Chapter 2. Early Mahāyāna scriptures: Prajñāpāramitā, Lotus, Avataṃsaka, Pure Land, and Vimalakīrti¶

The previous chapter examined Mahāyāna's origins and established an approach that sets aside claims to ancient authority while taking its ideas seriously. The present chapter turns to the principal early scriptural collections. The collections are bodies of literature from different sources, rather than a single system. Madhyamaka and Yogācāra later made Mahāyāna into systematic philosophies. Here we examine the teachings of the scriptural collections underlying those systems. The table surveys the five collections before we discuss each in turn.

1. Prajñāpāramitā: emptiness¶

The Prajñāpāramitā collection is the earliest, with the Eight Thousand Lines dating to around the beginning of the Common Era, and has the greatest philosophical significance. Its central term is emptiness (śūnyatā). No dharma has intrinsic nature (svabhāva). The denial concerns precisely the "intrinsic nature" that the Abhidharma discussed in Essay 3 worked so hard to establish. The Heart Sūtra takes the denial to its extreme. It declares the five aggregates empty and also rejects the four truths, the twelve links of dependent origination, knowledge, and attainment. Its words are "no suffering, origin, cessation, or path; no knowledge and no attainment." Buddhism's own conceptual framework is no exception.¹

The internal layers of Prajñāpāramitā literature. Prajñāpāramitā is a body of texts that expanded and contracted over several centuries, rather than a single sūtra. One direction of development was expansion. The Eight Thousand Lines (Aṣṭasāhasrikā, around the beginning of the Common Era) grew into the Twenty-five Thousand Lines and then the Hundred Thousand Lines. The versions are preserved in Xuanzang's Great Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra, whose six hundred fascicles contain sixteen distinct Prajñāpāramitā texts. The other direction was condensation, distilling the central teachings into short texts. The Diamond Sūtra (Vajracchedikā, date of composition uncertain; a Chinese translation existed by the early fifth century)² and the Heart Sūtra (Hṛdaya, around the fifth to seventh centuries) represent two extremes. The condensed texts have independent histories of development and are not simple summaries of the larger versions. The received version of the Heart Sūtra is traditionally attributed to Xuanzang as translator (649). Yet the earliest attribution of its translation to him appears in the eighth-century Kaiyuan Catalogue of Buddhist Teachings, and scholars dispute the attribution's reliability. The debate over composition in India or textual reworking in China remains unsettled.³

The philosophical hallmark of the Diamond Sūtra is a recurring sentence pattern, preserved most clearly in Xuanzang's translation. Its general form is:

"What is called X, the Tathāgata says, is not X; therefore it is called X."

The three-part negation has a philosophical function as well as a rhetorical one. First, it introduces a Buddhist category (X). It then denies that the category itself has intrinsic nature (not X), before retaining its provisional designation (called X). A single sentence affirms conventional names and language, allowing the term to be used, while refusing to treat any term as referring to something that exists by intrinsic nature. Nāgārjuna's Madhyamaka arguments later systematized the operation, but the Diamond Sūtra already employed it as a recurring pattern throughout its prose.¹

Subhūti's role as the principal interlocutor in several Prajñāpāramitā texts is deliberate. The Āgama tradition knew him as "foremost in understanding emptiness." The scriptures consciously gave the leading role in their dialogues to someone whom the schools already recognized as an adept interpreter of emptiness. Having him teach Prajñāpāramitā connected Mahāyāna instruction in emptiness with the early disciples.

