27 Facts About Mahayana sutras

Mahayana sutras are a broad genre of Buddhist scriptures that are accepted as canonical and as buddhavacana in Mahayana Buddhism.

Several hundred Mahayana sutras survive in Sanskrit, or in Chinese and Tibetan translations.

Mahayana Buddhists typically consider several major Mahayana sutras to have been taught by Gautama Buddha, committed to memory and recited by his disciples, in particular Ananda.

However, other Mahayana sutras are presented as being taught by other figures, such as bodhisattvas like Manjusri and Avalokitesvara.

Mahayana sutras were not accepted by all Buddhists in ancient India, and the various Indian Buddhist schools disagreed on their status as "word of the Buddha".

Related searches

Scholars like Joseph Walser have noted how Mahayana sutras are heterogenous and seem to have been composed in different communities with varying ideas.

Study of differences in various versions of Mahayana sutras translated into Chinese has directly shown that these texts were often transmitted orally.

Mahayana sutras were committed to memory and recited by important learned monks called "Dharma reciters", who were viewed as the substitute for the actual speaking presence of the Buddha.

Mahayana sutras movement remained quite small until the fifth century, with very few manuscripts having been found before then .

Warder notes that the Tibetan historian Taranatha proclaimed that after the Buddha taught the Mahayana sutras, they disappeared from the human world and circulated only in the world of the nagas.

Mahayana sutras are generally regarded by Mahayanists as being more profound than the sravaka texts as well as generating more spiritual merit and benefit.

Study of Mahayana sutras is central to East Asian Buddhism, where they are widely read and studied.

Mahayana sutras were not recognized as being Buddha word by various groups of Indian Buddhists and there was lively debate over their authenticity throughout the Buddhist world.

Various Mahayana sutras warn against the charge that they are not word of the Buddha and defend their authenticity in different ways.

The practice of visualization of Buddhas has been seen by some scholars as a possible explanation for the source of certain Mahayana sutras which were seen as revelations from Buddha in other heavenly worlds.

Different Mahayana justification for the authenticity of the Mahayana sutras is that they are in accord with the truth, with the Buddha's Dharma and therefore they lead to awakening.

Central to the Mahayana sutras is the ideal of the Bodhisattva path, something which is not unique to them as such a path is taught in non-Mahayana texts which required prediction of future Buddhahood in the presence of a living Buddha.

Some Mahayana sutras promote it as a universal path for everyone, while others like the Ugrapariprccha see it as something for a small elite of hardcore ascetics.

The old idea that the Mahayana sutras began with the rejection of the arhat ideal in favor of that of the bodhisattva is thus clearly incorrect.

Several Mahayana sutras depict Buddhas or Bodhisattvas not found in earlier texts, such as the Buddhas Amitabha, Akshobhya and Vairocana, and the bodhisattvas Maitreya, Manjusri, Ksitigarbha, and Avalokiteshvara.

An important feature of Mahayana sutras is the way that it understands the nature of Buddhahood.

Warder, some scholars think that the earliest Mahayana Sutras were mainly composed in the south of India, and later the activity of writing additional scriptures was continued in the north.

Some earliest Mahayana Sutras were translated by the Kushan monk Lokaksema, who came to China from the kingdom of Gandhara.

Newar Buddhism has a group of nine Sanskrit Mahayana sutras that are considered the key texts of the tradition.

Many of these Mahayana sutras are known by the number of lines, or slokas, that they contain, such as the Pancavimsatisahasrika PP Sutra, the Astadasasahasrika, and the Satasahasrika etc.

Related searches

In some East Asian traditions, the Lotus Sutra has been compiled together with two other Mahayana sutras which serve as a prologue and epilogue, respectively the Innumerable Meanings Sutra and the Samantabhadra Meditation Sutra.

Two other important Mahayana "sutras" which are collections of smaller independent sutras are the Maharatnakuta Sutra which contains 49 individual sutras, and the Mahasamnipata Sutra which is a collection of 17 sutras.