IB World Religions 2.3.2. Mahayana and Vajrayana Scriptures: Sutras, Shastras, Agamas and Tantras Notes

2.3.2. Mahayana and Vajrayana Scriptures: Sutras, Shastras, Agamas and Tantras

Scripture beyond the Canon

1. Mahayana Buddhists accept the early discourses but do not stop there. They hold a much larger body of sutras (Pali suttas) to be the Buddha's teaching as well, and it is these texts that shape Mahayana practice.
2. The early collections survive in Mahayana form as the agamas, Sanskrit and Chinese versions of the discourse collections Theravada Buddhists know in Pali. Their contents run closely parallel, and Mahayana readers treat them as common ground.
3. On top of that shared base sit the distinctively Mahayana sutras, most composed in Sanskrit and preserved above all in Chinese and Tibetan translation.
4. Mahayana Buddhists sort these texts by what they teach rather than by date. The Prajnaparamita literature, the Lotus Sutra and the Sukhavati (Pure Land) sutras each carry a different emphasis.
5. Two further categories complete the picture. Shastras are systematic treatises by named teachers, and tantras are the ritual and meditation texts that Vajrayana Buddhists take as their working scripture.
6. The result is not one canon but several. Chinese and Tibetan Buddhists preserve overlapping but different collections, and no single ordering of the material holds across all Mahayana schools.

The Prajnaparamita sutras

1. The Prajnaparamita (perfection of wisdom) literature is the oldest layer of distinctively Mahayana scripture. Its subject is panna (Sanskrit prajna: wisdom) carried to completion.
2. It is a family of texts rather than one book, running from versions in a hundred thousand lines down to a few lines. The tradition holds that the long and short versions say the same thing at different lengths.
3. Its central teaching is sunyata (emptiness), the claim that no phenomenon has independent existence of its own. Mahayana thinkers present this as anatta extended from persons to everything whatever.
4. The Diamond Sutra (Vajracchedika) makes the case through a dialogue between the Buddha and the monk Subhuti, withdrawing each category as soon as it has been used. A Chinese copy dated 868 CE is the earliest dated printed book known.
5. The Heart Sutra compresses the whole literature onto a single page. In it the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara tells Sariputta that the five khandas (Sanskrit skandhas) are empty.
6. These texts are not treated as philosophy to be studied at a distance. The Heart Sutra ends in a mantra, and Zen, Chan and Tibetan communities chant it daily.

The Lotus Sutra

1. The Lotus Sutra (Saddharmapundarika Sutra) is the most influential single scripture in East Asian Buddhism. It presents itself as the Buddha's final and complete teaching.
2. Its central claim is the ekayana (one vehicle). The apparently separate paths of the arahant (Sanskrit arhat), the solitary buddha and the bodhisattva are held to be one path leading everyone to Buddhahood.
3. The sutra accounts for the earlier teaching through upaya (skill in means), holding that the Buddha fitted what he said to what his hearers could receive.
4. It argues in parables rather than in analysis. In the burning house a father promises his children three different carts to get them out of a fire, then gives every child the same great cart.
5. The sutra also reworks who the Buddha is. His life span is presented as immeasurable and his death as itself a device, taught so that people who assume he will always be there take the path seriously.
6. Nichiren Buddhists in Japan treat this one sutra as the whole of the teaching. Their central practice is the daimoku, chanting Namu Myoho Renge Kyo, homage to the Lotus Sutra of the wonderful dhamma.

Pure Land scriptures

1. Three texts known together as the Sukhavati sutras form the scriptural basis of Pure Land Buddhism, the Larger and Smaller Sukhavativyuha Sutras and the Contemplation Sutra.
2. They describe Sukhavati, the Land of Bliss, a realm established in the west by the Buddha Amitabha (Japanese Amida).
3. The Larger sutra tells how Amitabha, while still the monk Dharmakara, made a series of vows and refused Buddhahood until they were fulfilled. The eighteenth vow promises rebirth in his land to anyone who calls on him in faith.
4. The Lotus Sutra also describes Pure Lands, realms in which other Buddhas teach, and Mahayana Buddhists read the two accounts alongside each other.
5. The practice that follows is the nembutsu (Chinese nianfo), reciting Amitabha's name, and Pure Land schools in China, Japan and Vietnam make it the central act of devotion.
6. These sutras are the scriptural ground of the most widely practised Buddhism in East Asia. They put a text within reach of people who cannot read one, since the name itself is the practice.

Shastras and Vajrayana tantras

1. A shastra is a systematic treatise by a named teacher rather than a text presented as the Buddha's speech. Mahayana Buddhists rank shastras below sutras in authority while depending on them for how the sutras are read.
2. Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakakarika turns the Prajnaparamita teaching on sunyata into close argument, and it founds the Madhyamaka school.
3. Asanga and Vasubandhu did comparable work for the Yogacara school, whose treatises analyse experience in terms of consciousness. Tibetan monastic education is still built on such works.
4. The Tibetan collection keeps the distinction visible in its shelving. The Kangyur gathers texts held to be the Buddha's word and the Tengyur gathers the shastras and commentaries.
5. Tantras are the scriptures of Vajrayana, the Diamond Vehicle, and they read as ritual manuals rather than as discourses. They set out visualizations, mantras, mudras and mandalas for identifying oneself with a chosen Buddha or bodhisattva.
6. Major tantras such as the Guhyasamaja and the Kalachakra are sorted into classes, and each supports a sadhana, a structured practice text a student works through under supervision.
7. Access to them is controlled in a way that has no parallel among the sutras. A Vajrayana practitioner is expected to receive empowerment from a lama before studying or practising a given tantra.

These scriptures in practice

1. The Mahayana and Vajrayana collections are far too large to be read whole. The Chinese canon runs to thousands of separate works, so what matters in practice is which texts a school selects.
2. Selection is much of what distinguishes the East Asian schools from one another. Pure Land Buddhists build on the Sukhavati sutras, Nichiren Buddhists on the Lotus Sutra, and Chan and Zen communities on the Prajnaparamita texts.
3. Most contact with scripture is oral. Monks and lay Buddhists chant the Heart Sutra, the daimoku or the nembutsu far more often than they read a text through.
4. Copying and reproducing sutras is itself an act of devotion. East Asian Buddhists have copied texts by hand, carved them into woodblocks and printed them to generate punna (Sanskrit punya: merit).
5. Vajrayana adds a further step before study. A text is normally received through lung, an oral transmission in which a lama reads it aloud, before a student may take it up.
6. Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhists therefore treat scripture as something entered rather than merely consulted. A sutra is chanted, copied, visualized and taught long before it is read as a document.