A Buddhist Bible: The Favorite Scriptures Of The Zen Buddhist Sect

Book Review: A Buddhist Bible: The Favorite Scriptures of the Zen Sect

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It naturally came about, therefore, that the first serious popular acceptance of Buddhism was in the practice of Dhyana, and as the most popular subject for meditation and concentration was the Divine Name, with its promise of re-birth in the Pure Land, the later sects that go under that name, on the surface, appear to have a certain claim to priority.

But it is a question whether this earliest acceptance can rightly be called a "salvation by faith" type of Buddhism, for its emphasis on dhyana practice would mark it as a "meditation" type. Much depends on whether the phrase, "Na-moo-mitt o-fu" was used in those early days as a subject for meditation and concentration, or as a mantra with magic working powers.

Suzuki has discussed this question at length in his Essays in Zen Buddhism, Second Series, where it can be studied to advantage. The first name that emerges in this connection is Tao-an He was a notable monk, learned in both Confucian and Taoist lore and books of his are still extant dealing with these yoga practices of dhyana and commenting upon them.

It is easy to see from them that he looked upon these Indian practices as good working methods for attaining Taoist ideals of non-activity and non-desire. Tao-an left a disciple, Hui-yuan , who was also a great scholar and learned in Taoist mysticism. He is most remembered as the founder of a Buddhist center or fraternity near Kuling, known as the White Lotus Society, whose characteristic was their concentration on the Divine Name, in consequence of which he is commonly looked upon as the founder of the Pure Land Sects of China and Japan.

But history shows that he was more interested in the serious practise of dhyana and to him the repetition of the Divine Name was the best method for attaining concentration of mind. There was nothing new in the practice of dhyana; it had existed in India for a millennium and was taken over by Shakyamuni and given a new content of meaning as the Eighth Stage of his Noble Path.

As it appeared in China it was at first largely a practise of. The characteristic that now began to emerge in the teachings and interest of Tao-an and Hui-yuan was the more definite focusing of mind and its more energetic character. After Hui-yuan there came into prominence one of his disciples, Taoseng , who with his disciple, Tao-you, developed the doctrine of "Sudden Awakening," as against the almost universal belief in the "Gradual Attainment," that thereafter entered into Chinese Buddhism to condition its distinctive characteristic.

By this teaching the old conception of the gradual attainment of Buddhahood through myriads of kotis of re-births was challenged and in its place was offered, through the right concentration of dhyana, the possibility of sudden and perfect enlightenment. The Chinese Ch an Buddhism that came to monopolise the religious field was the mingling of these two distinctively Chinese elements: A more strenuous dhyana, and the possibility of a sudden awakening and attainment of enlightenment, with the Indian philosophy of the Mahayana. The next outstanding name, and the one to whom is usually given the chief credit for being the founder of Ch an Buddhism in China, is Bodhidharma.

He was an Indian monk of princely family who must have arrived in South China about A. This length of stay in China is much longer than is usually given but it appears to be necessary to account for all that is recorded concerning him. He must have been a most extraordinary man, a great personality, stubborn, taciturn, gruff and positive, but withal, honest, straightforward and clear minded. There are two incidents in his life that will bear repeating. Emperor Wu of Liang was very favorably inclined toward Buddhism; he founded temples, supported monks, and translated scriptures, but when he asked Bodhidharma during an interview what credit he had earned, the gruff old monk replied, "None whatever, your majesty.

To Bodhidharma, books, logical ideas, study, ritual, worship were useless; only simple but "seeking" and tireless "wall-gazing" was sufficient. All distinctions of self and not-self, comfort or discomfort, joy or suffering, desire or aversion, success or failure, and mental discrimination of all kinds must be ignored and left behind, in the sole effort to merge oneself with Mind-essence which alone is reality, Inasmuch as one's own inner conscience is Mind-essence, why seek for it elsewhere?

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This "treasure of the heart" is the only Buddha there ever was, or is, or ever will be. Dhyana cannot be understood by the definitions of the wise. Dhyana is a man's successful seeing into his own fundamental nature. I have no interest in monastic rules, nor ascetic practises, nor miraculous powers, nor merely sitting in meditation.

The reason for this exception was because that Sutra alone taught the doctrine of the Selfrealisation of the Oneness of all things in Mind-essence. When at last after nine years of "wall-gazing" he gained one disciple who understood him, Hui-k e. Bodhidharma gave him certain instruction that could only be transmitted from mind to mind, and gave him his beggingbowl and his robe and his copy of the Lankavatara Sutra, which.

There is a tradition that Bodhidharma soon after returned to India, but the place and time of his death is unknown. There is no doubt that at first and for a long time the "Sudden Awakening" Ch an school was a hard one to attend.

