Sutras
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36 Sūtras
by its reconstructed, but unattested, Sanskrit title, the *Brahmajālasūtra. This scripture is reputed to have been translated by KumārajIva in 406, but it is most likely an indigenous Chinese scripture (see apocrypha) composed during the middle of the fifth century. The Fanwang jing, in its current recension in two rolls, purports to be the tenth chapter of a much longer, 120-roll scripture tided the Bodhisattvaśīlasūtra, which is otherwise unknown. The first roll provides a description of the buddha Vairocana and the ten different stages of the bodhisattva path. Because subsequent Chinese indigenous scriptures that were closely related to the Fanwang jing, such as the Pusa yinluo penye jing, provided more systematic presentations of these soteriological models, this first roll was not widely studied and was typically omitted in commentaries on the scripture. Far more important to the tradition is the second roll, which is primarily concerned with the "bodhisattva precepts" (bodhisattvaśīla); this roll has often circulated independently as Pusajie jing (*Bodhisattvaśīlasūtra) "The Book of the Bodhisattva Precepts"). This roll provides a list of ten major and forty-eight minor Mahāyāna precepts that come to be known as the "Fanwang Precepts," which became a popular alternative to the 250 monastic precepts of the Dharmaguptaka vinaya (also known as the Sifen Lü). Unlike the majority of rules found in other non-Mahāyāna vinaya codes, the bodhisattva precepts are directed not only at ordained monks and nuns, but also may be taken by laymen and laywomen. The Fanwang jing correlates the precepts with Confucian virtues such as filial piety and obedience, as well as with one's buddha-nature (foxing). Numerous commentaries on this text were composed, and those written by Fazang, Mingkuang (fl. 800 CE), and the Korean monk T'aehyǒn (d.u.) were most influential. As the primary scriptural source in East Asia for the bodhisattva precepts, the Fanwang jing was tremendously influential in subsequent developments in Buddhist morality and institutions throughout the region. In Japan, for example, the Tendaishū monk Saichō (767-822) disparaged the prātimokṣa precepts of the traditional vinaya as being the precepts of hInayāna adherents, and rejected them in favor of having all monastics take instead the Mahāyāna precepts of the Fanwang jing. In Korea, all monastics and laypeople accept the bodhisattva precepts deriving from the Fanwang jing, but for monks and nuns these are still seen as complementary to
their main monastic vows. (Source: "Fanwang jing." In The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, 295. Princeton University Press, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46n41q.27.)the Sarvabuddhasamāyogaḍākinījālaśaṃvara, it also introduced a number of innovations - most importantly the doctrine of the four blisses - and it is noted for skillfully blending the world of tantric ritual practice and non-esoteric Mahāyāna doctrine. Compared to the other emblematic yoginītantra,
the Herukābhidhāna, the Hevajratantra can be said to contain much more theological and philosophical material, showing a confident grounding in the Buddhist world. (Source: Brill's Encyclopedia of Buddhism: Literature and Languages, edited by Jonathan A. Silk, Oskar von Hinüber, and Vincent Eltschinger, 334. Leiden: Brill, 2015.)According to the Kālacakra tradition, the extant version of the Kālacakratantra is an abridged version of the larger original tantra, called the Paramādibuddha, that was taught by the Buddha Śākyamuni to Sucandra, the king of Śambhala and an emanation of Vajrapāṇi, in the Dhānyakaṭaka stūpa, a notable center of Mahāyāna in the vicinity of the present-day village of Amarāvatī in Andhra Pradesh. Upon receiving instruction on the Paramādibuddhatantra and returning to Śambhala, King Sucandra wrote it down and propagated it throughout his kingdom. His six successors continued to maintain the inherited tradition, and the eighth king of Śambhala, Mañjuśrī Yaśas, composed the abridged version of the Parāmadibuddhatantra, which is handed down to us as the Sovereign Abridged Kālacakratantra (Laghukālacakratantrarāja). It is traditionally taught that it is composed of 1,030 verses written in the sradgharā meter. However, various Sanskrit manuscripts and editions of the Laghukālacakratantra contain a somewhat larger number of verses, ranging from 1,037 to 1,047 verses. The term an “abridged tantra” (laghu-tantra) has a specific meaning in Indian Buddhist tantric tradition. Its traditional interpretation is given in Naḍapādas (Nāropā) Sekoddeśaṭīkā, which states that in every yoga, yoginī, and other types of tantras, the concise, general explanations (uddeśa) and specific explanations (nirdeśa) make up a tantric discourse (tantra-saṃgīti), and that discourse, which is an exposition (uddeśana) there, is an entire abridged tantra.
The tradition tells us that Mañjuśrī Yaśas's successor Puṇḍarīka, who was an emanation of Avalokiteśvara, composed a large commentary on the Kālacakratantra, called the Stainless Light (Vimalaprabhā), which became the most authoritative commentary on the Kālacakratantra and served as the basis for all subsequent commentarial literature of that literary corpus. The place of the Vimalaprabhā in the Kālacakra literary corpus is of great importance, for in many instances, without the Vimalaprabhā, it would be practically impossible to understand not only the broader implications of the Kālacakratantra' cryptic verses and often grammatically corrupt sentences but their basic meanings. It has been said that the Kālacakratantra is explicit with regard to the tantric teachings that are often only implied in the other anuttara-yoga-tantras, but this explicitness is actually far more characteristic of the Vimalaprabhā than of the Kālacakratantra itself. (Source: Wallace, Vesna A. The Inner Kālacakratantra: A Buddhist Tantric View of the Individual. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001: pp. 2-3.)