A STUDY GUIDE TO PURSUING THE MAHĀRATNAKŪṬA SŪTRA COLLECTION

Discuss and learn about the traditional Mahayana scriptures, without assuming that any one school ‘owns’ the only correct interpretation.
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Leo Rivers
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A STUDY GUIDE TO PURSUING THE MAHĀRATNAKŪṬA SŪTRA COLLECTION

Post by Leo Rivers »


It's a modest PDF Table - I don't know how to mount with my pdf or ok html versions of the Table here. I would love some advice Thanks Leo
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Leo Rivers
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Re: A STUDY GUIDE TO PURSUING THE MAHĀRATNAKŪṬA SŪTRA COLLEC

Post by Leo Rivers »

The way this table will grow ... adding bits of data as to locating text material in ENglish.
Ratnakuta #21 Bhadra maya kara vyakarana, The Magician Bhadra's Prediction of Buddhahood,
is paraphrased in chapter 2 of The Book of Zambasta a

EMMERICK, Ronald Eric. (1968) The Book of Zambasta: Khotanese Poem on Buddhism, School of Oriental & African Studies, ISBN-10: 0197135579, ISBN-13: 978-0197135570, 480 pages, chapter 2 begins on page 10.
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Leo Rivers
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Re: A STUDY GUIDE TO PURSUING THE MAHĀRATNAKŪṬA SŪTRA COLLEC

Post by Leo Rivers »

Paper would be good too...

EXAMPLE: https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/handle/1887/14661

REFERENCE:
Remarks on the Kāśyapaparivarta CommentaryAuthor: Silk,
J.A.Issue: 52
Start Page: 381End Page: 397Pages: 17
Publisher: Indica et Tibetica VerlagIssue Date: 2009
Editor(s): Straube, MSteiner, RSoni, JHahn, MDemoto, MHandle: http://hdl.handle.net/1887/14661" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

File
https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/bitstr ... sequence=1

--------
Articulating a New Message: Reading the Kāśyapaparivarta as an Earlier Mahāyāna Scripture
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http://hcbss.stanford.edu/event/articul ... -scripture

Speaker's Bio
Jonathan Silk (1983 BA in East Asian Studies, Oberlin College; 1988 MA, 1994 PhD University of Michigan, in Buddhist Studies) is Professor in the study of Buddhism at Leiden University, having earlier taught at Western Michigan University, Yale University and UCLA. His research focuses primarily on Indian Buddhism, particularly on the scriptural traditions of the Mahāyāna movement. His publications include Riven by Lust: Incest and Schism in Indian Buddhist Legend and Historiography (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2008) and Managing Monks: Administrators and Administrative Roles in Indian Buddhist Monasticism. (Oxford University Press, 2008). He is the Founding Editor-in-chief of Brill’s Encyclopedia of Buddhism and co-Editor-in-Chief of the Indo Iranian Journal.
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longjie
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Re: A STUDY GUIDE TO PURSUING THE MAHĀRATNAKŪṬA SŪTRA COLLEC

Post by longjie »

Nice job with the study guide. I just wanted to add that I have a few from the Maharatnakuta Sutra available here:

http://lapislazulitexts.com/tripitaka#ratnakuta

Hopefully we can continue to add more translations in the future.

:namaste:
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Leo Rivers
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Re: A STUDY GUIDE TO PURSUING THE MAHĀRATNAKŪṬA SŪTRA COLLEC

Post by Leo Rivers »

Amazing and delightful. THANKS for this:
T11n310: Mahāratnakūṭa Sūtra

Compiled by Trepiṭaka Bodhiruci in 707-713 CE, as Da Baoji Jing (大寶積經). The Mahāratnakūṭa, or “Great Jewel Heap,” is a very large collection of Buddhist sūtras, many of which are early Mahāyāna teachings from India. Although it is a magnificent collection, most of the texts contained in it are little known. When this collection was originally compiled in the Tang Dynasty, if an individual text in the collection had been translated before, then the previous translation was generally used instead of translating it again. In this collection, each text is deemed a “Dharma assembly,” and there are 49 Dharma assemblies in all.

21. The Inquiry of Bhadra the Magician PDF (tr. Bodhiruci)
30. The Inquiry of Good Wisdom PDF (tr. Bodhiruci)
46. Mañjuśrī Teaches Prajñāpāramitā PDF (tr. Mandrasena)
And so much more!


I have 2 questions for you.