The "perfection of wisdom" (prajñāpāramitā) practiced by a bodhisattva is the insight of "nonattainment." No dharma is grasped as truly existent, including "emptiness," "nirvāṇa," and "I am saving sentient beings." The insight connects directly with the judgment in 3.1. The historical way forward lay in completely dismantling the premise that dharmas possess intrinsic nature, rather than positing a more solid bearer. The Prajñāpāramitā sūtras explicitly propose the approach, which Nāgārjuna's Madhyamaka systematizes in Essay 5. The present book regards Prajñāpāramitā emptiness as the central philosophical contribution among the five collections. The others develop more along religious, cosmological, and practical lines.⁴

The relationship between Prajñāpāramitā and Madhyamaka goes beyond "scripture first, scholars organizing it later." The Mahāprajñāpāramitopadeśa, attributed to Nāgārjuna, comments on the Large Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra of the Twenty-five Thousand Lines family, translated by Kumārajīva. Madhyamaka arguments provide a philosophical defense of Prajñāpāramitā emptiness, while the authority of the sūtras supports the Madhyamaka position. The two reinforce one another as a system. In the common Mahāyāna pattern, sūtras give the direction and treatises supply the arguments. The treatises' authority in turn strengthens the sūtras' standing.¹

Mahāyāna "emptiness" (śūnyatā) and "emptiness" in early Buddhism do not mean exactly the same thing, a distinction developed further in Essay 5 on Madhyamaka. Early Buddhist emptiness primarily has two senses. First, no permanent, unitary, self-subsisting subject can be found in the stream of the five aggregates, an account of not-self in the phenomena that constitute the subject (anattā/anātman). Second, consciousness and its objects fall away in particular meditative states, or meditations on emptiness. "The selflessness of persons" belongs to the Mahāyāna framework, which pairs it with "the selflessness of dharmas" and treats the latter as a higher insight. In Mahāyāna's logic, the selflessness of dharmas entails the selflessness of persons, while the reverse does not follow. Volume 2 examines the argument in detail. Early Buddhist teachings on not-self make no such hierarchical distinction. They state directly that the stream of aggregates contains no permanent, unitary, self-subsisting self. Mahāyāna emptiness extends the denial from the phenomena that constitute the subject, or "persons," to the "dharmas" that Abhidharma so painstakingly distinguished as basic elements. All dharmas lack intrinsic nature and have no self-subsisting reality. The Prajñāpāramitā sūtras thereby challenged the foundation of the schools' metaphysical structure, and Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā developed the argument further.

2. The Lotus: one vehicle and skillful means¶

The Lotus Sūtra (around the first or second century) makes two important claims.

The first is the "one vehicle" (ekayāna). The "three vehicles" of śrāvakas, pratyekabuddhas, and bodhisattvas posited by Mahāyāna are ultimately just one Buddha vehicle. Everyone will eventually become a Buddha; the liberation previously taught to those seeking only their own release was merely an expedient to draw them onto the path. (The "three vehicles" are Mahāyāna's own categories, and the account here follows its framework.)

The second claim concerns "skillful means" (upāya). The Buddha teaches different doctrines according to beings' capacities, all as skillful ways of guiding them toward the one Buddha vehicle. The Lotus explains the claim through several famous parables. Children are lured out of a burning house with promises of three kinds of carts (they receive only one kind of large cart drawn by white oxen). Other parables concern a poor son recognizing his father and a conjured city relieving travelers' thirst.⁵ A further, startling claim follows in the chapter on the Tathāgata's lifespan. The Buddha's lifespan is immeasurably long, and his historical passing into extinction was only an expedient manifestation. He is always teaching. The account raises the Buddha from a historical person to a being beyond time, continuing the Mahāsāṃghika conception of a "supramundane, transcendent Buddha body" discussed in 2.3. It also echoes the previous chapter's conception of the dharmakāya, according to which "the Buddha is still teaching."

The three parables share a structure in how they portray people receiving instruction. The children absorbed in play in the burning house, the poor son who fails to recognize his father, and the travelers who want to turn back halfway are all presented as unable to see their actual situation. Direct explanations fail to persuade them or make them leave, so only promises and deception can finally make them act. The narrative systematically deprives the people being taught of agency. They appear as children or weak people who must be kept in the dark, enticed, and led by the hand. The portrayal highlights the omniscience and great compassion of the teacher, the Buddha or Mahāyāna. The present book regards it as a fairly typical propaganda technique. It bypasses direct persuasion through doctrinal arguments and first demotes the other side to people "without judgment, who can only be manipulated." The superiority of one's own position then seems self-evident. Vimalakīrti's humiliation of Śāriputra and the others in Section 5 belongs to the same narrative strategy.

