mahayana sutras forthcoming

8/18/2019 Mahayana Sutras Forthcoming

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Mahayana sutrasDavid Drewes

Mahayana sutras are Indian Buddhist texts that imitate the literary form of more traditional sutras

but claim to present especially profound teachings intended primarily for bodhisattvas. Though itis difficult to give a precise number, according to one scholar’s estimate, about six hundredsutras of this class are extant (Skilton 101). Though dozens survive in Indic languages, most areknown only through Tibetan or Chinese translations. The term “Mahayana sutra” seems not tohave come into general use until a few centuries after the first of these texts were composed. Theearliest known texts show a clear awareness of Mahayana sutras as a distinct class of text, butuse different names, such as “vaipulya (extensive) sutras” (alt. vaidalya, vaitulya) or “ gambhī ra(profound) sutras,” to refer to them.

Scholars have long considered Mahayana sutras the scriptural texts of “MahayanaBuddhism,” but this now seems to be incorrect, at least in the Indian context, since these texts no

longer seem to have been the product of a separate form of Buddhism. Over the past two decadesscholars have increasingly reached the consensus that people who believed in and usedMahayana sutras did not split from the various nik ā yas, or schools. As Jonathan Silk points out,“there is no evidence that there was any kind of Buddhist monk other than one associated with aSectarian [i.e., nik ā ya] ordination lineage” in South Asia (364). Several scholars have also pointed out that Chinese pilgrims and Mahayana sutras themselves make reference to monkswho studied Mahayana sutras who lived in the same monasteries as those who did not. All of themost ancient Mahayana sutra manuscripts that have come to light were discovered in collectionsin which most of the manuscripts contain non-Mahayana texts (Allon and Salomon). Mahayana śā stras apparently also show no awareness of any sort of “Mahayana Buddhism” apart fromMahayana sutras and the commentarial traditions associated with them. As late as the seventhcentury, the pilgrim I Ching defined Mahayanists as people who worship bodhisattvas and readMahayana sutras, and specifically stated that the nik ā yas cannot be classified as Hinayana orMahayana. Instead of the products of a separate form of Buddhism, Mahayana sutras can better be thought of as a controversial textual genre that emerged and developed within traditionalBuddhist social and institutional contexts. With this understanding, the term “the Mahayana” can be used to refer to the movement or trend focused on the production and use of these texts andthe beliefs and practices they present. Applied to people, the term “Mahayana” or “Mahayanist”can best be used to refer to those involved with this movement. Several scholars have suggested

that the term be used to refer to people who identified or identify as bodhisattvas, but, as we shallsee below, it seems that some people involved in the early movement did not do so. In addition,many people historically, and in modern Theravada, have identified as bodhisattvas withoutaccepting Mahayana sutras (e.g., Samuels). Identifying as a bodhisattva was thus neither anecessary nor a sufficient condition for involvement in the movement associated with these texts.Mahayana sutras contain many references to their being rejected as fraudulent compositions andto Mahayana preachers facing abuse and expulsion from certain monasteries. When the


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Theravada nik ā ya coalesced in roughly the third century CE, Theravādins accepted and usedMahayana sutras. It was only in the tenth century that a reform movement established Theravadaas avowedly non-Mahayana (Walters). Chinese and Tibetan Buddhist monks and nuns focus primarily on Mahayana texts and follow the vinaya of the Dharmaguptaka and Mulasarvāstivādanik ā yas.

Historical background

It is unclear when and where Mahayana sutras were first composed and used. Until recently theoldest datable evidence we had for these texts was a corpus of roughly a dozen sutras that weretranslated into Chinese in the late second century CE. Since the first Mahayana sutras must have been composed some time before this, leading scholars tended to guess that they were composedaround the beginning of the first millennium. A few years ago portions of a few apparently firstcentury Mahayana sutra manuscripts from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region came to light,

which, by the same loose reasoning, would push the composition of the first Mahayana sutrasinto the first century BCE. Harry Falk and Seishi Karashima have recently suggested that anearly version of the A ṣṭ asāhasrik ā Prajñā pāramit ā ( Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines) may even have been composed before this (100). The A ṣṭ asāhasrik ā and other apparentlyearly texts depict themselves as being revealed in the period of the disappearance of the truedharma, which was believed to have begun five hundred years after the Buddha’s death. Thismight tend to push the date of the first Mahayana sutras forward in time, though it is not clearwhen early Mahayanists believed the Buddha lived. When the composition of Mahayana sutrasceased in India is also unclear. Edward Conze suggests that the composition of Prajñā pāramit ā sutras “in the old style” ceased in the sixth century, but that some sutras, often focused ondhāraṇī s or incorporating tantric terminology, continued to be composed into the secondmillennium.

The most ancient extant Mahayana sutra manuscripts were all discovered in Afghanistanor Pakistan, a fact that has focused attention on this area as a possible location for the initialcomposition of Mahayana sutras, but the preservation of Mahayana manuscripts in this regionmay just be a result of its dry climate (Allon and Salomon 17). Mahayana texts later came to beused widely throughout South, Central, East, and Southeast Asia. Though they were certainlyused more in certain areas than others, patterns of use in particular areas surely changed overtime and are difficult to reconstruct. Chinese pilgrims left records of whether Mahayana texts,

non-Mahayana texts, or both were used in particular areas (Lamotte 1954, 392-96). Jens-UweHartmann comments that Central Asian manuscript discoveries indicate that “Mahāyāna texts prevailed along the southern Silk Route, while so-called Hīnayāna scriptures dominated in themonasteries on the northern route” (125). Sculptural material that can be linked to the Mahayanahas the potential to shed further light on this issue. Epigraphical evidence also has some potential, but only a small number of Indian epigraphs can be linked to the Mahayana. Thismaterial has been studied by primarily by Gregory Schopen (2005), although his main


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conclusions have been challenged by other scholars (e.g., Cousins, Davidson). One of the oldest pieces of evidence we have for the Mahayana is a pedestal of an image of Amitābha found nearMathura that dates to the mid second century.

