Kǔmgang sammae kyǒng

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वज्रसमाधिसूत्र

*

Vajrasamādhisūtra

རྡོ་རྗེའི་ཏིང་ངེ་འཛིན་གྱི་ཆོས་ཀྱི་རྣམ་གྲངས་ཡི་གེ།

rdo rje'i ting nge 'dzin gyi chos kyi rnam grangs yi ge

金剛三昧經

Jingang sanmei jing

Kǔmgang sammae kyǒng

D135 · T273

SOURCE TEXT

The *Vajrasamādhisūtra is a Korean apocryphon, meaning an indigenous scripture that claimed to be a translation of an Indic original. It was composed at the end of the seventh century and continues to have widespread appeal across Asia as a source for buddha-nature and original enlightenment teachings. It belongs to the genre of "samādhi sūtra" in that it offers contemplative techniques designed to lead to enlightenment. The scripture reveals influences of early Chan and the Chinese Yogācāra tradition of Paramārtha, containing an extensive discussion of "immaculate consciousness" (amalavijñāna), the ninth consciousness which unites saṃsāra and nirvāṇa in a "single taste." The great Korean scholiast Wǒnhyo (617- 686, 體用) wrote the most famous commentary, in which he outlined six successive steps for realizing original enlightenment. It is translated in Buswell, The Formation of Ch'an Ideology in China and Korea.

Relevance to Buddha-nature

The Vajrasamādhi is a foundational scripture for buddha-nature and original enlightenment theory in East Asia.

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Text Metadata

Text exists in	~ Tibetan ~ Chinese ~ English
Canonical Genre	~ Kangyur · Sūtra · mdo sde · Sūtranta

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Book

Cultivating Original Enlightenment

Wŏnhyo (617–686) is the dominant figure in the history of Korean Buddhism and one of the most influential thinkers in the Korean philosophical tradition. Koreans know Wŏnhyo in his various roles as Buddhist mystic, miracle worker, social iconoclast, religious proselytist, and cultural hero. Above all else, Wŏnhyo was an innovative thinker and prolific writer, whose works cover the gamut of Indian and Sinitic Buddhist materials: Some one hundred treatises and commentaries are attributed to him, twenty-three of which are extant today. Wŏnhyo’s importance is not limited to the peninsula, however. His writings were widely read in China and Japan, and his influence on the overall development of East Asian Mahāyāna thought is significant, particularly in relation to the Huayan, Chan, and Pure Land schools. In Cultivating Original Enlightenment, the first volume in The International Association of Wŏnhyo Studies’ Collected Works of Wŏnhyo series, Robert E. Buswell Jr. translates Wŏnhyo’s longest and culminating work, the Exposition of the Vajrasamâdhi-Sûtra (Kŭmgang Sammaegyŏng Non). Wŏnhyo here brings to bear all the tools acquired throughout a lifetime of scholarship and meditation to the explication of a scripture that has a startling connection to the Korean Buddhist tradition. In his treatise, Wŏnhyo examines the crucial question of how enlightenment can be turned from a tantalizing prospect into a palpable reality that manifests itself in all activities. (Source: University of Hawai'i Press)

Buswell, Robert E., Jr. Cultivating Original Enlightenment: Wǒnhyo's Exposition of the Vajrasamādhi-Sūtra (Kǔmgang Sammaegyǒng Non). International Association of Wŏnhyo Studies' Collected Works of Wŏnhyo 1. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2007.

Buswell, Robert E., Jr. Cultivating Original Enlightenment: Wǒnhyo's Exposition of the Vajrasamādhi-Sūtra (Kǔmgang Sammaegyǒng Non). International Association of Wŏnhyo Studies' Collected Works of Wŏnhyo 1. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2007.;Cultivating Original Enlightenment;Doctrine;Original Enlightenment;Vajrasamādhisūtra;Wǒnhyo; Robert E. Buswell Jr.;Cultivating Original Enlightenment: Wǒnhyo's Exposition of the Vajrasamādhi-Sūtra (Kǔmgang Sammaegyǒng Non);Wŏnhyo

Article

Notes on the "Vajrasamādhi"