3. The Avataṃsaka: mutual inclusion within the dharmadhātu¶

The Avataṃsaka Sūtra is a vast scripture built up through successive accretions. Core texts such as the Ten Stages Sūtra and the "Entry into the Dharmadhātu" chapter are earlier, while the complete collection was compiled around the third or fourth century. It presents a grand vision of a cosmos in which all phenomena include and reflect one another. One is all, and all is one. The later Huayan school described the relation through "Indra's net," a jeweled net in the celestial lord's palace. Every jewel reflects and contains every other jewel in endless layers.⁶ As the present book regularly reminds the reader, precise formulations such as "the nonobstruction of phenomenon and phenomenon" and "Indra's net" largely belong to the elaborations of later Huayan patriarchs. The scripture supplies the vision of mutual inclusion, while the systematic terminology came later.

The Ten Stages Sūtra lays out ten levels of bodhisattva practice (daśabhūmi, the ten stages). Each emphasizes a particular perfection. Together they form the basic structure of the Mahāyāna account of the path.

Retrogression and nonretrogression (avaivartika) are central to the ten-stage structure. Before entering the ten stages, bodhisattvas may lose the fruits of their practice, gaining an initial assurance only at the first stage. The eighth, immovable stage provides a more secure threshold. Bodhisattvas attain "acceptance of the nonarising of dharmas" (anutpattikadharmakṣānti), direct insight that dharmas neither arise nor cease. Practice thereafter proceeds naturally and without effort, with no possibility of retrogression. The Pure Land scriptures likewise expressly describe rebirth in Sukhāvatī as "nonretrogression." Rebirth can, in effect, bypass the long practice of the ten stages, with Amitābha's original vows directly guaranteeing nonretrogression. The guarantee is one argument for the appeal of the Pure Land path of other-power to Mahāyāna practitioners.

The "Entry into the Dharmadhātu" chapter, an independent Sanskrit sūtra called the Gaṇḍavyūha, is a separate text with a vast narrative scope, later incorporated at the end of the Avataṃsaka. It tells of the youth Sudhana seeking awakening through visits to fifty-five (or one hundred and ten) spiritual friends (kalyāṇamitra). They include monks, nuns, laypeople, merchants, boys and girls, and even prostitutes and non-Buddhist practitioners. The journey expresses the claim that the possibility of awakening is not tied to a particular identity or position. Anyone may display a portion of the bodhisattva path. Sudhana asks each spiritual friend, "Please teach me." He receives a method of practice and is directed to the next teacher. The structure has no single highest point. Each spiritual friend represents a complete approach to the Dharma, and the approaches do not cancel one another out.

Another enormously influential saying in the Avataṃsaka is "The three realms are mind only; all dharmas are consciousness only." It derives from the statement in the Ten Stages chapter of the Avataṃsaka, "The three realms are illusory, made by the one mind alone" (Buddhabhadra's translation, following the witnesses marked 宋, 元, 明, and 聖 in the apparatus; the Taishō base text reads "mind" without "one"). Śikṣānanda's translation reads, "All that exists in the three realms is just one mind."⁷ The two versions sound similar but differ subtly in meaning. Both indicate that all phenomena in the three realms arise with mind as their source. This saying later became important scriptural evidence for Yogācāra consciousness-only thought (see Essay 6). Yet in the Avataṃsaka's own context, "mind" is not necessarily equivalent to ālaya-vijñāna as described in consciousness-only theory. Equating it directly with that theoretical framework is a later interpretive leap, not the original meaning of the scripture.