#! I have been told by someone who knows Bill Gates, Gates has an operation set up with about 125 lawyers which searched uncopywritten patients and photos and music and stuf and regesters them on sec. I knew personally a man in Eugene Oregon that wrote a driver for a modem free for all, and was sued by Microsoft who patented it and sued for infringment. They won. How does this work with written text?

#2 What is your opinion of Lama Tony Duff's translations? I have his Ugra and Maitreya Ratnakuta texts and even though I am innocent of any tongue but my own, have some questions.

Thanks again
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longjie
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Re: A STUDY GUIDE TO PURSUING THE MAHĀRATNAKŪṬA SŪTRA COLLEC

Post by longjie »

Leo Rivers wrote:I have 2 questions for you.

#! I have been told by someone who knows Bill Gates, Gates has an operation set up with about 125 lawyers which searched uncopywritten patients and photos and music and stuf and regesters them on sec. I knew personally a man in Eugene Oregon that wrote a driver for a modem free for all, and was sued by Microsoft who patented it and sued for infringment. They won. How does this work with written text?

#2 What is your opinion of Lama Tony Duff's translations? I have his Ugra and Maitreya Ratnakuta texts and even though I am innocent of any tongue but my own, have some questions.

Thanks again
:buddha2:
Okay, good questions. Every text or artistic work is implicitly copyrighted, even private letters to friends, so their authorship and copyright are implicit and automatic. This means that unless some license or permission is given, others cannot copy, modify, or redistribute the works. Once a work falls into the public domain, then the author no longer has special rights to it, and that version will remain in the public domain forever. In order to qualify for copyright again, some other person would need to modify or add to the work in a way that is notably creative or adds significant original material. That new version may qualify for copyright, but the public domain version will always be in the public domain.

Once it is in the public domain, that version can't be copyrighted by anyone (and claims of copyright would be invalid). As long as some distribution method exists, people will always be able to use the public domain work freely. That means they have the right to copy, modify, add, redistribute, etc. For example, the works of William Shakespeare are in the public domain, so anyone can compile them, edit them, and publish them freely.

Copyright laws and the public domain vary a bit between countries, and some countries make it more difficult to dedicate works into the public domain. That's why the Creative Commons made a special "Creative Commons Zero" license that basically covers all the necessary items to make it public domain to the maximum extent globally. It may seem strange to add a license to ensure that a work is public domain (since public domain means you can do anything with it), but in this case it is helpful.

Originally on this website, I used the "Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike" license, which requires that others give credit to the author, but permits that others can modify or redistribute the work if they like. One problem with this, though, is that I don't think that ethically I should own copyright to the translated words of the Buddha or put extra restrictions on them. Historically, the sutras in ancient India and China were de facto public domain because they had no copyright. This is what allowed others to compile them into Buddhist canons and print them all together. This is really what allowed them to propagate and survive. Anyone with enough time (copying by hand) or enough money (woodblock printing) could copy ancient translations as much as they liked. At some point, I decided that copyright restrictions for Buddhist sutra translations were petty, unnecessary, and fell short of the original standards for Buddhist sutra translations (public domain), and so the whole website was converted to "Creative Commons Zero."

For intellectual property, there are copyrights, trademarks, and patents, and the laws for them are very different. Fortunately we don't need to worry about trademarks and patents, and can focus on just getting the copyright part straight so others can copy and use the texts freely without restrictions.

As for Tony Duff's translations, I'm sorry to say I am not familiar with them. It seems that he is translating from the Tibetan versions, though, and I wouldn't be very helpful there.
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Re: A STUDY GUIDE TO PURSUING THE MAHĀRATNAKŪṬA SŪTRA COLLEC

Post by Leo Rivers »

Thanks for the Xumoti Jing (須摩提經) add! I am fascinated by the "little girl" or "just a woman" Wisdom Teacher trope in this literature. Was it a theatrical conciet in which the Teacher giving the sutra was saying "if a GIRL can get it, why can't you?" or Repressed anxiety about The Female expressing as a female wisdom figure, or the intrusion of Chokmah or Pistis Sophia?

After all, the Lonely Brahmah trope in the Cosmology Section of the Bodhisattva Bhumi on kalpas and re-creation is almost word by word parallel to the Gnostic justification of the Lower God/Demi-urge. (see Wisdom, Compassion, and the Search for Understanding: The Buddhist Studies Legacy of Gadjin M. Nagao, Gajin Nagao, Jonathan A. Silk, University of Hawaii Press, Jan 1, 2000 for the translation into English of that Chapter, see The Nag Hammadi Library, Robunson for the earlier Gnostic versions of the Lonely Sakla tale.)

