Unit 17 · The Texts in Life, and Capstone

The Heart Sutra is one of the shortest and best-known Mahayana texts. In the common Chinese version, credited to the monk Xuanzang in the seventh century, it has about 260 characters. It teaches, through the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, that form is emptiness and emptiness is form. It ends with a mantra. Monks and laypeople across East Asia recite it daily.

Copying sutras is an old devotional act. Some Mahayana sutras, such as the Lotus Sutra, praise the merit of copying them. In Japan, shakyo, sutra copying, is practiced at temples and at home. A person grinds ink, sits quietly and copies the Heart Sutra character by character with a brush, often over a faint model. Many temples accept the finished copies as offerings.

This practice treats the text as more than information. The act of copying is itself valued, and the finished page is treated with care. In the eighth century, Japanese court workshops copied thousands of sutra scrolls. Today calligraphers also make Heart Sutra art. Buddhists often ask that such art be displayed respectfully, not on floors or in bathrooms.

Some of the most important uses of Buddhist texts come at death. In Theravada countries, monks chant passages from the Abhidhamma and suttas at funerals and memorial rites. A common verse says that conditioned things are impermanent and that their calming is happiness. Families offer food and robes to monks and share the merit with the dead.

In Japanese Jodo Shinshu and other Pure Land temples, ministers chant from the Pure Land sutras and recite nembutsu, Namu Amida Butsu, the name of Amida Buddha. Families gather at memorial services held on set anniversaries after a death. The Buddhist Temple of Chicago, a Jodo Shinshu-rooted community, holds such services for its members.

In Tibetan traditions, a lama may read the text known in English as the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the Bardo Thodol, to guide a dying or dead person through the bardo, the in-between state. It was first translated into English by Kazi Dawa Samdup and edited by W.Y. Evans-Wentz in 1927. Each tradition chooses texts that match its teaching about death.

The Lotus Sutra is a Mahayana sutra that teaches, among other things, that all beings can become Buddhas and that the Buddha’s life is vast beyond measure. It was translated into Chinese by Kumarajiva in 406 CE. East Asian Buddhists have honored it for centuries, and Tiantai thinkers placed it at the summit of the sutras.

In thirteenth-century Japan, the monk Nichiren (1222 to 1282) taught that chanting the sutra’s title, Namu Myoho Renge Kyo, contains the whole of its power. Nichiren Buddhists today, including members of Soka Gakkai International and Nichiren Shu temples, chant the title, the daimoku, often before a scroll called the Gohonzon.

Here the text lives most fully in a phrase. Nichiren Buddhists believe chanting it expresses and awakens Buddha-nature. Soka Gakkai has members in many countries, including the United States. Scholars note how this practice differs from Theravada study of the suttas, and see both as ways of treating a text as a living presence.

A mandala in Tibetan Buddhism is a diagram of a sacred world: the palace of a Buddha or deity, seen from above. Its forms follow tantric texts and ritual manuals, and monks spend years learning to draw them. Sand mandalas are one kind; others are painted on cloth, called thangkas, or built in three dimensions.

One often-made sand mandala is that of Kalachakra, the Wheel of Time. The Dalai Lama has given the Kalachakra initiation many times, including in the United States. Making the mandala is itself a ritual, begun and ended with chanting. The monks describe it as consecrating the space and blessing those who see it.

The dissolution is part of the practice. Monks explain it as a teaching on impermanence and as a way of spreading blessing, especially when the sand goes into flowing water. Museum visitors often see it as art. Monks usually welcome visitors while asking for quiet respect. Scholars note that the museum setting adds new meanings while the ritual keeps its own.

The earliest Buddhist monuments are stupas, mounds over relics, as the Mahaparinibbana Sutta describes. At Sanchi and Bharhut, carvings from the last centuries BCE show scenes of the Buddha’s life. But in many of them, the Buddha himself is not shown as a person. Instead there is an empty seat, a tree, footprints, a wheel or a parasol.

Scholars long called this aniconic art, art without images, and debated why. Some thought early Buddhists avoided showing the Buddha. Others, such as Susan Huntington, argued that some scenes show later worship at sacred sites rather than the Buddha himself. The debate continues. It is a good case of scholars reading the same evidence in different ways.

