The Mahayana Sutras: Prajnaparamita and the Lotus Sutra

01Wisdom in eight thousand lines

The oldest of the wisdom sutras is the Ashtasahasrika, the Perfection of Wisdom in 8,000 Lines. Lokakshema, a Kushan monk, put it into Chinese at Luoyang in 179 CE, so it was already established in Bharat before then. Its teaching is shunyata, emptiness: forms, feelings, the self, even the Buddha’s own teaching, have no independent existence. Later versions grew to 25,000 and 1,00,000 lines, and others shrank to a few pages. Mahayana Buddhists honour the text itself as the mother of all Buddhas, and in Pala Bengal and Bihar it was worshipped as the goddess Prajnaparamita.

02The bodhisattva’s vow

Mahayana means the great vehicle, and in its own words it is the path of the bodhisattva, one who resolves to reach full awakening so as to free all beings, however long it takes. The vow is called bodhicitta, the mind set on awakening. Its practice is the six perfections: giving, virtue, patience, energy, meditation and wisdom, with wisdom crowning the five. Compassion and wisdom are spoken of as the two wings of a bird. Mahayana teachers held these sutras to be the Buddha’s word, taught to those ready to hear them, and honoured the earlier teachings as well.

03The Heart Sutra

The Prajnaparamita Hridaya fits on a single page. Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, coursing in the deep perfection of wisdom, sees that the five aggregates are empty, and speaks to Shariputra: here, form is emptiness and emptiness is form; emptiness is no other than form, form no other than emptiness. Then come the negations, no eye, no ear, no suffering, no path, no attainment, and the mantra that closes it. It is chanted daily from Ladakh and Tawang to Kyoto, in Tibetan, Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese, and often in Sanskrit too.

04The Diamond Sutra

The Vajracchedika is set at the Jetavana in Shravasti. After the alms round the elder Subhuti rises and asks how one who sets out on the bodhisattva path should stand, practise and control the mind. The Buddha answers that a bodhisattva must lead countless beings to nirvana and yet hold no notion of a being, a self or a soul. The sutra cuts through every fixed idea, which is why it is named for the thunderbolt that cuts diamond. It ends with a verse on how to see all conditioned things: a star, a flicker, a lamp, a dewdrop, a bubble, a dream, lightning, a cloud.

05The Lotus and the burning house

The Saddharma Pundarika, the Lotus of the True Dharma, teaches through parables. A father sees his children playing in a burning house and lures them out with the promise of three carts, a goat cart, a deer cart and an ox cart; once they are safe he gives each the same great carriage. So the Buddha taught three paths but leads all to one, the Buddha-vehicle. In the second chapter he says it plainly: there is only one vehicle, not a second or a third. Kumarajiva’s Chinese translation of 406 CE made it the most loved sutra of East Asia.

06More parables of the Lotus

A rich man’s son runs away and wanders for fifty years in poverty; the father hires him as a labourer and raises him step by step until he can tell him he is heir to everything. One rain falls on every plant, large and small, and each grows by its own nature. A guide conjures a city in the desert so that weary travellers will rest and go on. A friend sews a jewel into a sleeping man’s robe, and the man lives as a beggar not knowing he is rich. Later the Buddha reveals that his life is beyond measure, and a chapter on Avalokiteshvara became a text of devotion on its own.

07Found at Gilgit

In 1931 a cowherd near Gilgit uncovered a stupa that held a cache of birch-bark and paper manuscripts, written in Bharat in about the 6th and 7th centuries. Among them were Sanskrit copies of the Lotus Sutra and the Diamond Sutra, among the oldest Mahayana manuscripts in any Indian script. Scholars working from Srinagar and later from Delhi published them as the Gilgit Manuscripts. Many Mahayana sutras had survived only in Chinese and Tibetan; Gilgit and the libraries of Nepal gave back their Sanskrit.

08Nalanda, the Palas and Nepal

Nagarjuna, the great acharya of the Madhyamaka school, built his philosophy on the Prajnaparamita, and Nalanda and Vikramashila taught these sutras for centuries. Under the Pala kings of Bengal and Bihar, scribes copied the Ashtasahasrika on palm leaf and painted its covers and folios with the goddess Prajnaparamita and scenes of the Buddha’s life. When those monasteries fell, Nepal kept the Sanskrit texts alive. The Newar Buddhists of the Kathmandu valley still worship nine Mahayana sutras, the Ashtasahasrika and the Lotus among them, as the Navagrantha.

09Read and recited today

In the monasteries of Ladakh, Lahaul, Sikkim and Tawang, and in the Tibetan settlements of Dharamshala and Bylakuppe, monks read the Kangyur, the Tibetan translation of the Buddha’s word, which holds these sutras in full. Households invite monks to recite the Prajnaparamita for protection and blessing. In Japan the Lotus Sutra is the root text of the Tendai and Nichiren schools, and millions chant its title daily. In China, Korea and Vietnam the Heart Sutra is the most recited scripture of all. Every one of these texts first took shape in Sanskrit, in Bharat.