Leo
Thanks for the Xumoti Jing (須摩提經) add! I am fascinated by the "little girl" or "just a woman" Wisdom Teacher trope in this literature. Was thre it a theatrical conciet in which the Teacher giving the sutra was saying "if a GIRL can get it, why can't you?" or Repressed anxiety about The Female expressing as a female wisdom figure, or the intrusion of Chokmah or Pistis Sophia?

After all, the Lonely Brahmah trope in the Cosmology Section of the Bodhisattva Bhumi on kalpas and re-creation is almost word by word parallel to the Gnostic justification of the Lower God/Demi-urge. (see Wisdom, Compassion, and the Search for Understanding: The Buddhist Studies Legacy of Gadjin M. Nagao, Gajin Nagao, Jonathan A. Silk, University of Hawaii Press, Jan 1, 2000 for the translation into English of that Chapter, see The Nag Hammadi Library, Robunson for the earlier Gnostic versions of the Lonely Sakla tale.)

Leo

Wisdom, Compassion, and the Search for Understanding
http://books.google.com/books/about/Wis ... XW1ERbwtcC
-> An amazing book, like the Hobbit to The Foundations for Yogic Practice trilogy of collection!
Vol. 1 : The Foundation for Yoga Practitioners: The Buddhist <i>Yogacarabhumi</i> Treatise and Its Adaptation in India,... by Ulrich Timme Kragh (Jul 22, 2013) http://www.amazon.com/Foundation-Yoga-P ... acarabhumi :twothumbsup: :woohoo:

The Nag Hammadi Library http://www.amazon.com/Nag-Hammadi-Libra ... di+Library


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Kunzang
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Re: A STUDY GUIDE TO PURSUING THE MAHĀRATNAKŪṬA SŪTRA COLLEC

Post by Kunzang »

Leo thanks for putting this together.

I have a question. Number 4 on the list, Sukhāvatī-vyūha, you have given as the English title for this text, "Explanation of dreaming". Can you explain this unusual title?
Critics slap labels on you and then expect you to talk inside their terms. - Doris Lessing
longjie
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Re: A STUDY GUIDE TO PURSUING THE MAHĀRATNAKŪṬA SŪTRA COLLEC

Post by longjie »

Leo Rivers wrote:Thanks for the Xumoti Jing (須摩提經) add! I am fascinated by the "little girl" or "just a woman" Wisdom Teacher trope in this literature. Was it a theatrical conciet in which the Teacher giving the sutra was saying "if a GIRL can get it, why can't you?" or Repressed anxiety about The Female expressing as a female wisdom figure, or the intrusion of Chokmah or Pistis Sophia?
Some scholars have sort of presumed that the idea was that "even a young girl can get it." Notice in the Sumati Sutra, though, that there is no antagonism against sravakas. A more likely philosophical reason, in my view, would be that it demonstrates the emptiness of dharmas and the illusory and insubstantial nature of appearances. It cuts down the supposed privileges of elder male monastics by demonstrating that appearances are just that. I think this interpretation would be closer to the core themes of the sutra.

However, my best guess is that these sutras were compiled during the Satavahana dynasty, under the patronage of queens and princesses. If I recall correctly, Queen Srimala is patterned after a Satavahana queen. Some of these figures even show up in the Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra, and other texts from the south. A number of Maharatnakuta texts feature young women as protagonists, like Srimala, Sumati, Gangottara, and Asokadatta. Some of them are even described as royal princesses sitting on thrones.
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Re: A STUDY GUIDE TO PURSUING THE MAHĀRATNAKŪṬA SŪTRA COLLEC

Post by Leo Rivers »

Notice in the Sumati Sutra, though, that there is no antagonism against sravakas.
and
A more likely philosophical reason, in my view, would be that it demonstrates the emptiness of dharmas and the illusory and insubstantial nature of appearances. It cuts down the supposed privileges of elder male monastics by demonstrating that appearances are just that. I think this interpretation would be closer to the core themes of the sutra.

I have a personal bias that makes me want to read into al this that in this context "maha yana" means, not Great Chariot" by "Freeway with a multiple passenger demarcated Fast Lane"

and that this fast lane means "You can opt to go all the way for beings to Buddha" while implying a form of mainstream Buddhism could accept andintegrate an interpretation of Emptiness was possible.

...if this is an early medeval sutra (100-300 CE) like Rice Stock or the Kasyapa cluster.
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