A key problem with dating Mahayana sutras is that their authors depict them as having been revealed in the time of the Buddha and give few clues as to their absolute or relative dates.

The only objective date that can be assigned to most sutras is the terminus ad quem oftheir first translation into Chinese, which can usually be determined with some precision. Thedozen or so Mahayana sutras translated into Chinese in the second century, along with therecently discovered manuscripts mentioned above, are thus the oldest objectively datableMahayana texts. Especially since the first Mahayana sutras now seem likely to have beencomposed in the first century BCE, however, Mahayana sutras were likely composed for twocenturies or more before the Chinese translations, which suggests the possibility that other sutraswe possess may have been composed before them in some form. Several scholars have arguedthat certain sutras, e.g., the Ajitasenavyākaraṇa, Ugraparipṛ cchā, or Maitreyamahā siṃhanāda,

are especially early on the basis of internal evidence, but their arguments have not reached broadacceptance. A certain circularity is difficult to avoid: scholars tend to argue that a sutra is early because its characteristics fit a certain hypothesis about early Mahayana and then present thesutra as proof that the hypothesis is correct. There are some criteria that probably do suggest anearly date, but even if such criteria were agreed upon, the fact that sutras were clearly oftencomposed over periods of time and that later sutras often imitate the style or incorporate passages from earlier texts would make them difficult to use. The A ṣṭ asāhasrik ā has long beenthe proverbial sutra to beat in terms of age. Although several scholars have argued that certainsutras are older, no sutra has yet been established as such, and recent developments have onlystrengthened the text’s status. The A ṣṭ asāhasrik ā is said to have been one of the first two

Mahayana sutras translated into Chinese in the second century and a first-century manuscript ofan early or prototypical version of the sutra is now the oldest datable evidence we have for theMahayana of any sort. Fragments of another, second-century, manuscript of the text are alsoamong the oldest Mahayana sutra manuscript material we possess. It is possible that an earlyversion of the A ṣṭ asāhasrik ā may have been the first Mahayana sutra to rise to prominence,though we know that other Mahayana sutras were composed before the text reached its currentform, since they are mentioned indirectly in later chapters of the text. Other sutras translated intoChinese during the second century include the Pratyutpanna, Ak ṣobhyavyūha, largerSukhāvat ī vyūha, K āś yapaparivarta, Ugraparipṛ cchā, Drumakinnarar ā ja, Śūraṃ gamasamādhi,and portions of the Avataṃ saka. A lengthy manuscript of a previously unknown Mahayana sutrarelated to the Akṣobhyavyūha and Prajñāpāramitā sutras was among the recent discoveries fromAfghanistan/Pakistan and is currently being edited by Ingo Strauch and Andrea Schlosser. Somesutras, such as the Saṃdhinirmocana, can be dated to later periods on the grounds that they present ideas developed in śā str ic traditions, or by other means.


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Textual Practice

Unlike pre-Mahayana sutras, Mahayana sutras often encourage their users to write them downand worship them in written form. This fact has led many scholars to think of Mahayana as aform of Buddhism specially associated with writing. Many scholars, going back to the nineteenthcentury, have identified book worship as a distinctly Mahayana practice. In 1975, Schopendiscussed a small number of passages in a few Mahayana sutras that state that places where people use sutras in various ways will be “caityabhūta,” a difficult term that could literally meaneither “a true caitya (shrine),” or “like a caitya.” Whereas earlier scholars tended to take the termin the latter sense, Schopen argued that it in fact means “a true shrine” and claimed that itindicates that Mahayanists created special book-shrines that served as “institutional bases” ofearly Mahayana groups (2005, 25-62). Though his argument was highly tenuous, it was widelyaccepted and celebrated. Other scholars, encouraged by Schopen’s work, argued that writtentexts were important for the Mahayana in other ways. Richard Gombrich argued that “the rise of

the Mahayana is due to the use of writing” in the sense that writing enabled Mahayanists to preserve new texts outside of traditional oral transmission lineages (21). Other scholars haveargued that the use of writing was responsible for the development of aspects of Mahayanathought.