4. Pure Land: other-power and recollection of the Buddha¶

The Pure Land collection follows the approach of faith, aspiration, and other-power. The "three Pure Land sūtras" usually means the Larger Sukhāvatīvyūha, the Smaller Sukhāvatīvyūha (the Amitābha Sūtra), and the Contemplation of Amitāyus Sūtra. They did not take shape at the same time. The larger and smaller sūtras date to around the first or second century. Lokakṣema had already translated early texts of a Pure Land character, such as the Pratyutpanna Samādhi Sūtra, which includes concentration on recollection of the Buddha. The Contemplation Sūtra is much later and may not have originated in India. Together the three construct the same Pure Land faith from different angles, but their emphases differ and require separate treatment.⁸

The Larger Sukhāvatīvyūha ("The Adornment of Sukhāvatī") is the longest of the three and the fullest in doctrine. It recounts the forty-eight great vows made by Amitābha (Infinite Light; also Amitāyus, Infinite Life) before Buddhahood, when he was the bodhisattva Dharmākara. The eighteenth, the "vow of rebirth through recollection of the Buddha," became central to the later Pure Land school: anyone who invokes Amitābha's name ten times will be met and guided by him at death and brought to birth in Sukhāvatī, except those who commit the five grave offenses or slander the true Dharma. The logic of the original vows is that the Buddha's pledges while still on the path, together with the virtues resulting from his attainment of Buddhahood, constitute a power available to believers. Through faith and aspiration, believers in effect gain access to this already accomplished power. They thereby attain nonretrogression, a position that would otherwise require an immensely long period of practice through their own efforts.

The Amitābha Sūtra, the shorter Sukhāvatīvyūha, is very brief. It centers on descriptions of Sukhāvatī's splendors and emphasizes "recollection of the Buddha by holding to his name": one holds to the name "Amitābha Buddha" with "single-mindedness free of distraction" and thereby gains rebirth at death. Here the practice of holding to the name (nāmasaṃkīrtana, proclaiming the name) is already a complete form of Pure Land practice, independent of visualization.

The Contemplation of Amitāyus Sūtra (Amitāyurdhyāna-sūtra) is the most distinctive of the three. Its account follows the political tragedy of King Bimbisāra's imprisonment by his son Ajātaśatru and Queen Vaidehī's grief and anger. In response to Vaidehī's request, the Buddha directly teaches her how to visualize Sukhāvatī. The scripture lists sixteen contemplations:⁹

The structure of the sixteen contemplations reveals an early form of Pure Land faith centered on meditative contemplation (dhyāna). Through concentration, practitioners faithfully construct the Pure Land's landscape in their minds and ultimately see Amitābha's body. This directly connects with the "visions obtained in meditation" discussed in the previous chapter. Seeing Buddhas in concentration in the Pratyutpanna Samādhi Sūtra and the sixteen contemplations of the Contemplation Sūtra are two ends of the same tradition.

The development from visualizing the Buddha to reciting his name requires explanation. Recollection of the Buddha through visualization was the early form. Practitioners visualized the Buddha's body and the Pure Land's splendors through meditative concentration, requiring considerable meditative ability. Recollection through recitation of the name, vocally saying "Amitābha Buddha," became widespread later and was in theory open to people of all capacities. The change was the crucial transition from elite meditation to popular Pure Land faith, and it was completed in China. Daochuo (562 to 645) and Shandao (613 to 681) strongly advocated recitation because they considered people's capacities poor in the age of the Dharma's decline. Visualization was difficult to accomplish, while anyone could recite the name. The change simplified practice for convenience and also reconstructed the entire classification of teachings and philosophy of practice.

Pure Land is the most overtly religious strand of Mahāyāna and the one that reached most deeply into popular life. Its philosophical significance lies less in speculation of the Prajñāpāramitā kind than in shifting the basis of liberation from realization achieved entirely through one's own practice to "other-power," reliance on the Buddha's power. The distinction between "other-power" and "self-power" became a major question in later Pure Land teaching, especially in China and Japan.

