Buddhist canonical texts - Essay Example

The latter are the various commentaries on canonical texts and other treatises on the Dharma, as well as collections of quotations, histories, grammars, etc. () However, it should be borne in mind that many divisions are arbitrary, and some texts fall between categories, or can be associated with more than one category. Canonical texts are in some way or other associated with Gautama, the historical Buddha. Different schools, however, are not always in agreement about which texts are canonical, and the various recessions of the Buddhist Canon contain widely varying numbers and types of texts.

Broadly speaking, the texts come in three types: sutras (i.e. discourses), vinaya (relating to the rules of monastic discipline), and abhidharma (analytical texts). Together these three make up what is known in Sanskrit as the Tripitaka and in Pali as the Tipitaka. Both the sutras and the vinaya of every Buddhist school contain a huge variety of documents including discourses on the Dharma, commentaries on other teachings, cosmological and cosmogonical texts, stories of the Buddha's previous lives, and various lists (Skilton 50).

The Theravada and other Nikaya schools believe, more or less literally, that these texts contain the actual words of the Buddha. The Theravada canon, also known as the Pali Canon after the language it was written in, contains some four million words. Later texts, such as the Mahayana Sutras, are also considered to be the word of the Buddha, but were transmitted either in secret, via lineages of mythical beings (such as the nagas), or came directly from other Buddhas or bodhisattvas. Some 600 Mahayana Sutras have survived in Sanskrit, or in Chinese and/or Tibetan translation.

The most complete Mahayana Canon is in Chinese, though it was originally in Sanskrit. It contains texts from many strands of earlier tradition.Non or semi-canonical texts have been important from very early in Buddhism. Extensive commentaries exist in Pali for the Pali Canon and in Tibetan, Chinese and other East Asian Languages. Important examples of non-canonical texts are the Visuddhimagga, or Path of Purification, by Buddhaghosa, which is a compendium of Theravada teachings that include quotes from the Pali Canon.

The Milinda Panha, or Questions of Milinda, is a popular condensation of the Dharma in the form of a dialogue between the Buddhist sage Nagasena and the Indo-Greek King Menander (Eddy 164).The treatise Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana (attributed by the faithful to Ashvaghosa) strongly influenced Mahayana doctrine and inspired numerous commentaries authored by early Chinese and Korean Buddhist teachers. Shantideva's Bodhicaryavatara has been influential in both Mahayana and Vajrayana, and his Shikshasamucaya contains references to texts which are no longer extant in any other form.

The Platform Sutra of Huineng might be considered a semi-canonical text, it is one of a very few texts not thought to be spoken by the Buddha that has the label "sutra". One should note, however, that this distinction may be an artifact of translation: in the original Chinese, the Platform Sutra is a jing, a term that may be translated as "sutra", but is also applied to a variety of other classic texts, such as the Daodejing and the Shi Jing. In the Platform Sutra, Hui Neng gives an autobiographical account of his succession as Zen Patriarch, as well as teachings about Zen theory and practice.

The Zen and Ch'an school in particular rely on non-canonical