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The Large Sutra on Perfect Wisdom by Edward Conze Pdf
Some 2000 years ago Buddhism experienced a major reformation through a movement called the Mahayana, or "Great Vehicle," which dominated religious through in much of Asia for many centuries and still exerts considerable influence. The basic Mahayana texts, sermons ascribed to the Buddha and called "sutras" in Sanskrit, discussed the "perfect wisdom." The "Large Sutra on Perfect Wisdom" took shape between 50 and 2000 A.D. in southern India during one of the most momentous outbursts of religious creativity in human history.
The Perfection of Wisdom Sutras, The Prajnaparamita, is a collection of about forty texts. They were composed in India between approximately 100 BC and AD 600. Those contained within this volume are among the shorter ones; they are also some of the most well known such as The Heart Sutra and The Diamond Sutra. The Prajnaparamita texts are central to the Mahayana, the Great Vehicle tradition of Buddhism which today includes the Zen and Tibetan traditions. They are a magnificent work which offer guidance to those who wish to plumb the depths of their own mind and come face to face with the reality of existence by realising the truth of the Buddha's deep teachings on Emptiness and Great Wisdom. Dr Edward Conze (1904-1979) was the author of many books and the translator of much of the Prajnaparamita texts. He served on the faculties of several universities in Britain and the United States including Oxford, London, and California. Not only was he a great Buddhist scholar but also a serious practitioner, and his translations are very highly regarded.
Buddhist Wisdom by John F. Thornton,Susan Varenne Pdf
A landmark publication that offers Western readers a unique combination of what Buddhists worldwide consider the holiest of holy texts, The Diamond Sutra and The Heart Sutra. The Diamond Sutra, or the Perfection of Wisdom, which cuts like a thunderbolt, is one of the cornerstone texts of Mahayana Buddhism and provides a summary of the core concepts of the Buddha. The Heart Sutra, perhaps the most important of all Buddhist texts, sets out to formulate the very heart, or essence of perfect wisdom and is studied with special reverence in Zen monasteries and the Tibetan Buddhist lamaseries. Edward Conze, who was until his death in 1979 a powerful force for introducing Buddhism and its sacred texts to the West, has provided these translated key texts with an extensive commentary for the easiest possible appreciation phrase by phrase. For this new edition, Judith Simmer-Brown, a well-known American scholar of Buddhism, has contributed a lively, context-setting introduction. In the annals of spirituality, certain books stand out both for their historical importance and for their continued relevance. The Vintage Spiritual Classics series offers the greatest of these works in authoritative new editions, with specially commissioned essays by noted contemporary commentators. Filled with eloquence and fresh insight, encouragement and solace, Vintage Spiritual Classics are incomparable resources for all readers who seek a more substantive understanding of mankind’s relation to the divine.
The Abhisamayalamkara summarizes all the topics in the vast body of the prajñaparamita sutras. Resembling a zip-file, it comes to life only through its Indian and Tibetan commentaries. Together, these texts not only discuss the "hidden meaning" of the prajñaparamita sutras—the paths and bhumis of sravakas, pratyekabuddhas, and bodhisattvas—but also serve as contemplative manuals for the explicit topic of these sutras—emptiness—and how it is to be understood on the progressive levels of realization of bodhisattvas. Thus these texts describe what happens in the mind of a bodhisattva who meditates on emptiness, making it a living experience from the beginner's stage up through buddhahood. Groundless Paths contains the first in-depth study of the Abhisamayalamkara (the text studied most extensively in higher Tibetan Buddhist education) and its commentaries from the perspective of the Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism. This study consists mainly of translations of Maitreya's famous text and two commentaries on it by Patrul Rinpoche. These are supplemented by three short texts on the paths and bhumis by the same author, as well as extensive excerpts from commentaries by six other Nyingma masters, including Mipham Rinpoche. Thus this book helps close a long-standing gap in the modern scholarship on the prajñaparamita sutras and the literature on paths and bhumis in mahayana Buddhism. Arya Maitreya's Ornament of Clear Realization, with its Indian and Tibetan commentaries, presents the complex dynamics of the path to liberation as a succession of realizations of the empty nature of all phenomena. This presentation is a powerful antidote to whatever two-dimensional views we might hold about spiritual experience and the journey to enlightenment.
