Sutras
9 posts
- 1
Heart Sutra - Seeing the Five Aggregates as Empty
A guide to the Heart Sutra, the 260-character scripture chanted daily for nearly fourteen hundred years. What the five empty aggregates and form-is-emptiness mean, what the chain of negations aims at, the five-part structure with the full Chinese text and an English rendering, and the gate gate mantra.
- 2
Diamond Sutra - The Wisdom of Letting Go
An accessible introduction to the Diamond Sutra's core teachings and modern relevance
- 3
Five Commentaries on the Diamond Sutra - One Line, Five Answers
The Wujia jie sets five commentaries under the same line of scripture: Fu Dashi's verses, Huineng's plain gloss, Zongmi's scholastic essentials, Yefu's one-line ripostes and songs, and Zongjing's sermon outline. Here is how the five voices diverge, why Hamheo in early Joseon added a sixth, and how the book came to be translated into Korean on a king's dying instruction.
- 4
Platform Sutra - Three Verses on a Wall
The most quoted line of Huineng's verse, "fundamentally there is not a single thing," does not appear in the oldest Dunhuang manuscript of the Platform Sutra. Here the verses of the Dunhuang, Huixin, and Zongbao editions are set side by side in the original Chinese, along with the sudden and gradual framing of South and North, the teachings on concentration, wisdom, and no-thought, and the Korean life of the text, from the name Jogye and Jinul to the Deyi edition and its Hangul translation.
- 5
Vimalakirti Sutra - The Thunder of Silence
An accessible introduction to the Vimalakirti Sutra's teachings on non-duality and lay enlightenment
- 6
Lotus Sutra - Everyone Can Become a Buddha
An accessible introduction to the Lotus Sutra's teachings on universal Buddha-nature and skillful means
- 7
Fahua Wenju - Reading One Line Four Times
Zhiyi lectured on the Lotus Sutra at Guangzhai Temple in 587, and the record became the Fahua Wenju. It reads each line of the sutra four ways: by causes and conditions, by doctrinal classification, by trace and origin, and by contemplating the mind. Here is what those four modes are, how the trace and origin division cuts the sutra's twenty-eight chapters in half, and why the fourth mode is unlike the other three.
- 8
Flower Garland Sutra - Everything Is Connected
An accessible introduction to the Avataṃsaka Sūtra's vision of universal interconnectedness
- 9
Awakening of Faith - Enlightenment and Delusion Share One Root
An accessible introduction to the Awakening of Faith's teachings on One Mind and tathāgatagarbha