Closer study of Schopen’s “caityabhūta” passages has made it clear that they do not referto actual shrines. Though scholars have claimed that Mahayana sutra manuscripts have beendiscovered in stupas, none ever actually has been, leaving nothing to suggest that institutionalMahayana book caityas ever existed (Drewes 2007). Schopen apparently concurs, writing in arecent publication that “when Mahāyāna literary sources refer in any detail to the location of books, those books are typically in domestic houses” and that “nowhere in these texts is there

any suggestion of . . . depositing [them] anywhere but at home” (2010, 49, 53). Other claims thathave been made about the importance of writing for Mahayana have overlooked certain problems. First, Mahayana sutras make reference to and advocate memorizing, reciting, andteaching them significantly more often than they advocate writing and book worship andexplicitly depict these activities as being more important. The confusion on this point has largely been a result of a general misunderstanding of the meaning of the words udg ṛ hṇāti, dhārayati,and paryavā pnoti, which, along with vācayati (recite), are the most common words thatMahayana sutras use to refer to and advocate textual practices. While scholars have generallyunderstood these terms as applying to written texts, all three actually refer to memorization

(Drewes forthcoming). In addition, it seems quite likely that writing was used for Buddhist textsfrom significantly earlier times than is often thought. Since the nineteenth century, scholars havegenerally held that Buddhist texts were not written down until the first century BCE, but the only basis for this idea is a short passage, two verses long, found in both the fourth or fifth-century Dī pavaṃ sa and later Mahāvaṃ sa, that states that the Tipiṭaka and commentaries were firstwritten down at this time. Several leading scholars have suggested over the years that this passage has little or no historical value. Even if it is a record of fact, however, the passage fairly


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clearly does not even intend to record the first time writing was ever used for Buddhist texts, butthe first creation of a complete set of written scriptures in Sri Lanka. Though early Buddhistsutras do not mention the writing of Buddhist texts, since we know that Indians possessed awritten script since at least the time of the Aśoka, there is no obvious reason to suppose thatBuddhists did not begin writing their texts as early as the second, or even third century. The

likelihood of this is strengthened by the fact that we now possess actual Buddhist manuscriptsthat date to the first or second century BCE. Though it is difficult to do more than guess, it seemsquite likely that writing was used for Buddhists texts from well before the emergence of theMahayana. The oldest Buddhist textual material that has been found in stūpas, and the vastmajority in all periods, is non-Mahayana in nature (e.g., Drewes 2007). Finally, although moderntranslations of Mahayana sutras have obscured the fact, Mahayana sutras make very frequentreference to figures called dharmabhāṇakas, who specialized in the composition, memorization,transmission, and preaching of Mahayana sutras, and depict them as the central figures in theMahayana movement (Drewes 2011). Like the texts of all premodern Indian religious traditions,

Mahayana sutras were primarily used orally and mnemically, though like epics, pur āṇas, andnon-Mahayana Buddhist sutras, they were simultaneously used and venerated in written form.

Multiple Mahayanas?

Several scholars have argued that individual Mahayana sutras were composed and used byseparate communities. Schopen asserted this in the final sentence of his 1975 article discussed inthe preceding section: “Since each text placed itself at the center of its own cult, early Mahāyāna(from a sociological point of view), rather than being an identifiable single group, was in the beginning a loose federation of a number of distinct though related cults, all of the same pattern,

but each associated with its specific text” (2005, 52). Schopen’s idea at the time was that eachMahayana group coalesced around a particular site or sites where the sutra it was devoted to wasenshrined. Though Schopen has now apparently given up this theory, he continues to suggest thatsince each Mahayana sutra “promotes itself over all others . . . what we call ‘the Mahāyāna’ wasrather a loose network of individual groups, each focused on a given specific S ūtra, or set ofS ūtras” (2010, 54). Without the support provided by his theory of institutional book shrines,however, these are thin grounds for concluding that sutras were associated with separate groups.Since hundreds of Mahayana sutras have survived, this view would require the existence ofhundreds of distinct early Mahayana groups, when scholarship has increasingly suggested that

early Mahayanists did not form separate groups at all. Schopen reduces the number of distinctgroups his view would require with the suggestion that groups may have formed around sets ofsutras, but the fact that each sutra “promotes itself over all others” does not provide any supportfor this. At present there is no known passage in any Mahayana sutra, śā stra, or Chinese pilgrim’s report that suggests the existence of any group that was devoted to a single Mahayanasutra, nor any that suggests the existence of a person or group that accepted and used someMahayana sutras but not Mahayana sutras in general.


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Many Mahayana sutras, including such texts as the A ṣṭ asāhasrik ā, Pratyutpanna, K āś yapaparivarta, larger Sukhāvat ī vyūha, Bhadrakalpika, Vimalak ī rtinirde śa andSaddharmapuṇḍ ar ī ka, explicitly advocate the use of Mahayana sutras in the plural. ThoughMahayana sutras often present different ontological or Buddhological perspectives, there is noobvious reason to presume that these were divisive. Buddhists have always been able to present

or overlook theoretical inconsistencies in sutra texts with the understanding that the Buddhataught different things to different people in accordance with their individual capacities andneeds. Mahayana sutra anthologists freely cite passages from a wide range of sutras; translatorsfrom the second century on down typically translated multiple sutras with divergent perspectives;and Mahayana śā stra authors often cite sutras with different perspectives as proof texts. Theattitude toward other sutras that we find in Mahayana sutras tends to be highly inclusive. Somesutras caution against rejecting sutras that one has not heard before or directly encourage therevelation of new sutras. Mahayana sutras display an extraordinarily high degree ofintertextuality and are one of the most stereotyped genres of Buddhist literature. After reading

five or seven of them, one is unlikely to find much that lies outside their range. Though weoccasionally find what seem likely originally to have been non-Mahayana texts that were laterMahayanized, e.g., by adding bodhisattvas to their audiences or similar means, most were clearlycomposed in close conjunction with the broader mass. Mahayana sutras can generally be thoughtof as an agglomerative corpus of literature. The movement most likely emerged with theextension of the avad āna genre in certain preaching circles, which resulted in the formation ofthe Mahayana sutra as a new genre. Though there was certainly some slippage, later authorsgenerally sought to adopt the basic vision, standard characters, stock phrases, themes, narratives,and various sorts of lore established in earlier sutras and expand on them in various ways.Though certain sutras and interpretations undoubtedly became more popular in certain areas and

time periods, and some texts must have been rejected as inauthentic and lost, the movementseems generally to have been willing to accept new sutras into the Mahayana corpus as they wererevealed.