Sukhāvatī is one among a considerable variety of pure lands in Mahāyāna scriptures. Akṣobhya's Abhirati, the Land of Wonderful Joy, appears in early texts including the Vimalakīrti Sūtra. Bhaiṣajyaguru, the Medicine Buddha, has his eastern Pure Land of Lapis Lazuli. Maitreya's Pure Land offers another highly influential path. The bodhisattva Maitreya, the next Buddha to appear in the world, currently resides in Tuṣita heaven. Believers may vow to be reborn in its inner court, remain close to Maitreya there, and await his descent. This path was quite popular in India and early Chinese Buddhism; Xuanzang himself vowed to be reborn in Tuṣita. The later predominance of Amitābha's Pure Land in Chinese and Japanese Buddhism resulted in considerable part from its vigorous promotion by successive patriarchs, from Daochuo and Shandao to Hōnen and Shinran.¹⁰

Another scholarly debate concerns whether Amitābha, Infinite Light, has some connection with ancient Iranian, or Zoroastrian, deities of light or sun worship. Proponents point to the distinctive combination of his immeasurable radiance and residence in a western Pure Land, and to the cosmological standing of light in ancient Iranian religion. Critics argue that Mahāyāna scriptures have their own context for the use of light and that the comparison lacks sufficient textual support. Neither position has been established conclusively. The present book leaves detailed discussion to the dedicated treatment of Pure Land in Essay 10.

5. Vimalakīrti: nonduality and the lay sage¶

The Vimalakīrti Sūtra (around the first or second century) is a superb drama. Its protagonist, Vimalakīrti, is a layman whose wisdom surpasses that of the Buddha's leading disciples and even the bodhisattvas. One after another, Śāriputra and the others are made to look foolish. The intent is plainly to elevate Mahāyāna and disparage practitioners of the path to liberation who are mocked as "seeking only their own release." (For the origins and inaccuracy of this disparaging label, see the next chapter, "The Bodhisattva Path.")

The scripture centers on "nonduality" (advaya). Saṃsāra and nirvāṇa, defilement and purity, the worldly and the supramundane are fundamentally undivided. The climax comes in the chapter on "Entering the Gate of Nonduality." The bodhisattvas each explain how they enter nonduality. When Vimalakīrti's turn comes, he says nothing. Mañjuśrī praises this wordless silence as the true entry into the gate of nonduality.¹¹ "Vimalakīrti's silence sounds like thunder." In the present book's view, that silence continues the old theme of 1.5. At the ultimate, one reaches the limit of language; further speech falls into conceptual proliferation, and silence becomes the most fitting response. The Buddha's refusal to determine answers to metaphysical questions and Vimalakīrti's silence express the same awareness of language's limits. Mahāyāna turns it into a dramatic climax.

In the Vimalakīrti, "abandoning distinctions" and "nonduality" take the form of a dramatic scene. In Madhyamaka and its later successors, they develop into an evaluative criterion with substantive force. Clinging to distinctions or falling into dualistic oppositions shows that one has not attained liberation. Applied to others, the criterion can criticize any position. To say "A is better than B" is already to fall into discrimination, and discrimination itself is grasping. Applied to practitioners themselves, it constrains speech and conduct. If things are nondual, one should not readily make judgments or take sides, nor cling to "higher and lower" or "victory and defeat." In practice these two uses often become entangled. Criticizing others for "falling into discrimination" may itself be another form of discriminating attachment. This tension runs through the ways Madhyamaka and later Chan speak. Essays 5 and 8, the latter devoted to Chinese Buddhism, will return to it.

6. Shared features¶

The five collections differ in character but share several features. All exalt the bodhisattva path, replacing the arhat, mocked for "seeking only personal release," with the ideal of attaining Buddhahood to save sentient beings. They raise the Buddha to a being beyond history and rely heavily on "skillful means." Each also approaches the limits of language in its own way. Prajñāpāramitā does so through emptiness, Vimalakīrti through silence, and the Avataṃsaka through endlessly repeated mutual inclusion.

