Unit 10 · Mahayana Sutras, Zen and Tibet

Around the 1st century BCE and after, new Buddhist sutras began to circulate in India. They were written in Sanskrit and related languages. They called themselves the words of the Buddha and opened with ’Thus have I heard,’ like the older suttas.

Modern scholars date these Mahayana sutras by their language, ideas and first translations into Chinese. Many were written down over several centuries. Scholars see them as a new wave of Buddhist writing.

Mahayana Buddhists understand them differently. Some traditions teach that the Buddha taught these sutras to those ready to hear them, and that they were kept hidden until the time was right. Others stress that they express the Buddha’s true meaning. For them the sutras carry full authority.

The Lotus Sutra (Saddharma Pundarika Sutra, ’Sutra of the Lotus of the True Dharma’) is one of the most important Mahayana texts. Its best-known Chinese translation was made by Kumarajiva in 406 CE.

The sutra teaches that the different paths the Buddha taught are really one path, the ’one vehicle’, leading to buddhahood. It says that all beings, even those who seem far from it, can become buddhas.

In East Asia, the Lotus Sutra shaped the Tiantai school in China and the Tendai school in Japan. The Japanese teacher Nichiren (1222–1282) taught that chanting its title is the heart of practice. Nichiren Buddhists today, including Soka Gakkai members, continue this practice. The lotus itself is a symbol.

Chapter 2 of the Lotus Sutra is titled ’Skillful Means’ (Sanskrit upaya). It says the Buddha, as the sutra presents him, adjusts his teaching to what each listener can understand, like a good teacher or doctor.

The burning house parable in Chapter 3 shows this idea. The father’s promise of three carts is a skillful means to get the children out; the one great cart stands for the one vehicle.

Mahayana readers have used skillful means to explain why the Buddha seems to teach different things in different texts. Critics within and outside Buddhism have asked where skillful means ends and misleading begins. The sutra’s own answer is that the father’s intention was to save his children.

The Heart Sutra is one of the shortest Buddhist sutras. The common Chinese version has about 260 characters. It belongs to the Perfection of Wisdom (prajnaparamita) family of sutras.

In it, the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara speaks to Shariputra about emptiness (Sanskrit shunyata). Its most famous lines say that form is emptiness and emptiness is form. It ends with a short mantra.

Monks, nuns and laypeople in China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam chant the Heart Sutra daily. It is often copied by hand as a practice. Many Zen, Chan and Pure Land temples include it in services.

Emptiness is easy to misunderstand. Mahayana teachers stress that it does not mean nothing exists. Rather, they teach that nothing has a fixed, separate self. Everything depends on other things.

The Indian philosopher Nagarjuna (c. 2nd century CE) developed this idea in his Madhyamaka, or ’middle way’, school. He linked emptiness to the older teaching of dependent arising, found in the Pali suttas.

Teachers often use everyday examples. A table depends on wood, a carpenter, rain that grew the tree and much more. Mahayana Buddhists say seeing this interdependence clearly weakens grasping and brings freedom.

In many Japanese Zen and Korean temples, the Heart Sutra is chanted at morning services. A wooden drum shaped like a fish, called a moktak in Korean or mokugyo in Japanese, keeps the beat.

Copying the sutra by hand, called shakyo in Japanese, is another practice. People trace or write each character carefully with a brush. Temples often receive these copies as offerings.

For many East Asian Buddhists, the sutra is valued both for its meaning and as a sacred text in itself. Its closing mantra is chanted in a form close to the Sanskrit sound rather than translated.

Avalokiteshvara is the bodhisattva of compassion. The name is often explained as ’the lord who looks down’ on the world with care. Chapter 25 of the Lotus Sutra says that those in danger who call his name will be helped.

In China, Avalokiteshvara became Guanyin, ’one who perceives the cries of the world’. Over the centuries, Guanyin came to be shown mostly as a woman in white. In Japan the name is Kannon, in Korea Gwaneum and in Vietnam Quan Am.

Tibetan Buddhists call this bodhisattva Chenrezig and believe the Dalai Lama is his emanation. Many Buddhists pray to Avalokiteshvara for help, and statues of Guanyin stand in Chinese and Vietnamese temples in Chicago.

The Pure Land sutras describe Amitabha Buddha (’Infinite Light’). In the Larger Pure Land Sutra, a monk named Dharmakara makes vows, including a vow that all who sincerely call his name will be reborn in his land. He becomes Amitabha.

His land, Sukhavati (’Land of Bliss’), is described with jeweled trees, lotus ponds and birds that sing the teaching. Pure Land Buddhists believe that being born there makes awakening easy.

Pure Land Buddhism is one of the largest forms of Buddhism in East Asia. In China and Vietnam, devotees chant ’Namo Amituofo’. In Japan, Honen and Shinran taught the nembutsu, ’Namu Amida Butsu’. Shinran’s Jodo Shinshu is the tradition of the Buddhist Temple of Chicago.

Mahayana Buddhism has thousands of sutras, and no school uses them all equally. Nichiren Buddhists center the Lotus Sutra. Pure Land Buddhists center the Pure Land sutras. Zen teachers often cite the Heart Sutra and the Diamond Sutra.

Chinese teachers developed ways to sort the sutras, called doctrinal classification. The Tiantai school, for example, placed the Lotus Sutra as the Buddha’s final and fullest teaching.

From the outside, scholars see how each school’s choice of sutras shapes its practice. From the inside, each school explains its choice from its own texts. A fair comparison describes these reasons without ranking.