Around the first century CE, images of the Buddha in human form appear in two regions: Gandhara, in today’s Pakistan and Afghanistan, with Greek-influenced styles, and Mathura, in northern India. From then on, the Buddha image spread across Asia in countless styles. Buddhists treat these images with deep respect, as reminders of the Buddha and, for many, as objects of devotion that are consecrated in ritual.

Buddha statues are sold in garden centers, used as bar decor and printed on swimwear. For many Buddhists, this is painful. A consecrated image in a temple is treated as a presence: people bow, offer flowers and light, and place it high. Seeing the same form on a floor, near shoes or in a bathroom can feel like disrespect toward a teacher.

Some countries have acted. Sri Lanka has rules on the display and sale of Buddha images and has turned away tourists with visible Buddha tattoos. Thailand has campaigned against using Buddha heads as decoration and restricts the export of Buddha images. Buddhist groups in Asia and the United States have protested products that use the Buddha as a joke or mascot.

Views vary. Some Buddhist teachers say the image is a reminder, and its presence anywhere can plant a good seed. Others ask that it always be placed high, kept clean and never used for profit or jokes. A respectful rule of thumb from many temples: treat an image as you would treat a picture of a revered teacher. This course follows that norm.

In 1979, Jon Kabat-Zinn founded the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. His Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, MBSR, drew on Buddhist teachings about sati, mindfulness, and on meditation he had learned from Zen and Theravada teachers. He presented it in secular terms for patients with pain and stress.

MBSR and programs based on it spread widely. Hospitals, the military, businesses and many schools now offer them. Researchers have studied their effects, with results that are promising in some areas and mixed or uncertain in others. Public schools that use such programs usually present them as secular skills for attention and calm, not as religious practice.

Buddhist and scholarly responses vary. Some Buddhist teachers welcome mindfulness as a gift that reduces suffering. Others, and critics such as Ronald Purser in McMindfulness (2019), argue that removing ethics and the path turns a religious practice into a tool for productivity. Some Asian American Buddhists note that the Asian teachers behind the practice are often left out. Describing these views is itself a matter of attribution.

Chicago’s Buddhist history has two famous early dates. In 1893, Anagarika Dharmapala of Sri Lanka and the Japanese Zen teacher Soyen Shaku spoke at the World’s Parliament of Religions, held with the World’s Columbian Exposition. Many historians see it as a key moment for Buddhism in America. In 1944, Rev. Gyomay Kubose founded the Buddhist Temple of Chicago.

Kubose’s temple grew among Japanese Americans who came to Chicago after the wartime incarceration camps. It offered services, Dharma school for children and a community in a new city. Since then, Chicago and its suburbs have become home to temples and centers of many traditions, founded by Thai, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Lao, Chinese, Korean, Sri Lankan, Tibetan and other communities, and by convert groups.

In these sanghas, the texts are lived. Children learn verses. Families chant for the dead. Monks give talks on a sutta. Volunteers cook for festivals. For many immigrant families, the temple also keeps language and culture alive. A student who visits, with permission and respect, sees that Buddhist texts are not only studied in classrooms. They are part of Illinois life.

Many Chicago-area temples welcome visitors, especially school groups who call ahead. Customs vary, but some are common. Visitors often remove shoes before entering the shrine hall. They dress modestly, speak quietly, and do not point their feet toward the Buddha image or a monk. They ask before taking photos. They do not touch images or ritual objects.

Visitors are not expected to bow or chant. In this course, you observe; you do not practice. If a ceremony is taking place, you watch quietly. If a monk or member offers to explain, you listen and ask thoughtful questions. Many temples are glad to share, and practitioners are the best teachers of what their own practices mean.

After a visit, a good report describes what was seen and heard, names who explained it, and uses the community’s own words. It does not judge. It does not treat the temple as exotic or strange. It treats neighbors as neighbors. This is the same respect the course has asked for throughout: describe, attribute, and honor what others hold sacred.

The capstone asks you to choose one passage from the texts this course has read. Good options include a Dhammapada chapter or pair of verses, a section of the first sermon, the lamp passage or last words in the Mahaparinibbana Sutta, a Jataka such as the Hare or Vessantara, or a sutta dialogue such as the raft, the arrow or the Kalama Sutta.

