Maha Prajna Paramita Sutra: An Introduction.

 

A Sutra [ Sūtra, cognate with the English word ‘Suture’, a strung-together lock] was originally defined in the classical texts as: ‘A statement of few words, that is free from doubt, of significant meaning in content, having an universal application, free from rhetorical and repetitious words [‘padding’ that is found in many Vedic litanies], and is grammatically and logically accurate’.

The Sutras were originally meant as mnemonic arrangements, the anchoring reference of an oral teaching tradition under the guidance of a Guru. As used here they refer exclusively to the Prajna Paramita texts.

Prajna, is ‘Primal Sight-Insight’. Paramita in this context marks the limit of achievement, what the early literature calls attaining the ‘Other Shore’. Prajna Paramita is translatable with unavoidable clumsiness but fair accuracy as: ‘The [Self-Scuttling] Sight-Insight into the very nature of Sight-Insight’.

The settled cognition in other words, of Śūnyathā: Emptyness.

The Maha Prajna Paramita Sutra [ Mahā Prajñā Pāramita-Sūtra]  is the original source, the first, most comprehensive and least compromised attestation to Emptyness. Its unclouded eye and unhesitant voice have made it a document of heresy to some and divine inscrutability to others.

The earliest sections of the Prajna Paramita verses date back to the two centuries following the death of the Buddha. Of these, the first 41 verses form the extant core.

Soon after, the text was expanded to 302 verses called the Prajna Paramita Ratna Guna Samcayagatha [Arya Samcayagatha] by aspiring monks and leaders of the newly created Buddhist Sanghas. The extensions were mainly elaborations of the six ‘Precious Virtues’ [Ratna Guna], all of which become central in subsequent Buddhist religious writings [numerous versions of the extensions are readily available on the Net].

Noble virtues all and universally revered-but these extensions were the writings of pious and deeply religious men, not the pioneering brave-hearts from whom arose the radical declarations that made up the core verses of the original text.

The subsequent and better known prose expansion of the RatnaGuna was the Astasahasrika Prajna Paramita better known as the ‘Perfection of Wisdom in 8,000 Slokas’  [a Sloka being a metrical unit of 32 syllables]. This basic reference text has been further expanded upwards to 10, 18, 25 and 100,000 Slokas.

By the time the Prajna Paramita reaches these rarefied heights of loquacious amplification the core insights of the original text are faded into minor footnotes. More often they were simply misplaced or lost in the large monastic libraries. The learned and well-meaning monks, the scribes of the expansions, had tamed the fearsome bellow of the original verses into a domesticated religious document for conventional reverence and worship.

The oral tradition and its dependence on mnemonic phrasing did not transfer well to the new written word in high Sanskrit.  A downward spiral began, progressively compacting the now unwieldy texts to 2,500, 700, 500, 300, 150 and 25 Slokas respectively.

The 25 Sloka compacting is the Hridaya Sutra [‘Heart Sutra’] the daily invocation in every Zendo. Intentionally bite-sized and by far the most well-known, it is to be read and interpreted only as supplement to the Diamond Sutra. Much mischief has been created when it is read in isolation where it’s very tight phrasing can seriously miscue the entrant.

The 300 Sloka version is the celebrated Vajrachedika Sutra [‘Diamond Sutra’], the terse, cryptic summary that captures the entirety of the insights of the first 41 verses in uncompromised form. It is the central document that lays forth the truth of Emptyness without  blinking, and by far the most revealing and undiluted expression of what the original authors meant to say. Better known than the original 41 verses and more willing to speak an absurd tongue, it has held the ungrudging respect of the best minds over the centuries.

The story goes that Hui-neng, the pioneering Chinese 6th Patriarch of C’han-Zen awoke to ‘Enlightenment’ when he chanced upon this Sutra being recited at a public square [see the Page: ‘The Oldest Preserved Printed Text’].

The geographical origin of the Sutra is not very clear. But as
Dr. Edward Conze suggests and for good reasons, there is nothing conclusive about it being Gridhrakuta [‘Vulture Peak’] as is popularly held. An alternative proposal sources it in Southern India between Amaravathi and Kanchipuram. Both Nagarjuna and Bodhidharma came from this stretch of land, and Shankaracharya, the formulator of Advaitha Vedantha, significantly influenced by the Sutra, was from near this region. The great expansions East were mainly Southern and the Sutra has always found its home not in India but overseas and to the East.

The first translation from the Sanskrit was into classical Chinese in 179 C.E. by Lokashema from Kusana called ‘The Prajna Paramita Sutra and the practice of the Way’. [The Tao-Hsing]. It was the first philosophical text to cross the border.

Numerous other translations into the Chinese were done by driven and dedicated scholars over the next 800 years. the best known being that by Kumarajiva and later by Hsuan-tsan which ran to 600 fascicles. The first Tibetan translation took place around 850 C.E. and continued in numerous variations till the 16th century.

The translations into European languages are recent , as late as the early part of the 20th century.  This Site draws on the monumental labors of Dr. Edward Dietrich Conze, the ‘ foremost  Western scholar of the Prajna Paramita literature’, a labor which continued well into the latter half of the last century. His work draws on Haribhadra’s classic Abhisamayalankaraloka, Nagarjuna’s Commentaries  and others, bringing the literature finally into the Western loci of the Modern.

The task of the translator, let alone an interpreter of the Prajna Paramita literature has always been difficult. The job of extracting honest meaning from these bristling and unabashedly absurd lines, phrases that mock even the elemental rules of coherent linguistic structure, especially when being remade for the sensible, pragmatic languages of the modern West,  can bring grown men to tears.

That this Site pretends to be able to cross these deep linguistic, temporal and cultural divides is testimony to the power of these very old verses. Only one who is inescapably captured by the Truth so penetratingly and uncompromisingly expressed in these few lines would be foolhardy enough to share and speak their voice.END=NAM MO SAKYAMUNI BUDDHA.( 3 TIMES ).WORLD VIETNAMESE BUDDHIST ORDER=VIETNAMESE BUDDHIST NUN=GOLDEN LOTUS MONASTERY=THE EIGHTFOLD PATH.THICH CHAN TANH.THE MIND OF ENLIGHTMENT.AUSTRALIA,SYDNEY.20/3/2015.