It was well over the border of asceticism and self-denial, with no marks of sympathy between Master and disciple to make it bearable, but from that hard school rose a succession of great Masters and deep experiences and an extraordinarily virulent social influence. Concerning the teachings of Bodhidharma and the Ch an sect, Dr.

A BUDDHIST BIBLE THE FAVORITE SCRIPTURES OF THE ZEN SECT

Suzuki quotes the following passage: Externally keep yourself away from all relationships, and internally cherish no hankerings in your heart. When your mind becomes like an upright wall that is, resistant to the entrance of discriminative ideas you will enter into the path. At first Hui-k e tried in various ways to explain to himself the reason of mind-only but failed to realise the truth itself.

The Master would say: Later on Hui-k e said to the Master, 'Now I know how to keep myself away from all relationships. Have no doubt about it. Hui-k e was very learned in the Chinese classics and also in the common lore of Buddhism; he seems to have come to Bodhidharma at first more to win his approval than with any great expectation of added instruction, but after he had attained his deep experience with Bodhidharma, he made light of his great learning, became very humble minded and earnestly' sought for perfect.

After the passing of Bodhidharma, Hui-k e did not at once assume leadership as the Second Patriarch, but withdrew to a hermitage in the mountains and lived quite humbly with the lowest classes of society. He did not shun preaching but tried to do it quietly and inconspicuously. He was finally murdered by an envious Master whose disciples Hui-k e had unintentionally drawn away. The Third Patriarch was Seng-ts an about whom very little is known. One tradition has it that he suffered from leprosy and therefore retired to a hermitage in the mountains. There is a record of his transmitting the begging-bowl and the robe to Tao-hsin.

Taohsin was also a recluse and very little is known of him except that he left a composition which has always been highly valued by disciples of Ch an Buddhism. The Fifth Patriarch was Hung-jen. It is recorded of him that he was a near neighbor or relative of Seng-ts an and came to be with him when quite young. With his assumption of the Patriarchate there was introduced a decided change in the character of the presentation of Ch an Buddhism. Hitherto the Patriarchs had been of a retiring disposition, or else the times had changed making it possible for the Masters to work more publicly and assemble disciples.

At any rate we find Hung-jen the head of a great establishment with hundreds of disciples and attaining imperial favor. Among the disciples of Hung-jen were two who afterwards came into great public notice; Hui-neng whose Sutra we shall study in the following chapters and Shen-hsui, who was second only in rank in the great monastery to Hung-jen.

Shen-hsui was a very learned man and a notable orator and teacher, but he was egoistic and deficient in the insight that marks the true Ch an Master. Hung-jen was aware of this and so when the time came for him to appoint a successor, he passed by Shen-hsui and appointed Hun-neng. Having failed in securing the coveted rank of Sixth Patriarch, Shen-hsui returned to the North from whence he had originally come and there established a rival school that for a time was very successful and he came to be highly honored by the Emperor. His school differed from that of Hung-jen and came to be known as the "Gradual Attainment," or Northern School of Ch an Buddhism, but at his death it was less successful and finally lost standing.

As we have already pointed out Buddhism as generally held was of the foreign type which had been presented by Indian monks and Indian scriptures. It was largely given up to a study of the various scriptures and an easy-going practice of dhyana. It was still a foreign religion, and only slightly affected by its Chinese environment. On the contrary Ch an Buddhism was not at all intellectual, was far from being easy-going, and had become profoundly influenced by Chinese Taoism and Chinese customs.

In closing this introductory chapter it is well to sum up the characteristics of Ch an Buddhism as they differed from the orthodox Buddhism of that early period. Negatively, it was more atheistic. Shakyamuni had been more agnostic concerning the nature of Reality, Nestorian Christianity was emphatically theistic, while Taoism was decidedly atheistic, looking upon Tao as being Ultimate Principle rather than personality.

Mahayanistic Buddhism in contact with the great theistic religions of Central Asia had grown to be more philosophic, looking upon Reality in its three phases of essence, principle, and transitory appearances as existing in a state of undifferentiated Oneness. In contact with the polytheism of India and the animistic spiritism of Tibet it had absorbed much of their love for differentiated images and ranks of divinities; but that was for the accommodation of its more ignorant believers than for its elite.

Under the influence of Taoism, Ch anism became at first quite decidedly atheistic and iconoclastic, shading off later on into a more tolerant attitude, but even down to today, Ch an in China and Zen in Japan make very little of their images which are used more for decoration than for worship. The deification of Shakyamuni Buddha that marked the Hinayana of Ceylon and Burma is almost entirely absent in Ch an; in fact, the adoration shown Amitabha is much more apparent, and images of Kwan-yin, Manjushri and Kasyapa are just as frequently seen, while adoration to the image of the Founder of each particular temple and even for the Master of the Founder, seems to be more sentimentally sincere and earnest.

