition.
Fragment 6 (Plates III–IV) is identified as a portion of the Suvarṇaprabhāsa, corresponding to parivarta 14 and to p. 68⁹ ff. of Rai Sarat Chandra Śāstri's 1898 edition (Buddhist Texts Society of India, Calcutta). Reuter transcribes and restores the fragment's stanzas (numbered 27–32 in the source), comparing its readings against Śāstri's printed edition line by line and noting divergences in wording, meter, and vocabulary.
Fragment 7 (Plate V) corresponds to a passage in the Śatasāhasrikāprajñāpāramitā, 11th parivarta, but the fragment distributes the same text over two differently-numbered parivartas and shows enough divergence from the printed edition to suggest it belongs to a different manuscript recension, possibly related to Fragment 8.
Fragment 8 (Plate VI) is a complete leaf (numbered 147) closely allied to the Śatasāhasrikāprajñāpāramitā, opening with the bodhisattva Subhūti's questions to the Buddha on the "dream-like" and "illusion-like" nature of phenomena, and possibly forming part of the same textual tradition as Fragment 7, though not the same manuscript.
Fragment 9 (Plate VII) could not be identified with any known text; its general argument concerns the invincibility of an irreversible (avaivartika) bodhisattva's mind against the hosts of Māra, illustrated by the simile of a lapis lazuli gem placed amid glass beads, whose luster the glass cannot eclipse.
Fragment 10 (Plate I) is a small, bilingual Sanskrit-Khotanese piece, difficult to read, containing scattered decipherable words in both languages.
Fragment 11 (Plates VIII–IX) is a Khotanese-language piece naming the otherwise rare bodhisattva Bhaiṣajasena, offering philological comparanda with other known Khotanese Buddhist manuscripts (the Stein collection and the Godfrey manuscripts), and providing material for Reuter's discussion of Khotanese numerals, loanwords from Sanskrit, and verb morphology.
This dissertation provides a comprehensive study and complete translation of Tao-sheng's Commentary on the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka-sūtra (CSPS). This document occupies an important place in Chinese Buddhist literature. Its significance in the study of Chinese Buddhism can be described in two ways. Firstly, the CSPS was the first commentary ever written on the Lotus Sūtra, which was to become a scripture of fundamental importance on the Far Eastern Buddhist scene, especially for the later Chinese Buddhist schools. Furthermore, it was the first commentary on any Buddhist scripture that was written in Chinese and structured in fully developed commentarial form. The CSPS set a pattern in many ways for later Buddhists to follow in terms of both structure and ideology.
Secondly, the CSPS is a rich source of Tao-sheng's seminal ideas. Tao-sheng (ca. 360-434) has been regarded, both in his time and subsequently, as a uniquely creative and prophetic thinker. The CSPS, the only writing of Tao-sheng preserved in complete form, is essential to any study of Tao-sheng's own original thought. Most of his theses and arguments, which were controversial in his day, were originally propounded in his other writings, but the commentary may provide at least the general structure of Tao-sheng's thought.
The thesis is composed of two main portions: "Study" (Part I-IV) and "Translation" (Part V). Part I sets out and clarifies the problems involved in the study of Tao-sheng, the aims and method of the present study. Part II as the introductory step to the main task involving the CSPS extensively examines Tao-sheng as a whole as reflected in other sources, in terms of his background, historical and biographical, his works, his doctrines, and his influence. Part III is devoted to a critical examination of the CSPS proper. Here I undertake an in-depth analysis in several different ways in respect with both form and content, or language and ideology. The analysis focuses on how Tao-sheng renders, successfully or otherwise, the ancient Indian system of religious thought into the current Chinese language, which was already laden with indigenous philosophical connotations. Here I also trace and reconstruct Tao-sheng's thought incorporated in the commentary in accordance with his distinct themes. Part IV reviews the findings and significance of the study conducted. In brief, the thesis is the first full-scale study of Tao-sheng and the commentary.
Finally, a complete translation of the text is presented along with detailed annotations including the classical sources of Chinese philosophical terms used and numerous corruptions of the text. In light of the significance of Tao-sheng and the CSPS, the translation answers the need for a complete translation of the text into a modern language and will serve as a basis for further study.