Interest in the Vajrasamādhi has been roused by a paper of Lin Tai-yün published in 1932[1]). In the Vajrasamādhi Lin had found a quotation from what is generally supposed to be a Bodhidharma text[2]), and thus the problem was set of the relation between these bits of material and the bearing which an investigation into this matter might have on the riddle of Bodhidharma. Suzuki Daisetsu has dealt with this problem in 1936[3]), Paul Demiéville in 1952[4]) and Dr. Mizuno in I955 [5]). I shall in this note confine myself to the text itself.
       The texts in question are:
1. Chin-kang san-mei ching (Vajrasamādhi) T. 273 vol. 9. (Quoted in the following as Samādhi.) It has three commentaries:
  a. The Chin-kang san-mei ching lun, T. 1730 vol. 37 composed by Yüan-hsiao, a Korean, in the second half of the seventh century. This is the only commentary which I have used for this paper in order to correct the original. A very good modern edition has been published by Chou Shu-chia in Peking 1936.
  b. Zokuzōkyō A 55/2-3. Ming.
  c. Zokuzōkyō A 55/3. Ch'ing.
2. Chin-kang shang-wei t'o-lo-ni ching, T. 1344 vol. 21. Transl. Buddhaśānta (?). Yüan Wei.
3. Chin-kang ch'ang t'o-lo-ni ching, T. 1345 vol. 21. Transl. Jinagupta (?) (527-604). A second translation of the preceding. These two texts have no relation to the Samādhi.
4. Chin-kang san-nei pen-hsing ch'ing-ching pu-huai pu-mieh ching, T. 644 vol. 15. A probably genuine text, containing 100 samādhis . . . (Liebenthal, opening remarks, 347–48)

[ . . . ]

      It seems to me established that
      The Samādhi is an agglomeration of several texts, of which we have distinguished:
      1. A frame (Text A), probably derived from a sūtra translated in the fifth century or earlier in the North, perhaps in Liang-chou. This seems to have been a Hīnayāna text.
      2. A text (B), which contains the verses and part of the prose, composed between 565 and 590 by a teacher of the North, Yeh or P'eng-ch'eng. The author might have been Ching-sung.
      It is difficult to say how Text B originally looked. Was it a pamphlet or a collection of gleanings from other texts? Was it written to counteract the propaganda of Hui-ssu?
      In order to further clarify these points I propose for study: (1) a careful investigation of the northern tradition from Bodhiruci and Buddhaśānta on to about 590 A.D., (2) searching the Tun-huang fragments for parts of the original Text B, (3) further search for quotations in the texts studied by the teachers of the Northern Ch'i. (Liebenthal, conclusion, 383–86).

(*Chinese characters in the original text and notes unavailable)

Notes

Hayashi Taiun: "Bodaidaruma-den no kenkyū", Shūkyō kenkyū IX.iii, Tokyo, May 1932, pp. 62-76.
(Chinese text unavailable) A number of versions exist. See below.
Daruma no zen-bo to shisō oyobi sono ta, Tokyo 1936 (Suzuki II), a complement to the same author's Shōshitsu isho, Osaka 1935 (Suzuki I).
Le Concile de Lhasa (Bibl. de l'Institut des Hautes Études Chinoises vol. VII), Paris 1952, p. 54 n. 2 (Demiéville).
Mizuno Kōgen: "On the Relation between Bodhidharma's Two Entrances and Four Practices and the Vairasamādhi Sūtra" (Bodaidaruma no ninyū shigyō setsu to Kongōzanmai-kyō, Indogaku Bukkyōgaku kenkyū, III.2, Tokyo, March 1955, pp. 621-626 (Mizuno I). Same: same title, Komazawa daigaku kenkyū kiyō No. I3, Tokyo 1955 (Mizuno II). Cf. also Ono Hōdō: Daijō kaikyō no kenkyū, Tokyo 1954, p. I25/6.

Liebenthal, Walter. "Notes on the 'Vajrasamādhi'." T'oung Pao 44, no. 4/5 (1956): 347–86.

