In the original dust jacket. Brown cloth binding with gilt title on the spine.

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Please view the photographs: a quality book. Studies in the Lankavatara Sutra: (One of the Most Important Texts of Mahayana Buddhism in Which Almost All Its Principal Tenets are Presented, Including the Teaching of Zen)

Review: I have two copies of this Sutra; one prepared by Red Pine and this one, prepared by D.T. Suzuki. Comparing the two, the one prepared by Red Pine is far and away superior and this is why:

1. the font is easier on the eyes

2. I like Red Pine’s practice of putting his footnotes on the opposite page, instead of having to thumb all the way to the back of the book.

3. Red Pine includes lots of supporting background information, including notes from other translations.

This is not to say Suzuki’s book is so bad. The redeeming value in both translations is the message and here is where the reader is severely cautioned: what is being taught in these pages is mind-altering and, by extension, life-altering. It is one thing to read this Sutra for an academic class assignment; it is quite another to “study” this Sutra, because one MUST meditate on its message, especially in the absence of a qualified Teacher. I definitely would not read the book and then attempt to regurgitate its message to an uninitiated, non-Buddhist audience: the speaker will be soundly ridiculed and disparaged. No, my friends, this book is intended for a specific audience, one already following the teachings of the Western Heaven. It is not a book one reads overnight: it is a book one STUDIES for a very long time. The Buddha pulls no punches here: you are getting the teaching undiluted. In that light, the Lankavatara Sutra is an outstanding piece of literature.

Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha (lit. ’the awakened one’),was a wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism. According to Buddhist legends, he was born in Lumbini, in what is now Nepal, to royal parents of the Shakya clan, but renounced his home life to live as a wandering ascetic. After leading a life of mendicancy, asceticism, and meditation, he attained nirvana at Bodh Gayā in what is now India. The Buddha then wandered through the lower Indo-Gangetic Plain, teaching and building a monastic order. Buddhist tradition holds that he died in Kushinagar and reached parinirvana (“final release from conditioned existence”).

According to Buddhist tradition, the Buddha taught a Middle Way between sensual indulgence and severe asceticism,leading to freedom from ignorance, craving, rebirth, and suffering. His core teachings are summarized in the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path, a training of the mind that includes ethical training and kindness toward others, and meditative practices such as sense restraint, mindfulness, dhyana (meditation proper). Another key element of his teachings are the concepts of the five skandhas and dependent origination, describing how all dharmas (both mental states and concrete ‘things’) come into being, and cease to be, depending on other dharmas, lacking an existence on their own svabhava).

While in the Nikayas, he frequently refers to himself as the Tathāgata; the earliest attestation of the title Buddha is from the 3rd century BCE, meaning ‘Awakened One’ or ‘Enlightened One’. His teachings were compiled by the Buddhist community in the Vinaya, his codes for monastic practice, and the Sutta Piṭaka, a compilation of teachings based on his discourses. These were passed down in Middle Indo-Aryan dialects through an oral tradition. Later generations composed additional texts, such as systematic treatises known as Abhidharma, biographies of the Buddha, collections of stories about his past lives known as Jataka tales, and additional discourses, i.e., the Mahāyāna sūtras.

Buddhism evolved into a variety of traditions and practices, represented by Theravāda, Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna, and spread beyond the Indian subcontinent. While Buddhism declined in India, and mostly disappeared after the 8th century CE due to a lack of popular and economic support, Buddhism has grown more prominent in Southeast and East Asia.