{"id":3630,"date":"2017-09-05T08:36:12","date_gmt":"2017-09-05T14:36:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/wildfoxzen\/?p=3630"},"modified":"2017-09-14T11:24:23","modified_gmt":"2017-09-14T17:24:23","slug":"more-or-less-what-is-a-sutra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wildfoxzen\/2017\/09\/more-or-less-what-is-a-sutra.html","title":{"rendered":"What is a S\u016btra? Chirp, Buzz, Woof"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
\"sutra<\/div>\n
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Zen doesn\u2019t rely on words and Buddhism<\/a> doesn\u2019t have the equivalent of a Bible<\/em> or Quran<\/em>, although we have s\u016btras. Simply put, s\u016btras are Buddhist<\/a> scriptures<\/span> \u2013 and the plural there is important. Rather than just one book, we\u2019ve got a large basket of teachings called \u201cs\u016btra.\u201d<\/div>\n

How large?<\/h4>\n
That depends on what your definition of \u201cs\u016btra\u201d is. I\u2019ll get to that in a moment.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Tanya Storch, if you\u2019re interested, takes up many s\u016btra related issues in\u00a0The History of Chinese Buddhist Bibliography: Censorship and Transformation of the Tripitaka.\u00a0<\/em>I\u2019m working on a review, but finding it difficult to tie it up. So this post is a preface to that subsequent post.<\/div>\n
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Some scholars now think that Great Vehicle (aka, Mahayana) s\u016btras started to be verbally created and passed on sometime the century or two after the Buddha\u2019s death, not four or five centuries later as was generally accepted last century. These Great Vehicle s\u016btras vary in length from one page to thousands of pages. Yes, ironically, people that spend a lot of time sitting down and shutting up in meditation, often have a lot to say. And although they\u2019re often attributed to the Buddha, that seems unlikely. However, they\u2019re not signed and so we don\u2019t know who wrote them. Many went through multiple versions over decades or centuries with multiple authors and probably committees of authorship.<\/div>\n
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Despite (or because of) the difficulty in definition of what is and isn\u2019t a s\u016btra, there have been various collections of texts, canons, especially in China (apparently the our Great Vehicle Indian predecessors weren\u2019t interested in canons) that attempt to sort out what should be in and what shouldn\u2019t. These canons ranged in size from hundreds to several thousand\u00a0s\u016btra. Only a really small portion have been translated into English. For example, the\u00a0Taish\u014d Tripi\u1e6daka, a\u00a0Chinese Buddhist canon\u00a0and its Japanese commentaries created in the 20th Century, has about 3,000\u00a0s\u016btra and commentaries. Only about .5% of these have been translated. I wonder how much difference it would make in our practice if the other .95% were translated. However we answer that question, it\u2019s clear that we\u2019re just at the beginning of this buddhadharma project in the nonChinese\u00a0reading world.<\/div>\n
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It\u2019s also important to note that our predecessors used\u00a0s\u016btras not only for chanting and study, the primary uses in these parts today, but for their talisman qualities. The belief in s\u016btras for healing, protection, and miscellaneous magical effects was wide-spread, maybe even universal in the ancient world.<\/div>\n

The word itself<\/h4>\n
In order to begin a reflection on\u00a0s\u016btra, though, it is important to dig into the word itself. The Sanskrit word \u201cs\u016btra\u201d means \u201cthread\u201d or \u201ccord\u201d and it is related to the English word \u201csuture.\u201d So in Sanskrit, a\u00a0s\u016btra was something that tied all of us together, stitched the wound of the separate self, and connected us with practitioners in the past, present, and future.<\/div>\n
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As the dharma moved northeast to China, they had a decision to make in terms of what word to use for this literature. They could transliterate the Sanskrit \u201cs\u016btra\u201d\u00a0as they did with some other terms, but instead they chose the Chinese character \u7d93, pronounced\u00a0j\u012bng, which happens to be the same character\u00a0<\/span>used for Confucian texts. It has a wide range of meanings, though, including \u201cclassics,\u201d \u201csacred book,\u201d \u201cto pass through,\u201d \u201cwarp (textile),\u201d \u201clongitude,\u201d and \u201cmenstruation\u201d (from the\u00a0MDBG online dictionary).<\/div>\n
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David\u00a0Hinton in\u00a0Hunger Mountain: A Field Guide to Mind and Landscape<\/em>\u00a0has this about the etymology of s\u016btra\/j\u012bng \/\u7d93:<\/div>\n
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\u201cIt was still very early in Chinese cultural history when these threads were first strung onto looms, and this idea of a warp became one of the culture\u2019s foundational metaphors. The Shuo Wen graph for warp is composed of the\u00a0image for silk on the left, together with those for water and earth (stylized version of the early oracle-bone form showing a lump of clay on a potter\u2019s wheel). In the unnerving context of a Cosmos where everything is always in transformation and on its way somewhere else, even seemingly immutable facts like bedrock and mountain peaks, the threads of this earth-and-water warp were conceived as the enduring elements upon which the patterns of culture and consciousness are woven, and so the graph comes to mean such things as \u2018the classics,\u2019 \u2018abiding concepts or principles,\u2019 \u2018customs.\u2019\u201d<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
If we were inclined, then, to find an English word or phrase for\u00a0s\u016btra like the ancient Chinese, \u201cearth-and-water warp\u201d offers an interesting possibility. We could have \u201cThe Heart Earth-and-Water Warp,\u201d the \u201cMountains and Rivers Earth-and-Water Warp,\u201d and \u201cThe Sixth Ancestors Platform Earth-and-Water Warp.\u201d<\/div>\n

But to wrap up this warped post\u2026<\/span><\/h4>\n
Back to the issue of what to include in the category \u201cs\u016btra\u201d or \u201cearth-and-water warp.\u201d Some see s\u016btra as the buddhadharma in the flesh. <\/span>In Bukky\u014d (Buddha Teaching)<\/em>\u00a0Dogen said (Tanahashi translation),\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n

\u201cEndeavor of the way\u00a0in the practicing community, and the practice of sitting zazen, is unquestionably a buddha s\u016btra from beginning to end and from end to beginning. In this way, you inscribe s\u016btras on bodhi leaves, and you inscribe s\u016btras on the surface of the void\u2026. You receive s\u016btras and expound s\u016btras by means of mountains, rivers, and earth, or by means of the sun, the moon, and stars. Likewise, you hold s\u016btras and transmit s\u016btras with the self before the Empty Eon, or with body and mind before the original face. You actualize such s\u016btras by\u00a0cracking open particles. You bring forth such s\u016btras by cracking open the world of phenomena.\u201d<\/p>\n

What is a\u00a0s\u016btra?<\/h4>\n

\u201cBodhisattva Inexhaustible Intent
\nAsked a question in verse:
\n\u2018Oh World-honored One, of wondrous form,
\nI inquire again of that Buddha-child:
\nWhat are the causes of the name,
\nRegarding the Cries of the World?'\u201d<\/p>\n

Chirp, Buzz, Woof.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Zen doesn\u2019t rely on words and Buddhism doesn\u2019t have the equivalent of a Bible or Quran, although we have s\u016btras. Simply put, s\u016btras are Buddhist scriptures \u2013 and the plural there is important. Rather than just one book, we\u2019ve got a large basket of teachings called \u201cs\u016btra.\u201d How large? That depends on what your definition […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":3633,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat is a S\u016btra? 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