Chan Buddhism took shape in China from about the 6th to 8th centuries CE. The word chan comes from the Sanskrit dhyana, meaning meditation. In Japan it is called Zen, in Korea Seon and in Vietnam Thien.

Chan tradition traces itself to Bodhidharma, an Indian monk who, the tradition says, came to China around 500 CE. Later sources give Chan a famous saying: ’a special transmission outside the scriptures, not depending on words’.

Yet Chan and Zen produced huge numbers of texts: sermons, records of teachers and collections of encounters. Scholars note this paradox: a tradition that says it does not depend on words has created a rich literature. Its heart is transmission from teacher to student.

The Platform Sutra is the only Chinese text given the title ’sutra’ that centers on a Chinese teacher rather than the Buddha. It tells the story and sermons of Huineng (638–713), whom Chan honors as the Sixth Patriarch.

In the story, Huineng is a poor woodcutter who cannot read. He hears the Diamond Sutra recited and goes to a monastery. There he writes (through a helper) a short verse that shows, the text says, deeper insight than the head monk’s. The master secretly passes the robe to him.

Scholars have found that the text was edited over time and that parts of the story reflect later disputes between Chan groups. Chan and Zen Buddhists still read it as a key text on sudden awakening.

A koan is a short story, question or saying from a Chan master that a student works on in meditation. Teachers say a koan cannot be solved by logic alone. The student may work on one koan for months or years.

The Gateless Gate (Chinese Wumenguan, Japanese Mumonkan), compiled by Wumen Huikai in 1228, collects 48 koans with comments and verses. Its first case asks whether a dog has Buddha-nature. The master Zhaozhou answers, ’Wu!’ (Japanese: Mu), ’No’ or ’Not’.

The famous question ’What is the sound of one hand?’ is not in the Gateless Gate. It comes from the Japanese Zen master Hakuin (1686–1769). Rinzai Zen teachers still use koans with students today.

Dogen (1200–1253) was a Japanese monk who traveled to China to study Chan. He returned and founded what became the Soto school of Zen in Japan. He was a monk of the Tendai school before he turned to Zen.

Dogen taught zazen, seated meditation, as the heart of practice. He described ’just sitting’ (shikantaza), not as a means to reach awakening later but as the expression of awakening itself.

His major work, the Shobogenzo (’Treasury of the True Dharma Eye’), is a collection of essays in Japanese. It is famous for its poetic and difficult language. Soto Zen, one of Japan’s largest schools, reads it closely today.

In English, ’zen’ is often used as an ad word. A spa, a phone app or a tidy room may be called ’zen’. In this use, the word usually just means calm or simple. The word has drifted far from its Buddhist home.

Zen as a Buddhist tradition is much more. It has temples, monastic training, strict schedules, ordination, chanting, koans, sutras, precepts and teachers linked in lineages that trace back to the Buddha, as the tradition tells it.

Scholars and Zen teachers point out that borrowing the word without its setting can make the tradition hard to see. This is part of a wider discussion about cultural appropriation: using parts of another culture without understanding or respect.

Tibetan scholars translated a vast number of Indian Buddhist texts from Sanskrit into Tibetan, mostly between the 8th and 14th centuries. The collection was organized into two great parts by the scholar Buton (1290–1364) and others.

The Kangyur (’translated words’) holds texts Tibetans count as the Buddha’s words, including sutras, Vinaya and tantras. Editions have about 100 to 108 volumes. The Tengyur (’translated treatises’) holds commentaries by Indian masters, in about 220 volumes or more.

Because many Sanskrit originals were lost, the Tibetan translations are often the only surviving versions. Scholars around the world use them. Tibetan monasteries honor the volumes as sacred and carry them in procession on special days.

Milarepa (c. 1040–1123, dates vary) is one of Tibet’s most beloved figures. His biography, written in the 15th century by Tsangnyon Heruka, tells that as a young man he used black magic to take revenge on relatives who had cheated his family, causing deaths.

Filled with regret, he sought the teacher Marpa. Marpa put him through years of hard labor, building and tearing down towers, before teaching him. Milarepa then meditated for years in mountain caves, the story says, living on nettles until his skin turned green.

His songs, collected in the Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa, express his insights in simple, vivid poems. Tibetan Buddhists see his life as proof that anyone, even someone who did great harm, can change. His teaching line is the Kagyu school.

The Bardo Thodol, ’Liberation Through Hearing in the Intermediate State’, is part of a group of texts Tibetan tradition says was hidden by Padmasambhava and found in the 14th century by Karma Lingpa. A bardo is an in-between state, such as the time between death and rebirth.

In Tibet, a lama or relative reads the text aloud near a dying or recently dead person. Tibetan Buddhists believe it guides the person’s mind through the bardo toward liberation or a good rebirth.

In 1927, W.Y. Evans-Wentz published an English version titled The Tibetan Book of the Dead. The title echoed the Egyptian Book of the Dead and made the text famous in the West. Some scholars note that it was only one of many funeral texts in Tibet and was read through Western ideas.

Shantideva was an Indian monk of the 8th century CE at Nalanda. His poem, the Bodhicaryavatara (’Entering the Path of Awakening’), describes the path of the bodhisattva in ten chapters.

The poem covers generosity, patience, effort, meditation and wisdom. Its chapter on patience is famous for looking at anger closely and giving reasons to let it go. It also includes verses dedicating all merit to the good of others.

Tibetan teachers, including the current Dalai Lama, often teach from this poem. The Dalai Lama has often quoted a dedication verse from its last chapter as a personal favorite. It shows how Indian texts live on through Tibetan commentary.