Category Archives: Translations

A Swift Pair of Messengers

Serenity and insight are the two great wings of Buddhist med­it­a­tion. They each have a spe­cial role to play in the path to Awaken­ing. While some mod­ern approaches seek to mar­gin­al­ize serenity in favor of ‘dry’ insight, the Buddha’s own dis­courses place serenity right at the cen­ter of the path. This book col­lects vir­tu­ally all the sig­ni­fic­ant pas­sages on this topic that are found in the early dis­courses, care­fully elu­cid­ated for the mod­ern reader.

July 20, 2010 – 11:42 pm | By Bhikkhu Sujato | Posted in Books, Study, Translations | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Ekottara Agama—Numerical Discourses

The Ekot­tara Agama (EA) is one of the major col­lec­tions of early Buddhist dis­courses. Although it was ori­gin­ally writ­ten in an Indian lan­guage, today this col­lec­tion only sur­vives in a Chinese trans­la­tion made by Gautama Sanghadeva between 397 and 398 and called 增壹阿含經 (zeng-yi ah-han jing, T 125). The Ekot­tara Agama is so-called because it is organ­ized …

October 11, 2012 – 11:34 pm | By Bhikkhu Sujato | Posted in Translations | Comments (0)

Sikkhamana: The Two Years Training for Buddhist Nuns

The Buddhist mon­astic codes (Vinayas) include a pro­vi­sion for a train­ing period of two years for can­did­ates for bhikkhuni ordin­a­tion. This is one of the few aspects of bhikkhuni ordin­a­tion that has no par­al­lel in the ordin­a­tion for monks. The sikkham­ana train­ing period is con­tro­ver­sial, and is often not fol­lowed in mod­ern prac­tice. San­ti­pada under­took a research pro­ject to bring together, trans­late, and ana­lyze the major pas­sages from all Vinayas that deal with the sikkham­ana. While incom­plete, this pro­ject still com­prises the largest resource avail­able on this topic.

October 1, 2012 – 12:17 am | By Bhikkhu Sujato | Posted in Study, Translations | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

The First Council

The First Coun­cil was a crit­ical turn­ing point in Buddhist his­tory, defin­ing the dir­ec­tion Buddhism was to take after the death of its founder. Here is the account from the Mahīśā­saka Vinaya, trans­lated from the Chinese canon.

May 27, 2010 – 10:32 am | By Bhikkhu Sujato | Posted in Study, Translations | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

The First Chinese Bhikkhunis

Fif­teen hun­dred years ago, Buddhist nuns from Sri Lanka braved the long sea voy­age to China in order to intro­duce the authen­tic bhikkhuni ordin­a­tion lin­eage. Here are their stor­ies, trans­lated from the ancient Chinese histories.

May 16, 2010 – 12:45 am | By Bhikkhu Sujato | Posted in Translations | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off