What it contains

1. 1
   Ashtasahasrika Prajnaparamita अष्टसाहस्रिका प्रज्ञापारमिता

   The Perfection of Wisdom in 8,000 Lines, in 32 chapters, set on the Vulture Peak at Rajagriha. It closes with the bodhisattva Sadaprarudita, the ever-weeping, who gives everything to hear the teaching from Dharmodgata.

2. 2
   Panchavimshatisahasrika and Shatasahasrika

   The expanded versions in 25,000 and 1,00,000 lines. They set the wisdom teaching beside long lists of dharmas and stages, and Nagarjuna’s school studied them closely.

3. 3
   Vajracchedika (Diamond Sutra) वज्रच्छेदिका प्रज्ञापारमिता

   A dialogue with Subhuti at Shravasti in 32 short sections. A Chinese printed copy dated 868 CE, found at Dunhuang and now in the British Library, is the oldest dated printed book.

4. 4
   Prajnaparamita Hridaya (Heart Sutra) प्रज्ञापारमिताहृदयसूत्र

   The whole teaching in a page, spoken by Avalokiteshvara to Shariputra. It survives in a short and a longer form and ends in the mantra of the perfection of wisdom.

5. 5
   Saddharma Pundarika (Lotus Sutra) सद्धर्मपुण्डरीकसूत्र

   27 chapters in Sanskrit, 28 in Kumarajiva’s Chinese. The one vehicle, the burning house, the lost son, the conjured city, and the Buddha’s life without measure.

6. 6
   Lalitavistara ललितविस्तर

   The life of the Buddha from his descent from the Tusita heaven to the first sermon, told as his divine play. The reliefs of the first gallery at Borobudur follow it scene by scene.

7. 7
   Gandavyuha and Dashabhumika

   Two Sanskrit sutras that form part of the larger Avatamsaka collection. In the Gandavyuha the youth Sudhana seeks out one teacher after another, ending with Samantabhadra; the Dashabhumika lays out the ten stages of a bodhisattva.

8. 8
   Lankavatara लङ्कावतारसूत्र

   Taught, by its own frame, on the Malaya mountain in Lanka. It treats the mind and the storehouse consciousness, and became a root text for the Yogachara school and for Chan in China.

9. 9
   Samadhiraja, Suvarnaprabhasa, Tathagataguhya

   Three more of Nepal’s Navagrantha. The Suvarnaprabhasa, the Sutra of Golden Light, teaches how a righteous king protects his land and was recited for the welfare of kingdoms across Asia.

10. 10
    Sukhavativyuha सुखावतीव्यूह

    The larger and smaller sutras of Amitabha Buddha’s Pure Land, Sukhavati, and his vows to receive all who call on him. They are the root of the Pure Land schools of China and Japan.

11. 11
    Vimalakirti Nirdesha विमलकीर्तिनिर्देश

    The teaching of Vimalakirti, a householder of Vaishali whose wisdom outshines the great disciples. When asked about non-duality he answers with silence. Its Sanskrit text was found in Tibet and published in 2004.

Famous verses

इह शारिपुत्र रूपं शून्यता, शून्यतैव रूपं, रूपान् न पृथक् शून्यता, शून्यताया न पृथग् रूपं, यद् रूपं सा शून्यता, या शून्यता तद् रूपं॥

Here, Shariputra, form is emptiness and emptiness itself is form. Emptiness is not apart from form, form is not apart from emptiness. What is form, that is emptiness; what is emptiness, that is form.Prajnaparamita Hridaya Sutra

ॐ गते गते पारगते पारसंगते बोधि स्वाहा॥

Om. Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond: awakening, svaha.Prajnaparamita Hridaya Sutra, closing mantra

तारका तिमिरं दीपो मायावश्याय बुद्बुदम्। स्वप्नं च विद्युदभ्रं च एवं द्रष्टव्य संस्कृतम्॥

As a star, a flicker in the dark, a lamp, an illusion, a dewdrop, a bubble, a dream, a flash of lightning and a cloud: so should one see all that is conditioned.Vajracchedika Prajnaparamita 32

एकं हि यानं द्वितियं न विद्यते तृतियं हि नैवास्ति कदाचि लोके। अन्यत्रुपाया पुरुषोत्तमानां यद्याननानात्वुपदर्शयन्ति॥

There is only one vehicle; a second does not exist, and a third is nowhere in the world at any time, except as the skilful means by which the best of beings show many vehicles.Saddharma Pundarika 2.54