Test your choice with three questions. Is it short enough to read word by word, ideally under a page? Has it been read in different ways, so you can gather at least three readings? Can you cite it in a named translation, preferably one in the public domain, such as Muller (1881), Rhys Davids (1881) or the Cowell Jataka (1895 to 1907)?

A passage that fails one test can still work if you narrow it. The whole Vessantara Jataka is too long; the scene where Vessantara gives his children is not. The whole Kalama Sutta is long; its list of ten grounds is a manageable unit. Choosing well is the first act of interpretation.

To establish the text means to say exactly what you are reading. Name the collection and number: Dhammapada, chapter 1, verse 1, in the Khuddaka Nikaya of the Pali Canon. Name the language: Pali. Name the translation you will quote and its date: F. Max Muller, Sacred Books of the East 10, 1881. If you paraphrase a modern translation, say so.

Next, find the key terms in the original. For Dhammapada 1, the Pali opens manopubbangama dhamma. Mano is mind; pubbangama means going before; dhamma here is the hard word. A dictionary, such as the Pali Text Society’s Pali-English Dictionary (1921 to 1925), shows its range: teaching, truth, quality, mental state, thing.

Finally, set two or three translations side by side and mark where they differ. Leila’s table shows Muller’s ’all that we are’, a modern monk’s ’mental states’ and a teacher’s ’experience’. The differences are her evidence. Establishing the text does not settle what it means. It shows exactly where readers part ways.

Literary context is the text around your passage. For Dhammapada 1, that means verse 2, its twin, and the rest of chapter 1, the Yamaka Vagga, built of pairs. It means the Dhammapada as a whole, with its repeated themes of mind, restraint and conduct. And it means the Khuddaka Nikaya and the Pali Canon around it.

Context changes readings. Read alone, verse 1 can sound like a claim that thoughts create the world. Read with verse 2 and with verses 3 to 5 about harbouring grievances, it looks more like a teaching about how states of mind shape action and its results. Read with chapter 3 on the mind, it joins a call to train the mind.

In your capstone, give a short map: what comes before, what comes after, and what the chapter is about. For a sutta, name the speaker, the listeners and the setting. For a Jataka, name the story of the present that frames it. This map lets your reader check your interpretation against the text’s own structure.

Historical context asks when and where a text took shape. For the Dhammapada, scholars think the verses were gathered from older sayings in the centuries after the Buddha, c. fifth century BCE on many scholars’ dates, and the Pali Canon was written down in Sri Lanka in the first century BCE, as chronicles report. Related versions survive in Gandhari, Sanskrit and Chinese.

School context asks which Buddhist tradition keeps the text and how. The Pali Dhammapada belongs to the Theravada canon. It is memorized, chanted and preached in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. Mahayana communities know related collections and often read the Dhammapada in translation too. Modern Western readers meet it as world literature.

Name both scholarly and traditional views where they differ. Theravada tradition holds that the verses were spoken by the Buddha himself. Scholars describe a process of collection over time. You do not need to decide between them. You need to report both accurately and show how each shapes the way readers approach the passage.

Start with a reader from inside the tradition’s classical past. For a Dhammapada verse, the obvious choice is the Dhammapada commentary, traditionally credited to Buddhaghosa, fifth century CE, translated by E.W. Burlingame as Buddhist Legends (1921). For a sutta, Buddhaghosa’s commentaries or the Visuddhimagga. For a Mahayana sutra, a classical commentator such as Nagarjuna or a Chinese master.

For verse 1, the commentary tells the story of Cakkhupala, the blind monk who stepped on insects. The Buddha, in the story, clears him of fault because he had no intention to kill. So the classical reading ties verse 1 to karma and intention: the mind that goes before an act determines its moral weight.

Summarize the commentator’s reading in your own words, cite it exactly, and say what it emphasizes. Notice what it does with the hard word. The commentary glosses dhamma in verse 1 as mental states and the aggregates of experience. That gloss supports the modern monk’s translation more than Muller’s broad ’all that we are’.