Ch anists, intent in their strenuous practice of Dhyana, had found a more direct and immediate realisation of Reality and therein were satisfied. The same can be said of all the rest of the common paraphenalia of worship; they had no use for ritual, or public services, or prayer, or priests, or ranks of Dignity, or sentimentalism or emotionalism of any kind whatever. Everything had to give way to the one thing of self-realisation of Oneness.

The result of this contact of Indian Buddhism with Taoism, therefore, was to develop in Ch an a type of Buddhism that was coldly rational, experiential, positive and iconoclastic, and that led to a life of extreme simplicity, strict discipline, humility, industry, sympathy with all animate life, and to an equitable and cheerful peace of mind.

At first Ch an Buddhists had no temples of their own, nor organisations of any kind; they were either isolated individuals living a solitary life, or were groups of disciples gathered about a Master. This later developed into the calling of Ch an Masters to be the heads of monasteries belonging to other sects, and still later to the acquiring of their own monasteries and temples, with all their vested abbots of high degree, and ceremonial ritual and worldly pride.

Nevertheless, as of old, the true Ch an monk is more often to be found in some solitary hermitage, busy and cheerful at his manual work, humble and zealous at his practice of Dhyana, intent on the one goal of self-realisation of enlightenment, Nirvana and Buddhahood. While Bodhidharma is usually credited with being the founder of Ch an Buddhism and rightly so, it was Hui-neng the Sixth Patriarch who gave it more definite character and permanent form that time has tested and approved. Ch an Buddhism seems to have discerned the essentials of Shakyamuni's teachings and spirit better than any other sect, and to have developed their deeper implications more faithfully.

This development came through its contact with Chinese Taoism under the lead of Bodhidharma and Hui-neng, making it a virile and wholesome influence for all nations thereafter. Hui-yuan yielded to the seduction of the Divine Name and thereby gained the credit of being the founder of the Pure Land sects with all their glamour of "salvation by faith.

The outstanding features of Hui-neng's Ch an were as follows: Distrust of all Scriptures and dogmatic teachings. An enquiring mind and earnest search into the depths of one's own nature. Humble but positive faith in the possibilities of such an enquiring search, in a sudden self-realisation of enlightenment, Nirvana and Buddahood. The Pali canon was preserved in Sri Lanka where it was first written down in the first century BCE and the Theravadan Pali textual tradition developed there. Important examples of non-canonical Pali texts are the Visuddhimagga , by Buddhaghosa , which is a compendium of Theravada teachings and the Mahavamsa , a historical Sri Lankan chronicle.

The earliest known Buddhist manuscripts , recovered from the ancient civilization of Gandhara in north central Pakistan near Taxila just south west of the capital Islamabad are dated to the 1st century and constitute the Buddhist textual tradition of Gandharan Buddhism which was an important link between Indian and East Asian Buddhism. After the rise of the Kushans in India, Sanskrit was also widely used to record Buddhist texts.

Sanskrit Buddhist literature later became the dominant tradition in India until the decline of Buddhism in India. The Mahayana sutras are traditionally considered by Mahayanists to be the word of the Buddha, but transmitted either in secret, via lineages of supernatural beings such as the nagas , or revealed directly from other Buddhas or bodhisattvas. In the Mahayana tradition there are important works termed Shastras , or treatises which attempt to outline the sutra teachings and defend or expand on them. The works of important Buddhist philosophers like Nagarjuna , Vasubandhu and Dharmakirti are generally termed Shastras, and were written in Sanskrit.

The late Seventh century saw the rise of another new class of Buddhist texts, the Tantras , which outlined new ritual practices and yogic techniques such as the use of Mandalas , Mudras and Fire sacrifices. The division of texts into the traditional three yanas may obscure the process of development that went on, and there is some overlap in the traditional classifications.

For instance, there are so-called proto-Mahayana texts, such as the Ajitasena Sutra , which are missing key features that are associated with Mahayana texts. Some Pali texts also contain ideas that later became synonymous with the Mahayana. At least some editions of the Kangyur include the Heart Sutra in the tantra division.

Some Buddhist texts evolved to become a virtual canon in themselves, and are referred to as vaipulya or extensive sutras. The Flower Garland Sutra is an example of a single sutra made up of other sutras, many of which, particularly the Gandavyuha Sutra still circulate as separate texts. Tibetan Buddhism has a unique and special class of texts called terma Tibetan: These are texts or ritual objects, etc.