Lopez traces the many roles the Lotus Sutra has played in its travels through Asia, Europe, and across the seas to America. The story begins in India, where it was one of the early Mahayana sutras, which sought to redefine the Buddhist path. In the centuries that followed, the text would have a profound influence in China and Japan, and would go on to play a central role in the European discovery of Buddhism. It was the first Buddhist sutra to be translated from Sanskrit into a Western language—into French in 1844 by the eminent scholar Eugène Burnouf. That same year, portions of the Lotus Sutra appeared in English in The Dial, the journal of New England's Transcendentalists. Lopez provides a balanced account of the many controversies surrounding the text and its teachings, and describes how the book has helped to shape the popular image of the Buddha today. He explores how it was read by major literary figures such as Henry David Thoreau and Gustave Flaubert, and how it was used to justify self-immolation in China and political extremism in Japan.
Concise and authoritative, this is the essential introduction to the life and afterlife of a timeless masterpiece. (Source: Princeton University Press)
The Kannon-gyo is chapter 25 of the Lotus Sutra, and its focus is the bodhisattva of compassion, Avalokiteshvara, known in China as Guanyin, and in Japan as Kannon or Kanzeon. The text describes the many ways in which calling out the bodhisattva’s name—Namu Kanzeon Bosatsu—can relieve suffering.
Most schools of Zen Buddhism, and especially the Soto school, eschew such practices as chanting the names of buddhas and bodhisattvas, along with venerating such figures.
The eminent Soto Zen master Kosho Uchiyama Roshi, however, while doing hard physical labor early in his career, could not practice zazen—that is, formal sitting meditation. He came to appreciate the Kannon-gyo and the practices related to it. In particular, he took to reciting Kannon’s name, as recommended in the text of the Kannon-gyo.
Later in life, Uchiyama Roshi suffered from illness that again prevented him from practicing formal Zen, so he returned to the Kannon-gyo and the practice of chanting. He went so far as to assert that chanting Kannon’s name is completely equivalent to zazen, that the two practices are simply two sides of the same coin—a revolutionary idea seemingly at odds with Zen.
Chanting practice is especially accessible, as it can be done while working, traveling, or suffering from illness, and other activities that would ordinarily get in the way of formal Zen practice.
With these practices, the Kannon-gyo, and Kannon herself as a backdrop, Uchiyama Roshi muses about the purposes of religion, the goals of religious practice, and the meaning of enlightenment—and their relation to suffering itself. (Source: Wisdom Publications)In his comprehensive study of the development of the tathāgatagarbha teaching, J. Takasaki also deals with the sūtra which bears the name of this Mahāyāna philosophical current.[1] The Tathāgatagarbhasūtra (TGS) has generally been referred to as the earliest expression of this doctrine and the term tathāgatagarbha itself seems to have been coined by this very sūtra. In this paper I intend to introduce the textual history and doctrinal content of the TGS and offer some speculations concerning the possible motivations lying behind its compilation. By pointing out some interesting parallels concerning the structure and formulations in the Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra (SP), I shall then suggest that the SP and the TGS carry a similar compositional line. Finally, I shall determine the position and role of the TGS in Mahāyāna Buddhism as a sūtra presupposing the doctrine of the SP and providing its metaphysical foundation. (Zimmermann, introductory remarks, 143–44)
Notes
- Jikidō Takasaki 高崎直道, Nyoraizō shisō no keisei (Formation of the Tathāgatagarbha Theory), Tokyo 1974 (Shunjū-sha): pp. 40–68.
The Lotus Sutra, arguably the most important Buddhist scripture in East Asia, contains a famous story about bodhisattvas (enlightening beings) who emerge from under the earth to preserve and expound the Lotus teaching in the distant future. The story reveals that the Buddha only appears to pass away, but actually has been practicing, and will continue to do so, over an inconceivably long life span.
Leighton traces commentaries on the Lotus Sutra from a range of key East Asian Buddhist thinkers, including Daosheng, Zhiyi, Zhanran, Saigyo, Myōe, Nichiren, Hakuin, and Ryōkan. But his main focus is Eihei Dōgen, the 13th century Japanese Sōtō Zen founder who imported Zen from China, and whose profuse, provocative, and poetic writings are important to the modern expansion of Buddhism to the West.
Dōgen's use of this sutra expresses the critical role of Mahayana vision and imagination as the context of Zen teaching, and his interpretations of this story furthermore reveal his dynamic worldview of the earth, space, and time themselves as vital agents of spiritual awakening.
Leighton argues that Dōgen uses the images and metaphors in this story to express his own religious worldview, in which earth, space, and time are lively agents in the bodhisattva project. Broader awareness of Dōgen's worldview and its implications, says Leighton, can illuminate the possibilities for contemporary approaches to primary Mahayana concepts and practices. (Source: Oxford University Press)