Standard Interpretations

The most influential readings of Mahayana sutras have represented attempts to uncover thingsthat are relevant to modern religious concerns or beliefs. In the late nineteenth and earlytwentieth centuries scholars envisioned Buddhism as a rational moral philosophy. When the

ideas of Auguste Comte, who coined the term ‘altruism’ (altruisme) and presented it as thehighest stage in the development of human ethics, came into vogue, T.W. Rhys Davidsconsidered whether altruism was found in Buddhism and initially concluded that it was not. In asection entitled “The duty to the race in Buddhism and Comtism,” he writes:

Early Buddhism had no idea, just as early Christianity had not, of the principleunderlying the foundation of the higher morality of the future, the duty which we owe,


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not only to our fellow-men of to-day, but also to those of the morrow. . . . Buddhists andChristians may both maintain . . . that the duty of universal love laid down in theirScriptures can be held to involve and include this modern conception; but neither theearly Buddhists nor the early Christians looked at the matter quite in this way. . . . So faras I know, it never occurred to the Buddhist teachers to inculcate a duty towards the

beings that will exist in the ages yet to come (110-12).

Returning to the matter in an appendix, he introduced what was to become arguably the singlemost influential perspective on Mahayana in Western scholarship:

What was it that gave to [Mahayana] that superior vital power which enabled it to outlivethe earlier teaching? [Samuel] Beal . . . places the distinguishing characteristics of thenewer school in certain metaphysical subtleties which could scarcely have gained for itthe ear of the multitude. I venture to think that the idea referred to above, as summarized

in the theory of Bodisatship, is the key-note of the later school. . . . The Mahāyānadoctors said, in effect: ‘We grant you all you say about the bliss of attaining Nirvāṇa inthis life. But it produces advantage only to yourselves. . . . Greater, better, nobler, then,than the attainment of Arahatship, must be the attainment of Bodisatship from a desire tosave all living creatures in the ages that will come.’ . . . They might have been wiser hadthey perceived that their duty to the race would have been more completely fulfilled bytheir acting up to the ideal of Arahatship. But it was at least no slight merit to have beenled, even though they were led astray, by a sense of duty to the race” (254-55).

Though it began as little more than a projection of Comte’s evolutionary vision onto ancient

India, the idea that Mahayana emerged from the birth of a new spirit of altruism quickly rose to prominence. Building on Rhys Davids’ vision, Jean Przyluski later linked the putative selfishnessof the arhat ideal to Buddhist monastics and the compassionate reaction against it to the laity,creating the lay-origin theory of the Mahayana which became dominant in Western scholarshipfor most of the twentieth century. Even after its connection with Comtism had been forgotten,and despite the fact that the sudden upsurge of compassion it posits now seems risibly utopian,Rhys Davids’ idea has continued to seem plausible to many, perhaps because it depictsMahayana in a way that fits in with the still common idea that religion is fundamentally aboutethics.

Closer study of the way earlier Mahayana sutras talk about bodhisattvas and theattainment of Buddhahood has suggested that the bodhisattva ideal appealed less to strongfeelings of compassion than, as Jan Nattier puts it, a sense of “the glory of striving for the highestachievement that the Buddhist repertoire had to offer” (2003, 147). Paul Harrison similarlysuggests that the bodhisattva ideal was “a kind of power fantasy, in which the Buddhist practitioner aspires not simply to . . . arhatship, but to the cosmic sovereignty and powerrepresented by complete Buddhahood—not the destruction of ego, but its apotheosis” (1995, 19).


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While Mahayana texts often depict bodhisattvas as compassionate, they almost never encourageanything like social service, working for the poor, overcoming injustice or the caste system, oranything along these lines. Bodhisattvas are compassionate because they aim to becomeBuddhas; there is no need for them actually to work for the benefit of others in this life. In termsof so-called “real” religious significance, the adoption of the bodhisattva ideal probably meant

little more than that, rather than envisioning a series of heavenly rebirths after death and eventualtransformation into one sort of exalted supernatural being (the arhat), Buddhists began toenvision themselves eventually being transformed into a different sort of even more exaltedsupernatural being.

In the nineteen-twenties and thirties the paradigm of Buddhism qua moral philosophy began to be eclipsed by the idea that Buddhism was fundamentally about meditation and theattainment of ineffable religious experience or awakened consciousness. This new vision wasfirst developed by D.T. Suzuki, who was influenced by the work of William James (Sharf 1995aand 1995b). It quickly became so influential, and remains so today, that it is often difficult to

recognize how completely unprecedented it was both in scholarship and Buddhism itself.Though Suzuki conceded to Pali scholars that early texts provide little support for his vision,scholars immediately began to read this idea back into early texts. This happened so smoothlyand seamlessly that it is now widely held that the general understanding of Buddhism as a philosophy or way of life centered on meditation resulted from an excessive focus on the Palicanon. Though it took several decades, scholars eventually developed a coherent theory that fitMahayana into Suzuki’s paradigm, the so-called “forest hypothesis,” which has been the mostinfluential theory in the field over the past two decades. According to this theory, Buddhismdegenerated into institutionalization and ritual in the centuries after its origin and earlyMahayanists tried to revive its original focus on the quest for religious experience. This theory