Liebenthal, Walter. "Notes on the 'Vajrasamādhi'." T'oung Pao 44, no. 4/5 (1956): 347–86.;Notes on the "Vajrasamādhi";Vajrasamādhisūtra;Walter Liebenthal;&nbsp

Book

The Formation of Ch'an Ideology in China and Korea

This book contains an extensive study and a translation of the Vajrasamādhi Sūtra and makes a convincing argument to rethink the "national lines of argument" that had previously dominated discussions of East Asian Buddhist traditions. Buswell shows how Chan developed in multiple communities; it was not a Chinese phenomenon that was then exported to Korea and Japan. He also shows how the scripture is firmly in the Chinese Yogācāra tradition of Paramārtha, containing an extensive discussion of "immaculate consciousness" (amalavijñāna), the ninth consciousness which unites saṃsāra and nirvāṇa in a "single taste." Buswell draws on Japanese scholarship, such as that by Mozuno Kōgen, who first concluded that the sūtra was an apocryphon.

Buswell, Robert E., Jr. The Formation of Ch'an Ideology in China and Korea: The Vajrasamādhi-Sūtra, A Buddhist Apocryphon. Princeton Library of Asian Translations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989.

Buswell, Robert E., Jr. The Formation of Ch'an Ideology in China and Korea: The Vajrasamādhi-Sūtra, A Buddhist Apocryphon. Princeton Library of Asian Translations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989.;The Formation of Ch'an Ideology in China and Korea;Zen - Chan;Textual study;Vajrasamādhisūtra;Robert E. Buswell Jr.; The Formation of Ch'an Ideology in China and Korea: The Vajrasamādhi-Sūtra, A Buddhist Apocryphon

Book

The Tathāgata Store

The aim of Mahayana teachings is for everyone, out of compassion for all sentient beings, to attain Buddhahood. The reason one can attain Buddhahood is that one possesses the Tathagata store (tathagata-garbha), which is one's inherent pure mind or Buddha nature.

The Introduction chapter of this book, Rulu's seventh, explores the origin of the concept of the Tathagata store, and discusses how teachings on the Tathagata store have come to be accepted in China as the mainstream of Mahayana teachings and a distinct school of thought, standing apart from and along with the Madhyamaka School and the Yogacara School. Highlights of teachings on the Tathagata store presented in this chapter include why all sentient beings possess the Tathagata store, meanings of the dharma body and its four virtues, a comparison between the self claimed by those on non-Buddhist paths and a true self taught by the Buddha, meanings of one's Buddha nature, and how one's Tathagata store and alaya consciousness (alaya-vijnana) are unified.

This book presents the English translations of six sutras selected from the Chinese Buddhist Canon. The Mahavaipulya Sutra of the Tathagata Store gives a basic teaching and describes by nine analogies that one's Tathagata store is shrouded by one's afflictions. The Sutra of Neither Increase Nor Decrease reveals that the Tathagata store is a Tathagata's dharma body, and that the realm of sentient beings neither increases nor decreases. The Sutra of Shrimala's Lion’s Roar gives teachings on one's afflictions that shroud one's Tathagata store and inspires all sentient beings to ride the One Vehicle to attain Buddhahood. The Mahayana version of the Sutra of Angulimalika reveals that as one's Tathagata store transcends all dharmas, all dharmas are one's Tathagata store. The Sutra of the Unsurpassed Reliance teaches one to rely on one's Tathagata store in order to walk the bodhi path to Buddhahood. The Sutra of the Vajra Samadhi reveals that one's inherent awareness, the pure awareness of one's true mind, has a mass of benefits. This book will benefit readers at all levels and can serve as a basis for scholarly research. (Source: Author House)

Rulu, trans. The Tathāgata Store: Selected Mahāyāna Sūtras. Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2016.

Rulu, trans. The Tathāgata Store: Selected Mahāyāna Sūtras. Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2016.;The Tathāgata Store;Tathāgatagarbhasūtra;Anūnatvāpūrṇatvanirdeśaparivarta;Śrīmālādevīsūtra;Aṅgulimālīyasūtra;Vajrasamādhisūtra;Rulu; The Tathāgata Store: Selected Mahāyāna Sūtras

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