01:840:369 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, Ten Stages Sutra, Sandhinirmocana Sutra
18 Oct 2018
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Tuesday, October 9, 2018
Mahayana: The Great Vehicle
Origins of Mahayana Buddhism
•Recent scholarship tends to stress the fact that Mahayana was not in origin a
sectarian movement.
•Rather than causing a schism with the Sangha, Mahayana teachings were esoteric
teachings of interest to small groups of monks from various of the ancient schools.
•While earlier scholarship has tended to represented Mahayana as a movement
inspired by popular lay religiosity and stupa worship, more recent scholarship has
suggested that we might see the origins of the Mahayana in the activity of forest-
dwelling ascetic monks attempting to return to the ideals of original Buddhism. Other
writers have also connected the rise of the Mahayana with a growing cult of the book.
Most Important Mahayana sutras
•Sutras setting out the stages of the bodhisattva path: the Bodhisattva-pitaka, the
Dasabhumika Sutra.
•The ‘perfection of wisdom’ (prajna-paramtia) sutras.
•The ‘ideas only’ (vijnapti-matra) sutras: Samdhinirmocana Sutra
•The ‘embryo of the Tathagatha (tathagatagarbha) stras: the Tathagatagarbha Sutra,
Mahaparinirvana Sutra, Lankavatara Sutra
•Two sutras of particular importance in East Asian Buddhism: Lotus Sutra and
Avatamsaka Sutra
•The ‘pure land’ sutras
•Meditation sutras
Bodhisattva Ideal
•The traditional notion of the arhat is that he becomes awakened and then effectively
disappears from samsara; the bodhisattva, on the other hand, spends many aeons in
saw1sara perfecting spiritual qualities, and, in the process, working for the benefit of
sentient beings; eventually he become a fully awakened buddha. In choosing the path
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Tuesday, October 9, 2018
of the bodhisattva, a practitioner forgoes one’s own immediate release from suffering,
as an arhat, in order to become a buddha and teach the path to the cessation of
suffering to other beings.
•For the Mahayana, however, the path to arhatship appears tainted wit ha residual
selfishness since it lacks the motivation of the great compassion of the bodhisattva,
and ultimately the only legitimate way of Buddhist practice is the bodhisattva path.
Hinayana vs. Mahayana
•The difference between hinayana and mahayana is effectively the difference between
progressive stages of the same path.
•At the beginning of the path we are almost inevitably primarily motivated by the wish
to rid ourselves of our own individual suffering; it is only as we progress along the path
that we come to understand that suffering is above all something that beings share in
common; with the dawning of this realization we are moved by compassion and the
desire to help others; our motivation for following the path shifts and we enter the
Mahayana proper. The bodhisattva thus at once turns away from samsara as a place
of suffering and at the same time turns back towards it out of compassion for the
suffering of the world.
Perfection of Wisdom
•Wisdom and compassion are the two great themes of Mahayana thought.
•In the century or so prior to the appearance of the Perfect of Wisdom literature,
Buddhism, had, in the form of Abhidharma, begun to evolve increasingly detailed and
sophisticated theoretical accounts of the nature of reality and of the stages of the path
to awakening.
•Central to the Abhidharma is the distinction between the conventional truth (that
persons and selves exist) and the ultimate truth (that persons and selves are
ultimately simply aggregates of evanescent dharma-physical and mental events). The
main teaching of the Perfection of Wisdom is that, from the perspective of perfect
wisdom, even this account of the way things are is ultimately arbitrary.
•Abhidharma theory and the associated meditations provide a way of getting behind
appearance to a world that is quite different from the one ordinarily experienced - a
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Document Summary
Other writers have also connected the rise of the mahayana with a growing cult of the book. Most important mahayana sutras: sutras setting out the stages of the bodhisattva path: the bodhisattva-pitaka, the. Dasabhumika sutra: the perfection of wisdom" (prajna-paramtia) sutras, the ideas only" (vijnapti-matra) sutras: samdhinirmocana sutra, the embryo of the tathagatha (tathagatagarbha) stras: the tathagatagarbha sutra, Mahaparinirvana sutra, lankavatara sutra: two sutras of particular importance in east asian buddhism: lotus sutra and. Avatamsaka sutra: the pure land" sutras, meditation sutras. The bodhisattva thus at once turns away from samsara as a place of suffering and at the same time turns back towards it out of compassion for the suffering of the world. Perfection of wisdom: wisdom and compassion are the two great themes of mahayana thought, in the century or so prior to the appearance of the perfect of wisdom literature,