"Skillful means" also has a frequently criticized aspect. The doctrine is an ingenious interpretive device. Any teaching that differs from Mahāyāna can be classified as "an expedient for those of limited capacity," while Mahāyāna's own teaching is judged ultimate, of definitive meaning. Yet precisely because it works so well, it becomes an almost unfalsifiable weapon. Any opponent or earlier teaching can be absorbed as a lower step with the phrase "that is merely skillful means," without a direct doctrinal confrontation. It also opens a space for "benevolent falsehoods." The father's promise in the burning-house parable is not entirely true. He promises three carts but gives only one. If skillful means can be used in this way, where is the limit on "speaking falsely to bring people to liberation"? There is a tension here with Buddhism's longstanding commitment to right speech, including abstention from false speech.¹² The present book presents both the power of skillful means and this underlying concern. It is the other side of the technique, discussed above, by which the three parables strip the other party of agency.

In the present book's judgment, Prajñāpāramitā "emptiness" carries the principal philosophical function among these strands. It directly denies the intrinsic nature established in Essay 3, offering a historical response to the impasse of the schools' metaphysics. Nāgārjuna's Madhyamaka will next take up its systematization. The Lotus's one vehicle and Buddha of the distant past, the Avataṃsaka's dharmadhātu and mind-only teaching, Pure Land reliance on other-power and recollection of the Buddha, and Vimalakīrti's nonduality and silence develop respectively in the classification of teachings, cosmology, religious practice, and the understanding of language. They later enter the doctrinal traditions of Tiantai, Huayan, Pure Land, and Chan. The next chapter first examines the bodhisattva path as a new ideal of practice, followed by Mahāyāna's relationship with the schools. Madhyamaka, which inherits Prajñāpāramitā emptiness, and Yogācāra, which inherits the Avataṃsaka strand of "the three realms as mind only," organize Mahāyāna into two systematic philosophies and are left to Essays 5 and 6.

7. Accretions and internal contradictions¶

Most Mahāyāna scriptures grew through successive accretions. Material from different periods, regions, and communities was added over time before being compiled into a whole, leaving visible traces.

Differences between versions. Five Chinese translations of the Larger Sukhāvatīvyūha survive, differing markedly in the number of Amitābha's vows. The earliest Chinese versions, dating to around the second century, have twenty-four. The later version attributed to Saṃghavarman settles on forty-eight, while another version has thirty-six. The content of individual vows and the conditions for rebirth also often differ. Scholars have not settled how to explain these differences in number. The prevailing account takes them to reflect the gradual accretion and development of the textual tradition. Fujita Kōtatsu regards the twenty-four-vow version as the earliest, with the forty-eight vows representing later additions. More recently, some scholars have argued that the Indian original already had forty-eight vows and that the twenty-four in the early Chinese translation resulted from the translator's adaptation to emphasize bodhisattva practice (Xiao Yue).¹³

Traces of later additions. The "Devadatta" chapter of the Lotus Sūtra (Chapter 12) is absent from some earlier Chinese translations and certain Sanskrit manuscripts; scholars generally regard it as a later insertion. The Ten Stages Sūtra and "Entry into the Dharmadhātu" circulated independently before their incorporation into the Avataṃsaka. Narrative breaks at the joins remain clearly visible.

Contradictions among versions. The northern version of the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra, translated by Dharmakṣema in forty fascicles, differs considerably from the southern version, revised by Huiyan and others in thirty-six. The latter was a reorganization of the northern version by Chinese monks and was thus already a reworked text. Scholars regard the northern version's final few fascicles as additional material, whose formulations of Buddha-nature differ noticeably from earlier portions.

Problems of temporal consistency. The Lotus Sūtra's chapter on "The Lifespan of the Tathāgata" declares that the Buddha's lifespan is immeasurably long and that his historical extinction was only a manifestation. The Avataṃsaka's chapter on "The Appearance of the Tathāgata" suggests that the Buddha already knew everything upon attaining awakening. Both narratives stand in direct tension with the Buddha's historical life in the Āgama literature. In the Āgamas, his nirvāṇa is a real ending. These Mahāyāna scriptures reclassify the historical narrative as a stage performance, behind which the Buddha is always present. These are two different conceptions of the Buddha, not two compatible descriptions.⁴

Such contradictions are unsurprising, since ancient religious texts often grew by accretion. The claim that "the Buddha himself spoke these words" gives believers the impression of a unified, complete text. A considerable distance separates that impression from the textual evidence.