makes it possible to imagine Tibetan Buddhism and Zen as preserving traditions of meditationthat go back, through early Mahayana, to early Buddhism, providing strong support for the ideathat Buddhism is essentially about meditation. The main innovation of the forest hypothesis wasa move to take references to forest-dwelling and ascetic practice as evidence for the practice ofmeditation, which Mahayana sutras rarely encourage, or the quest for “inward religiousexperience.” Mahayana went overnight from being a form of lay devotionalism to a hardcore,monastic meditation movement. Descriptions of otherworldly paradises filled with jeweled treesand lotus ponds were repackaged as accounts of profound meditation experiences. Apart fromthe dubiousness of equating advocacy of harsh discipline with the pursuit of religious experience,the theory’s main problem is that few Mahayana sutras encourage forest-dwelling or ascetic practice any more than they do meditation. Only two of the roughly dozen sutras translated intoChinese in the second century advocate these practices and they do so only indifferently orinconsistently. The large majority of other sutras also do not advocate them and there are noknown sutras for which they are the primary focus. Many Mahayana sutras are more concernedto provide justification for behavior, especially sexual behavior, that is prohibited by traditionalBuddhist morality. Unusual sutras that focus on criticizing the immoral behavior of others may


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represent attempts to counterbalance the general trend or even merely to impress preachingaudiences with virtuous-sounding talk.

The Idea of the Bodhisattva

The idea of the bodhisattva was Mahayana sutra authors’ point of departure, but not in the waythat is often imagined. Since the time of Rhys Davids, scholars have tended to presume that therejection of the goal of arhatship and the adoption of the bodhisattva path by some mass ormasses of people was the primary factor that motivated the composition of Mahayana sutras.They have thus often understood explaining the emergence of Mahayana to be a matter offiguring out what led Buddhists to do this. As several scholars have pointed out, however,several apparently early Mahayana sutras include people pursuing arhatship and pratyekabuddhahood in their intended audiences and claim that their teachings can enable such people to reach their goals more rapidly than traditional sutras. Remarkable passages in the first

two chapters of the A ṣṭ asāhasrik ā both encourage and attempt to justify śr āvakas givingteachings to bodhisattvas, suggesting that people who identified as śr āvakas were involved in thecomposition of early Mahayana sutras. It thus seems clear that Mahayana did not emerge from arejection of the arhat ideal, and that identifying as a bodhisattva was not considered necessary for people involved in the creation and use of the texts. As we shall see below, given the way the bodhisattva path was understood, it is unclear that many people plausibly could have identifiedas bodhisattvas before the development of the central early Mahayana doctrine that people whoaccept and use these texts are already advanced bodhisattvas. Rather than Mahayana sutrasresulting from the adoption of the bodhisattva path by some significant mass of people, the massadoption of the bodhisattva path seems somewhat more likely to have been precipitated by these

texts.Rather than reflecting a mass upsurge of compassion, a rejection of Buddhist

monasticism, or a longing for Suzukian “inward religious experience,” the idea of the bodhisattva was the key to the creation of Mahayana sutras as a new genre of text thatdramatically expanded the early Buddhist vision. Early sutras clearly depict the Buddha as possessing vast knowledge that he never imparted to his disciples. They generally present this asa reflection of his pragmatism: he taught his śr āvakas things that were necessary for them toattain liberation rather than things of merely theoretical interest. At the same time, early sutrasrecognize the existence of bodhisattvas, and present them as central figures in the Buddhist

world, but present no teachings for them, leaving a major lacuna in the Buddhist vision that wasrecognized as a problem by Mahayanists and non-Mahayanists alike. The non-Mahayana authorof the Abhidharmad ī pa, for example, accepts the Mahayana claim that the Buddha must havegiven teachings for bodhisattvas and dubiously tries to argue that such teachings are contained inthe Tripiṭaka (Jaini). Since bodhisattvas needed to obtain omniscience, rather than mereliberation, they needed to know the things that the Buddha did not teach his śr āvakas. Presentingteachings for bodhisattvas thus enabled Mahayana authors to explore the content of the Buddha’s


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unrevealed knowledge and simultaneously made it possible for them to present their listenerswith a path to a higher religious goal than had previously seemed plausible. For people whoidentified as śr āvakas, Mahayana authors claimed that their texts could enable to them attainarhatship more quickly than non-Mahayana texts. Looked at in this way, the idea of the bodhisattva can be seen as a salient loophole in the established Buddhist narrative that enabled

Mahayana authors to present an expanded, primarily supernatural, vision that appealed to somesignificant audiences of their day.

Soteriology

One of the most common misconceptions about Mahayana sutras is that they encourage peopleto become bodhisattvas, which can perhaps be seen as a legacy of Rhys Davids’ depiction of the bodhisattva as an ethical, rather than supernatural, ideal. Not only do these texts not encourage people to become bodhisattvas, doing so would make little sense in their religious world.

