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ABSTRACT
This article thinks through the Buddhist sutra as a mode of world literary production from the second century CE to the present. I argue for understanding the sutra as a site of remediation and as a massively open-ended textual project aimed at articulating expressions of insight.
Notes on contributor
Charlotte Eubanks is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, Japanese, and Asian Studies at Penn State. She is author of Miracles of Book and Body: Buddhist Textual Culture and Medieval Japan (U of California P, 2011) and is Associate Editor for the journal Verge: Studies in Global Asias (U of Minnesota P).
Notes
1. For a playful account of the “authorship” of Mahāyāna sutras, see Alan Cole, Text as Father.
2. The hallmark of Mahāyāna (“Greater Vehicle”) Buddhism is its focus on the bodhisattva, rather than buddha figure. While a buddha passes into extinction (nirvana) at the end of the enlightened lifetime, the bodhisattva vows to remain a salvific force until all beings achieve liberation. With some exceptions (notably the inclusion of Vietnam), Mahāyāna Buddhism includes the forms of Buddhism that became popular in Central and East Asia.
3. On the early years of this translation activity, see Harrison, “Who Gets to Ride?”
4. In my understanding of “knowledge practices,” I am drawing heavily on Ware.
5. Of the more commonly used world literature anthologies, The Longman Anthology of World Literature: Compact Edition (Damrosch et al.) includes a snippet of one classical Buddhist text (“Discourse on What Is Primary”) as a way of introducing early critiques of Vedic caste systems. Volume B of the three-volume Longman series, now out of print, includes selections from The Platform Sutra. The Norton Anthologies contain no sutras, while The Bedford Anthology of World Literature: Volume 1: The Ancient, Medieval, and Early Modern World (Beginnings–1650) (Davis, Harrison, Johnson, and Crawford) includes portions of the Nirvana Sutra.
6. English versions are my own, unless noted as coming from Leon Hurvitz's Citation1976 translation.
7. In this article, I use buddha (lowercase “b”) to indicate any enlightened being who has passed into nirvana and reserve Buddha (capital “B”) to indicate the historical Buddha Śākyamuni.
8. See Du Graf.
9. See 天衣拂千歲 in Mueller.
10. Hurvitz 281; T 9.262.51a3–5. For more, see Rambelli 115–17 and Abe 275 and following. As Abe notes, these versions are “mutually inclusive levels of the same sutra” (276).
11. For discussions on some of these translation endeavors, see Willemen or Dotson.
12. See, for instance, Paul Rouzer's recent study of the Buddhist poetry of Han Shan.
13. The phrase shows up, not coincidentally, in The Platform Sutra itself (T Citation2008.48.360b26).
14. For useful accounts of this corpus of literature, see the works of Edward Conze.
15. See Gregory, especially 88–95.
16. My translation here is altered slightly from Yampolsky's version, in part to make it gender-neutral. The source text reads: 一切経書因人説有。(略) 故知一切萬法、盡在自身中。何不從於自心頓現眞如体姓 (Yampolsky 13).
17. On shakkyōka see Kamens, Miller, and Morrell. For Dōgen's poems, see Heine.
18. See Radhakrishnan; also see Warwick Research Collective.
19. See Bulson, Kirschenbaum, and Levine. My discussion here—and, indeed, my framing throughout—draws on a recent roundtable, “World Forms: How Literature Moves,” held at the Modern Language Association Annual Convention (Austin, TX, January 2016). Mark Wollaeger, Eric Bulson, and Marjorie Perloff were the speakers, with Peter J. Kalliney serving as discussant.
20. See Perloff.
21. See Pollock The Language of Gods in the World of Men, as well as the various thought experiments in his edited volume, Literary Cultures in History.
22. See Damrosch. Damrosch's phrasing, however, moves in both directions: “A great work of literature can often reach out beyond its own time and place, but conversely it can also provide a privileged mode of access into some of the deepest qualities of its culture of origin” (2).