8. Scholarly judgments on the Śūraṃgama Sūtra¶

The Great Buddha-Crown Śūraṃgama Sūtra, usually called the Śūraṃgama, holds an exceptionally important place in Chinese Buddhism, particularly Chan, where it forms part of daily liturgy and required reading. Scholarly judgments diverge considerably from this standing.

According to the traditional account, Paramiti brought a Sanskrit manuscript to Guangzhou in the first year of the Shenlong era (705 CE). Meghaśikha, a monk from Uḍḍiyāna, collaborated in the translation, and Fang Rong took it down. Examining this account raises many problems.

The most direct problem appears in an official Tang catalogue. The earliest record of this sūtra is Zhisheng's Kaiyuan Catalogue of Buddhist Teachings, completed in 730. Yet the translators it names do not match the later standard account at all. Its catalogue of works admitted to the canon states, "Translated at Guangzhou in the Great Tang by the monk Huaidi of Xunzhou together with an Indian monk," and marks the entry "newly added to the catalogue." The biographical section says that Huaidi was from Xunzhou and met an Indian monk, "whose name has not been obtained," while traveling in Guangzhou. They translated the work into ten fascicles, with Huaidi taking down the text and arranging its language and meaning; "when the Indian monk had finished transmitting the scripture, no one knew where he went." A search through the entire catalogue finds neither "Paramiti" (般剌蜜帝) nor "Fang Rong" (房融) even once. In other words, the translation story in circulation today is absent from the earliest catalogue to record this scripture. The official catalogue provides a different set of participants. Its principal translator is a Chinese monk, while the foreign monk working with him remains unnamed.¹⁴

A further problem is the absence of external evidence. No one saw the Sanskrit text again after the translation; subsequent generations of monks searched for it without success. There is no corresponding Tibetan translation or ancient translation into any other language. Major Indian Mahāyāna scriptures usually survive in Sanskrit or Tibetan; the absence of both is extremely rare.¹⁵

Internal textual evidence also deserves attention. The Śūraṃgama's doctrinal structure closely matches Tiantai, Huayan, and Chan terminology already established by the early eighth century. Core formulations, such as "the wondrous nature of true suchness of the tathāgata store" (如来藏妙真如性), have no identifiable corresponding source in Indian Buddhist literature. Doubts arose as early as the Tang, and the earliest dossier survives in Japan. During the Hōki era, the Japanese monk 德清 traveled to Tang China to investigate and brought back the Chinese layman Faxiang's claim that "Fang Rong forged it." The Japanese monk 玄叡 recorded the course of the affair in his Compendium of the Great Meaning of the Mahāyāna Three Treatises, while vigorously defending the scripture's authenticity. The full dossier on this dispute, together with the 101 objections in Lü Cheng's One Hundred Falsehoods in the Śūraṃgama and Minsheng's point-by-point rebuttal, appears in Volume 3, Essay 9, Chapter 2.

The conclusion of modern scholarship is that the Śūraṃgama is very probably an apocryphal scripture composed in China in the early Tang. This position is widely held among mainstream Buddhist scholars.¹⁵

The present book states the scholarly position without deciding what anyone should believe. For traditions that base their practice on the Śūraṃgama, this historical judgment is something that needs to be faced. Whether to face it is each person's own choice.

9. The origins of Mahāyāna scriptures: common defensive arguments¶

In response to the scholarly conclusion that "Mahāyāna scriptures were composed later rather than spoken personally by the Buddha," several forms of argument recur within Mahāyāna traditions. They deserve a separate account, not because they are necessarily untenable, but because their rhetorical structures contain defenses that make direct criticism difficult.

In the present book's judgment, the last argument, that doctrine and origin can be discussed separately, has a reasonable core. In practice, however, it often becomes a means of closing discussion. The others largely render criticism ineffective instead of responding to it directly. Pointing this out helps readers see that scholarly conclusions and decisions about faith can stand alongside each other. Coexistence does not mean that they cancel each other out.

References¶