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Sutrasamuccaya
The ''Sūtrasamuccaya'' ('Compendium of Scriptures') is a collection of excerpts from various Buddhist Sutras. The Sūtrasamuccaya is Extant literature, extant in Chinese and Tibetan versions. According to the Chinese and Tibetan traditions, this anthology is attributed to Nagarjuna. Alex Wayman (1997: p. 86) in making reference to the ''Lankavatara Sutra'' and the ''Madhyamika'' holds that: ...as the Lankavatāra-sutra is cited several times, and the Mādhyamika Nāgārjuna surely precedes this scripture, it is highly unlikely that this Sūtrasamuccaya is by Nāgārjuna. The fourth century AD is the earliest possible period for such a compendium.Wayman, Alex (1997). ''Untying the Knots in Buddhism: Selected Essays''. Motilal Banarsidass Publishers. . Source(accessed: December 19, 2007) Content (1) The utmost rareness of a Buddha's appearance (2) The utmost rareness of being born a human (3) The rareness of obtaining an auspicious rebirth (4) The rareness of having ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nagarjuna
Nāgārjuna . 150 – c. 250 CE (disputed)was an Indian Mahāyāna Buddhist thinker, scholar-saint and philosopher. He is widely considered one of the most important Buddhist philosophers.Garfield, Jay L. (1995), ''The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way'', Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jan Westerhoff considers him to be "one of the greatest thinkers in the history of Asian philosophy." Nāgārjuna is widely considered to be the founder of the Madhyamaka (centrism, middle-way) school of Buddhist philosophy and a defender of the Mahāyāna movement. His ''Mūlamadhyamakakārikā'' (Root Verses on Madhyamaka, or MMK) is the most important text on the madhyamaka philosophy of emptiness. The MMK inspired a large number of commentaries in Sanskrit, Chinese, Tibetan, Korean and Japanese and continues to be studied today. History Background India in the first and second centuries CE was politically divided into various states, including the Kushan Empire and the Satavaha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Buddhist
Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and gradually spread throughout much of Asia via the Silk Road. It is the world's fourth-largest religion, with over 520 million followers (Buddhists) who comprise seven percent of the global population. The Buddha taught the Middle Way, a path of spiritual development that avoids both extreme asceticism and hedonism. It aims at liberation from clinging and craving to things which are impermanent (), incapable of satisfying ('), and without a lasting essence (), ending the cycle of death and rebirth (). A summary of this path is expressed in the Noble Eightfold Path, a training of the mind with observance of Buddhist ethics and meditation. Other widely observed practices include: monasticism; " taking refuge" in the Buddha, the , and th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sutra
''Sutra'' ( sa, सूत्र, translit=sūtra, translit-std=IAST, translation=string, thread)Monier Williams, ''Sanskrit English Dictionary'', Oxford University Press, Entry fo''sutra'' page 1241 in Indian literary traditions refers to an aphorism or a collection of aphorisms in the form of a manual or, more broadly, a condensed manual or text. Sutras are a genre of ancient and medieval Indian texts found in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. In Hinduism, sutras are a distinct type of literary composition, a compilation of short aphoristic statements.Gavin Flood (1996), ''An Introduction to Hinduism'', Cambridge University Press, , pages 54–55 Each sutra is any short rule, like a theorem distilled into few words or syllables, around which teachings of ritual, philosophy, grammar, or any field of knowledge can be woven. The oldest sutras of Hinduism are found in the Brahmana and Aranyaka layers of the Vedas. Every school of Hindu philosophy, Vedic guides for rites of passage, v ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Extant Literature
Ancient literature comprises religious and scientific documents, tales, poetry and plays, royal edicts and declarations, and other forms of writing that were recorded on a variety of media, including stone, stone tablets, papyri, palm leaves, and metal. Before the spread of writing, oral literature did not always survive well, but some texts and fragments have persisted. One can conclude that an unknown number of written works too have likely not survived the ravages of time and are therefore lost. Incomplete list of ancient texts Bronze Age Early Bronze Age: 3rd millennium BC (approximate dates shown). The earliest written literature dates from about 2600 BC (classical Sumerian). The earliest literary author known by name is Enheduanna, a Sumerian priestess and public figure dating to ca. 24th century BC. Certain literary texts are difficult to date, such as the ''Egyptian Book of the Dead'', which was recorded in the ''Papyrus of Ani'' around 1240 BC, but other versions of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anthology
In book publishing, an anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler; it may be a collection of plays, poems, short stories, songs or excerpts by different authors. In genre fiction, the term ''anthology'' typically categorizes collections of shorter works, such as short stories and short novels, by different authors, each featuring unrelated casts of characters and settings, and usually collected into a single volume for publication. Alternatively, it can also be a collection of selected writings (short stories, poems etc.) by one author. Complete collections of works are often called "complete works" or "" (Latin equivalent). Etymology The word entered the English language in the 17th century, from the Greek word, ἀνθολογία (''anthologic'', literally "a collection of blossoms", from , ''ánthos'', flower), a reference to one of the earliest known anthologies, the ''Garland'' (, ''stéphanos''), the introduction to which compares each of its ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alex Wayman
Alex Wayman (January 11, 1921 – September 22, 2004) was a Tibetologist and Indologist and worked as a professor of Sanskrit at Columbia University. He was of Jewish background.Amanda Porterfield, ''The Transformation of American Religion : The Story of a Late-Twentieth-Century Awakening'', Oxford University Press (2001), p. 159 After finishing his B.A. (1948), M.A. (1949) and Ph. D. (1959) at the University of California, Los Angeles he came to Columbia as a visiting professor in 1966. In 1967 he was made professor of Sanskrit and remained in this position until his retirement in 1991. Wayman wrote many books on Buddhism, especially Tantric Buddhist themes, and on Buddhist logic Buddhist logico-epistemology is a term used in Western scholarship for '' pramāṇa-vāda'' (doctrine of proof) and ''Hetu-vidya'' (science of causes). Pramāṇa-vāda is an epistemological study of the nature of knowledge; Hetu-vidya is a syst .... References * Columbia NewsAlex Wayman, Pioneer of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Madhyamika
Mādhyamaka ("middle way" or "centrism"; ; Tibetan: དབུ་མ་པ ; ''dbu ma pa''), otherwise known as Śūnyavāda ("the emptiness doctrine") and Niḥsvabhāvavāda ("the no ''svabhāva'' doctrine"), refers to a tradition of Buddhist philosophy and practice founded by the Indian Buddhist monk and philosopher Nāgārjuna (c. 150 – c. 250 CE).Wynne, Alexander (2015) ''Early Buddhist Teaching as Proto-śūnyavāda.'' Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, 6. pp. 213-241. The foundational text of the Mādhyamaka tradition is Nāgārjuna's ''Mūlamadhyamakakārikā'' ("Root Verses on the Middle Way"). More broadly, Mādhyamaka also refers to the ultimate nature of phenomena as well as the non-conceptual realization of ultimate reality that is experienced in meditation. Mādhyamaka thought had a major influence on the subsequent development of the Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition. It is the dominant interpretation of Buddhist philosophy in Tibetan Buddhism and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Buddhist Texts
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 written down and composed as manuscripts in various Indo-Aryan languages (such as Pāli, Gāndhārī, and Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit) and collected into various Buddhist Canons. These were then translated into other languages such as Buddhist Chinese (''fójiào hànyǔ'' 佛教漢語) and Classical Tibetan as Buddhism spread outside of India. Buddhist texts can be categorized in a number of ways. The Western terms "scripture" and "canonical" are applied to Buddhism in inconsistent ways by West ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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