Many of the terma texts are said to have been written by Padmasambhava , who is particularly important to the Nyingmas. Probably the best known terma text is the so-called Tibetan book of the dead , the Bardo Thodol. The Chinese Buddhist canon contains a complete collection of early sutras in Chinese translation, their content is very similar to the Pali, differing in detail but not in the core doctrinal content. Parts of what is likely to be the canon of the Dharmaguptaka can be found amongst the Gandharan Buddhist Texts.

Several early versions of the Vinaya Pitaka from various schools are also kept in the Chinese Mahayana Canon. The vinaya literature is primarily concerned with aspects of the monastic discipline. However, vinaya as a term is also contrasted with Dharma, where the pair Dhamma-Vinaya mean something like 'doctrine and discipline'. The vinaya literature in fact contains a considerable range of texts. There are, of course, those that discuss the monastic rules, how they came about, how they developed, and how they were applied. But the vinaya also contains some doctrinal expositions, ritual and liturgical texts, biographical stories, and some elements of the " Jatakas ", or birth stories.

Paradoxically, the text most closely associated with the vinaya, and the most frequently used portion of it, the Pratimoksha , is in itself not a canonical text in Theravada, even though almost all of it can be found in the canon. This doctrine was later taken up by the Mahayana in a modified form as Vasubandhu 's Ten Stages Sutra.

The Sutras Sanskrit ; Pali Sutta are mostly discourses attributed to the Buddha or one of his close disciples. They are all, even those not actually spoken by him, considered to be Buddhavacana , the word of the Buddha, just as in the case of all canonical literature. The Buddha's discourses were perhaps originally organised according to the style in which they were delivered.

There were originally nine, but later twelve, of these. The Sanskrit forms are:. The first nine are listed in all surviving agamas, with the other three added in some later sources. In Theravada, at least, they are regarded as a classification of the whole of the scriptures, not just suttas.

The scheme is also found in Mahayana texts.

A Buddhist Bible

However, some time later a new organizational scheme was imposed on the canon, which is now the most familiar. The scheme organises the suttas into:. These range in length up to 95 pages.

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These are the rest of the sutras of any length, and the Pali Majjhima Nikaya has suttas. This grouping consists of many short texts connected by theme, setting, or interlocutor. The Pali Samyutta Nikaya contains more than 2, sutras. Sutras with the same number of doctrinal items, comprise over 2, suttas in the Pali Anguttara Nikaya. Not all schools had this category, but the Pali Khuddaka Nikaya has several well-known and loved texts, including:.

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Many of these texts are available in translation as well as in the original language. The Dhammapada, for instance, has a Pali version, three Chinese versions, a Tibetan version, and a Khotanese version. Abhidharma in Pali , Abhidhamma means 'further Dharma' and is concerned with the analysis of phenomena.

It grew initially out of various lists of teachings such as the 37 Bodhipaksika-dharmas or the 37 Factors leading to Awakening. The Abhidharma literature is chiefly concerned with the analysis of phenomena and the relationships between them. Outside of the Theravada monasteries the Pali Abhidharma texts are not well known. Not all schools accepted the Abhidharma as canonical. The rejection by some schools that dharmas i. It is a compendium of doctrine, and covers a range of subjects. It is included in some editions of the Pali Canon. Other early texts which are usually not considered 'canonical' are the Nettipakarana and the Petakopadesa - "The Book of Guidance" and "Instruction on the Pitaka".

They were mostly the work of Buddhist Yoga teachers from Kashmir and were influential in Chinese Buddhism. The Pali texts have an extensive commentarial literature much of which is still untranslated. There are also sub-commentaries tikka or commentaries on the commentaries. Buddhaghosa was also the author of the Visuddhimagga , or Path of Purification , which is a manual of doctrine and practice according to the Mahavihara tradition of Sri Lanka and according to Nanamoli Bhikkhu is regarded as "the principal non-canonical authority of the Theravada.

Another highly influential Pali Theravada work is the Abhidhammattha-sangaha 11th or 12th century , a short introductory summary to the Abhidhamma. Buddhaghosa is known to have worked from Buddhist commentaries in the Sri Lankan Sinhala language , which are now lost. There are numerous Tantric Theravada texts, mostly from Southeast Asia. Burmese Buddhist literature developed unique poetic forms form the s onwards, a major type of poetry is the pyui' long and embellished translations of Pali Buddhist works, mainly jatakas.

A famous example of pyui' poetry is the Kui khan pyui' the pyui' in nine sections, Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers. Learn more about Amazon Giveaway. Set up a giveaway. What other items do customers buy after viewing this item? Feedback If you need help or have a question for Customer Service, contact us. Would you like to report poor quality or formatting in this book? Click here Would you like to report this content as inappropriate?

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