According to both non-Mahayana and at least earlier Mahayana understanding, one cannotsimply decide to become a bodhisattva. According to non-Mahayana and early Mahayanaunderstanding, since ordinary beings generally do not remember their past lives, and are rebornin circumstances determined by their accumulated karma, if someone were somehow to form adesire to attain Buddhahood ex nihilo and do some bodhisattva practices he or she would probably forget all about it in their next life. Even if a person were to get some traction and makesome progress on the path over several lifetimes, one’s status would remain tenuous for eons.According to a story in the Ta chih du lun, for instance, Śāriputra practiced the bodhisattva pathfor sixteen eons before giving up and deciding to become an arhat instead (Lamotte 1981, 701).Only after one encounters a living Buddha who predicts that one will eventually become a

Buddha oneself is one’s status as a bodhisattva assured. According to the Sarvāstivāda Mahāvibhāṣa, a being cannot properly be called a bodhisattva until he has not only received a prediction from a Buddha, but developed sufficient merit, or good karma, to be able to manifestthe so-called thirty-two marks of a great man (Fronsdal 120). The Theravada Nid ānakathā similarly states that an aspiration to become a Buddha takes effect only if it is made in the presence of a living Buddha and specifically states that making a resolution at a stupa or bodhitree will not work.

Since there are now no Buddhas in the world, it is impossible for Buddhists to obtain a prediction or make a meaningful resolution to become a bodhisattva in this life. The key

doctrinal innovation that made it possible to circumvent this problem was the idea that users ofMahayana sutras had already received, or were close to receiving, a prediction that establishedthem as true, or “irreversible,” bodhisattvas. From early times, it was believed that only beingswith a great deal of merit could encounter and accept Buddhist teachings. Mahayana sutrasextend this idea and claim that it is not possible to encounter and believe in the Buddha’s most profound teachings—Mahayana sutras—without having already made significant progress on the bodhisattva path. The A ṣṭ asāhasrik ā, makes this claim, according to an old rough count of mine,


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about twenty times. One passage states, for instance, “Those sons and daughters of good familyfor whom this Prajñā pāramit ā will come within range of hearing will be those who have doneservices to former Jinas [i.e., Buddhas], who have good roots that were planted under manyBuddhas . . . how much more so those who will memorize this Prajñā pāramit ā, retain it inmemory [etc.].” Another states:

It is just like a man leaving the interior of a [great] forest . . . . While leaving, he will see prior signs, [such as] cowherds, animal herders, or boundaries . . . by which a village, atown, or market town is discerned. Having seen these prior signs he thinks, “Since these prior signs are seen, my village, or town, or market town is near.” He becomes relaxedand no longer has concern for robbers. In just this way . . . the bodhisattva- mahā sattva forwhom this profound Prajñā pāramit ā turns up . . . should understand, “I am very nearunsurpassed, complete enlightenment. I will obtain the prediction to unsurpassed,complete enlightenment before long.” He need no longer fear, or be frightened of, or

afraid of, the level of śr āvakas or the level of pratyekabuddhas.Other passages state that people who believe in or are not frightened by the text are alreadyirreversible. The way the A ṣṭ asāhasrik ā presents it, the A ṣṭ asāhasrik ā itself serves as a sort ofsignpost on the bodhisattva path that indicates to whomever encounters it that he or she is eitheran irreversible bodhisattva, or nearly an irreversible bodhisattva, already. Despite the fact thatthey have been all but ignored in scholarship, similar passages are found widely in Mahayanasutra literature, e.g., in the Pratyutpanna, Ak ṣobhyavyūha, smaller and larger Sukhāvat ī vyāhas, Ajitasenavyākaraṇa, Samādhir ā ja, Saddharmapuṇḍ ar ī ka, Vimalak ī rtinirde śa, Ratnar āśi, and soon. An important passage in the A ṣṭ asāhasrik ā criticizes bodhisattvas who reject the text because

they do not trust its claim that they are irreversible because the text does not mention themspecifically by name. This suggests that the claim was intended to be taken literally and thatconvincing people that they were bodhisattvas was an important part of the text’s presentation.Though the bodhisattva path is often depicted as being extraordinarily long and arduous, thedoctrine that users of Mahayana sutras were already irreversible or nearly irreversible meant thatmost of their difficulty was already in the past. Mahayana sutras and śā stras that make use of thescheme of ten bhūmis, or stages, of the bodhisattva path typically place the attainment ofirreversibility on the seventh or eighth stage. The idea of the ekayāna, or one vehicle, and relatedconceptions, such as the idea that people destined to become arhats, pratyekabuddhas, orBuddhas inherently belong to separate gotras, or lineages, which are developed in some later

sutras, can be understood as attempts to simplify the identification of large audiences as bodhisattvas.

The main practices that Mahayana sutra authors advocate are creatively conceivedshortcuts that they claim can enable their users to circumvent most of the remaining path andattain Buddhahood as quickly and easily as they wish. Generally they focus on the attainment ofmerit, the universal currency of the Buddhist world, a vast quantity of which was believed to benecessary for the attainment of Buddhahood. Though it has been overlooked in scholarship, one


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such practice that is mentioned frequently is anumodanā, or “rejoicing,” in meritorious actions orthe teachings of Mahayana sutras, typically combined with the dedication of the resulting meriteither to the attainment of Buddhahood or to all beings. The A ṣṭ asāhasrik ā, Pratyutpanna, andSamādhir ā ja each devote a full chapter to the practice and many other sutras advocate it as well,including such texts as the Ugraparipṛ cchā, Saddharmapuṇḍ ar ī ka, K āraṇḍ avyūha,Upāliparipṛ cchā, Bhadracaripraṇidhāna, Vimalak ī rtinirde śa, Tathā gatagarbha, Ratnaketuparivarta, and Suvar ṇabhā sa. According to the A ṣṭ asāhasrik ā’s presentation, the practice involves considering all the merit made throughout all time by all Buddhas, in allworlds, as well by all bodhisattvas and other beings, forming a vivid mental image of it,rejoicing, and dedicating the resulting merit to the attainment of Buddhahood. According to thetext, doing this will result in one obtaining more merit than the total amount of merit possessed by all beings.

