From the Ground Up - CA
Category Literature
From the Ground Up - CA
From the Ground Up - CA
Buddhist texts – The words of the Buddha
Buddhist texts can be categorized in a number of ways.
The Western terms "scripture" and "canonical" are applied to Buddhism in inconsistent ways by Western scholars: for example, one authority refers to "scriptures and other canonical texts", while another says that scriptures can be categorized into canonical, commentarial, and pseudo-canonical.
Buddhist traditions have generally divided these texts with their own categories and divisions, such as that between buddhavacana "word of the Buddha," many of .
Different types of Buddhist texts & literature
Buddhist texts are those religious texts which belong to the Buddhist tradition.
The earliest Buddhist texts were not committed to writing until some centuries after the death of Gautama Buddha.
The oldest surviving Buddhist manuscripts are the Gandhāran Buddhist texts, found in Afghanistan and written in Gāndhārī, they date from the first century BCE to the third century CE.
The first Buddhist texts were initially passed on orally by Buddhist monastics, but were later .
Jataka tales – The previous births of Gautama Buddha
The Jātakas are a voluminous body of literature native to South Asia which mainly concern the previous births of Gautama Buddha in both human and animal form.
Some of these works are also considered great works of literature in their own right.
In these stories, the future Buddha may appear as a king, an outcast, a deva, an animal—but, in whatever form, he exhibits some virtue that the tale thereby inculcates.
Often, Jātaka tales include an extensive .
Early Buddhist texts – Retracing the historical Buddhist discourses
Early Buddhist texts (EBTs), early Buddhist literature or early Buddhist discourses are parallel texts shared by the early Buddhist schools.
The most widely studied EBT material are the first four Pali Nikayas, as well as the corresponding Chinese Āgamas.
However, some scholars have also pointed out that some Vinaya material, like the Patimokkhas of the different Buddhist schools, as well as some material from the earliest Abhidharma texts could also be quite early.
Besides the large .
Buddhist translators – from canonical corpus to progressive spirituality
There is no consensus among the different Buddhist traditions as to what constitutes the scriptures or a common canon in Buddhism.
The general belief among Buddhists is that the canonical corpus is vast.
This corpus includes the ancient Sutras organized into Nikayas or Agamas, itself the part of three basket of texts called the Tripitakas.
Each Buddhist tradition has its own collection of texts, much of which is translation of ancient Pali and Sanskrit Buddhist texts of .
Sutras & beings related to Vairocana Buddha
Vairocana is a cosmic buddha from Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism.
Vairocana is often interpreted, in texts like the Avatamsaka Sutra, as the dharmakāya of the historical Gautama Buddha.
In East Asian Buddhism, Vairocana is also seen as the embodiment of the Buddhist concept of śūnyatā.
In the conception of the 5 Jinas of Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism, Vairocana is at the centre and is considered a Primordial .