Next, choose a modern teacher who speaks from within a Buddhist community. For the Dhammapada, options include Acharya Buddharakkhita (translation 1985), Thanissaro Bhikkhu, Gil Fronsdal (2005) or Eknath Easwaran. For suttas, Bhikkhu Bodhi or Thich Nhat Hanh. For Jatakas, a Thai or Sri Lankan monk’s sermon in translation.

Modern teachers often connect the passage to present concerns. A teacher might read verse 1 as teaching that how we respond to events shapes our experience, and link it to stress or anger in daily life. That is a real reading, grounded in the text and the commentary’s stress on mind. It also reflects Buddhist modernism’s interest in psychology.

Cite the modern teacher by name, book and year, and paraphrase rather than quote at length, since modern translations are under copyright. Then compare with the commentator. What does the teacher keep? What does the teacher add or set aside? Leila finds that her modern teacher keeps intention but says little about rebirth.

Finally, choose a scholar: someone who studies the text historically or philologically, whether or not they are Buddhist. For the Dhammapada, John Brough’s The Gandhari Dharmapada (1962) or K.R. Norman’s translation The Word of the Doctrine (1997) both discuss wording and parallels. For Jatakas, Naomi Appleton. For suttas, Richard Gombrich or Rupert Gethin.

Scholars ask different questions. How does the Pali verse compare with the Gandhari and Sanskrit versions? What did dhamma mean in early Indian usage? How did the Dhammapada’s compilers arrange their verses? A scholar may, for example, compare the wording of verse 1 with parallels in other early collections and ask what the comparison suggests about its age.

A scholar’s reading is not a verdict on the tradition’s truth. It is a different kind of question. In your capstone, report what the scholar argues and on what evidence: manuscripts, parallels, grammar. Then note how it sits beside the other two readings. Often it explains why translators disagree.

Your thesis is not ’the verse is true’ or ’the verse is false’. It is a claim about meaning and readers. Leila’s thesis: ’Readers of Dhammapada 1 differ mainly over the word dhamma. The commentary and modern Theravada translators read it as mental states, tying the verse to intention and karma; Muller’s broader "all that we are" reflects a nineteenth-century philosophical reading.’

A good thesis has three parts. It names the passage. It states what readers agree on. It names the key difference and explains a cause of it: a word, a school, a period or a question. It can be argued with evidence, which means someone could disagree and you could answer them from the texts.

Test your thesis by asking whether each sentence attributes its claims. ’Readers differ’, ’the commentary reads’, ’Muller renders’: all attributed. ’The verse means’, with no reader named, is a warning sign. The capstone asks you to argue about interpretation, not to settle religious truth.

Each paragraph of your capstone should make one point and support it. Quote exactly from public-domain translations, with citation: Dhammapada 1, tr. Muller, SBE 10 (1881). Paraphrase modern translations and commentaries and mark them as paraphrase, still with citation. Never invent a citation; if you cannot find the source, leave the claim out.

Attribution runs through every sentence. Write ’Theravada teachers read…’, ’the sutta presents the Buddha as…’, ’Buddhists believe…’, ’Brough argues…’. Do not write ’we’ for any tradition. Do not tell the reader what to believe. When sources disagree, lay out each side and its evidence before giving your analysis of why they differ.

Finally, respect the tradition. Describe the Buddha and sacred images with the respect their devotees give them. Describe practices without leading them. If your passage raises a hard question, as Vessantara’s gift does, report the range of Buddhist responses. Your analysis may be sharp, but it should be fair enough that a member of the tradition would recognize their own view in it.

The capstone ends with a short presentation to the class. Show the passage first, with its citation, so everyone reads the same words. Then show your three readings side by side, each named: commentator, modern teacher, scholar. Then state your thesis and give your two or three strongest pieces of evidence.

Keep slides or handouts plain: the text, the readings, the key word. Read Pali terms slowly and give their gloss. If your passage involves practice, such as meditation or chanting, describe it; do not ask the class to do it. If it involves a hard topic, give the context and the range of responses before your analysis.

End by inviting questions. Classmates might ask whether a fourth reader would change your thesis, or why you chose one translation. Answer from the texts. The goal is the same one this course began with: to understand how a Buddhist text has been read, and to explain that understanding clearly, fairly and with evidence.