Since ancient times Buddhists have believed that merit could be produced not only by performing meritorious acts of one’s own but also through anumodanā in the meritorious acts of

others. The idea is found in the Pali canon, and in other non-Mahayana texts such as the Mahāvastu, Sarvāstivāda abhidharma texts, and the Dī vyāvad āna. Even today in Theravadacountries it is believed to be possible to make more merit through anumodanā in another’s giftthan the giver makes him- or herself. Mahayana sutras take this old idea and use it as thetheoretical basis for a new practice that can generate a vast amount of merit quickly and easily.The key to the new version of the practice is that rather than rejoicing in the merit made byothers’ individual gifts, one rejoices, e.g., in all the merit ever made by all beings. If anumodanā in a gift can enable one to make more merit than its giver, the amount of merit that can begenerated by rejoicing in all the merit ever produced is surely just as vast as the A ṣṭ asāhasrik ā says it is. This is strongly emphasized at the end of the text’s chapter on anumodanā when a

large number of gods state in unison that it is amazing that the heap of merit generated by this practice surpasses the merit that other bodhisattvas generate over a vast expanse of time.

Perhaps the best known of all the shortcuts to Buddhahood advocated in Mahayana sutraliterature are what are commonly known as pure land practices, practices that are presented asenabling people to be born after their deaths in special worlds where Buddhas currently live, andwhere it is easy to make rapid progress to Buddhahood. The two main pure lands are Sukhāvatī,the pure land of the Buddha Amitābha, also known as Amitāyus, and Abhirati, the pure land ofthe Buddha Akṣobhya. The basic theory is that Akṣobhya and Amitābha performed especiallydifficult bodhisattva practices in order to endow their worlds with all manner of luxuries andmake it possible for beings born there to acquire the merit and knowledge necessary to attainBuddhahood quickly and easily. Practices that are said to enable one to be born in these purelands are typically exaggeratedly easy, such as merely giving rise to an intention to be born thereor focusing one’s attention on Amitābha’s name. Schopen has drawn attention to the fact that promises of rebirth in Sukhāvatī and Abhirati are not only found in sutras focused specifically onAmitābha or Akṣobhya, but throughout Mahayana sutra literature in general (2005, 154-89).Such promises are made to people who engage in a wide varieties of practices which usually


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have nothing specifically to do with Amitābha or Akṣobhya, including such things asmaintaining the eight precepts, hearing the names of certain Buddhas or bodhisattvas,remembering the name of Śākyamuni, and, most commonly, hearing, memorizing, and writingvarious Mahayana sutras or parts of Mahayana sutras. According to some sutras, including theSanskrit larger and smaller Sukavat ī vyūhas, after being born in a pure land one can quickly

generate a vast store of merit and knowledge and obtain Buddhahood in one’s very next life.Several scholars have argued that pure-land practices are the product of ascetics or forest-

dwellers. Schopen and Gérard Fussman have argued on the basis of passages that state that onlyadvanced bodhisattva are born in Sukhāvatī that it was originally understood as a destination forwhat Schopen calls “the religious virtuoso,” rather than an easily accessible paradise (Schopen2005, 189, Fussman). This, however, overlooks the central Mahayana sutra doctrine, discussedabove, that everyone who accepts the authenticity of these texts is already an advanced bodhisattva. Harrison suggests that Lokakṣema’s translation of the text fits in with the foresthypothesis on the grounds that it states that women born in Sukhāvatī are born as men, which he

suggests is a reflection of “uncompromising anti-female sentiments of . . . male ascetics” (1998,564). Since the presupposition that all women hope to be reborn as men is widely attested inMahayana sutras, however, it seems more likely that this stipulation was actually intended toappeal to women. Harrison also suggests that Sukhāvatī is “the forest hermitage celestial” andthat the text’s well-known descriptions of glorious trees made of gold and jewels are intended asa template for meditative visualization, “the effect” of which would “presumably [be] brilliantand kaleidoscopic” (2003, 142, 121-22), but the text does not advocate using its descriptions inthis manner. Nattier argues to the contrary that even the earliest versions of the Sukhāvat ī vyūha depict rebirth in Sukhāvat ī and Buddhahood itself as being able to be obtained with “ease” (2000,99,101). She herself argues, however, that the Ak ṣobhyavyūha depicts difficult or ascetic practice

as necessary for rebirth in Akṣobhya’s pure land Abhirati (2000, 91, 99). This, however,overlooks the main passage in the text that explains how to be born there, which in both theTibetan version of the text and the second century Chinese translation presents a series ofmethods ranging from relatively to extremely easy, including being mindful of Akṣobhya,learning the text of the Ak ṣobhyavyūha, or simply giving rise to a desire to be born there, each ofwhich is explicitly said to be sufficient for rebirth in Abhirati.

Although Mahayana sutras often recommend anumodanā and pure land practices, theshortcuts they mention by far the most frequently are ones involving the use of Mahayana sutrasthemselves: listening to them, memorizing them, reciting them, preaching them, copying them,and worshipping them. Throughout Mahayana literature we are told that doing these thingsgenerates more merit than filling worlds with gems and giving them to Buddhas, erecting billionsof stūpas, or establishing virtually infinite numbers of beings on the bodhisattva path. In the past,scholars have generally ignored these passages, or dismissed them as simply “cult of the book”related material. They have often seen them as gimmicks for encouraging people to preserveMahayana sutras that have little to do with the actual concerns of these texts. A morestraightforward and perhaps more likely interpretation would be that Mahayana sutra authors


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recommend these practices more frequently and more enthusiastically than all others simply because they saw them as the most effective practices for making rapid progress towardBuddhahood.

Between the idea that users of Mahayana sutras are already, or nearly, irreversible bodhisattvas, and the shortcut methods these texts advocate, a point that I do not believe can be

overstated is that the path to Buddhahood envisioned by at least earlier, and most, Mahayanasutras is a quick and easy one. The only significant exceptions, which are mentioned especiallyin narrative sections of Mahayana sutras, are cases in which bodhisattvas choose to take theirtime, being born in luxurious circumstances for eons, always in the presence of Buddhas, beforefinally becoming Buddhas themselves. In this regard, these texts can be seen as extending thereligious vision of avad āna literature, according to which, as Jonathan Walters explains,commenting specifically on the Pali apad āna collection, “Each Apad āna actor experiences in hisor her cosmic biography a period of transition between the first performance of a Buddhistaction—often a trivial gesture or fleeting recollection—and the final attainment of nirvāṇa . . . .

This period of transition lasts for countless eons, but it is entirely pleasant: only birth in heavenor on earth, and always in a state of luxury that vastly magnifies the original piety” (1997, 178).According to Mahayana sutras, simply listening to a Mahayana sutra and believing in itsimultaneously locates one’s existence in a cosmic biography in which one has already been practicing as a bodhisattva for eons and guarantees that one is destined to encounter only gloryand bliss in future lives. Étienne Lamotte has made the important observation that Mahayanasutras make use of formulae and stock phrases that are only otherwise found in avad ānas (1988,591) and Hajime Nakamura has plausibly suggested that “the Avadāna literature was the matrixof Mahāyāna sūtras” (153).

Ontology, Buddhology, and Cosmology

Many Mahayana sutras present perspectives on the nature of reality, the nature of Buddhas, andthe cosmos that significantly extend more traditional Buddhist visions. Since Prof. Williamsaddresses much of this material in his article in this volume, there is no need for more than a fewobservations here. The most influential ontological perspective developed in Mahayana sutras isthe concept of emptiness ( śūnyat ā). As Prof. Williams points out, although Prajñā pāramit ā sutras and Mahayana sutras in general assign great importance to this idea, they do not present itin a philosophically articulated manner. Although realizing emptiness through the practice of

meditation is often depicted as one of Mahayanists’ central aims, the A ṣṭ asāhasrik ā and someother apparently early sutras actually depict this as something that bodhisattvas must be carefulto avoid. Realizing emptiness is tantamount to attaining liberation, so if a bodhisattva were to doso before accumulating all the merit and other requisites of Buddhahood, he or she wouldimmediately become an arhat or pratyekabuddha, which would make attaining Buddhahoodimpossible. In some texts we see a clear concern to avoid realizing emptiness by mistake.Another common idea about emptiness is that it does not legitimate violating the Buddhist


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precepts, but the A ṣṭ asāhasrik ā and many other sutras clearly depict it as making traditionalBuddhist morality, especially sexual morality, largely irrelevant. Much of the ontology,Buddhology, and cosmology of Mahayana sutras is presented in narrative form. One thinks ofthe famous stories of Vimalakīrti’s illness in the Vimalak ī rtinirde śa, Maitreya’s pavilion, ortower, in the Gaṇḍ avyūha, the dance of śr āvakas (and low level bodhisattvas) in the Drumakinnarar ā ja, Dṛḍhamati’s attempt to discover Śākyamuni’s lifespan in theŚūraṃ gamasamādhi, and the vast number of similar stories that fill Mahayana sutra literature.Although it is often precisely such material that attracts scholars to the study of Mahayana, it hasreceived little attention in scholarship. Scholars often suggest that such material is an expressionof meditation experiences, but this seems unwarranted. Rather than explaining these stories, suchinterpretations explain them away, propping up the Suzukian vision of Buddhism as a traditionfocused on some sort of actual spiritual experience or “awakening” while doing little to clarifyMahayana authors’ actual vision. The fact that different Mahayana sutras often present differentontological or Buddhological perspectives is sometimes presented as evidence for different

Mahayana groups with different doctrines, but, as mentioned above, we know that texts withdivergent perspectives were used together from early times. Some of the most highly articulatedontological and Buddhological perspectives are presented in sutras, such as theSaṃdhinirmocana and Laṅk āvat āra, which reflect the influence of śā stric traditions more thanthat of earlier Mahayana sutras.

DAVID DREWES

David Drewes is Associate Professor in the Department of Religion at the University ofManitoba. He is the author of several articles on early Mahayana.

Index: Mahayana, bodhisattva, orality, books, meditation, pure land, anumodanā, Aṣṭasāhasrikā,D.T. Suzuki, Auguste Comte


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mahayana sutras forthcoming

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