Apocryphal Scriptures

This volume contains five scriptural texts that have been especially important and influential in the East Asian Buddhist tradition. ""The Bequeathed Teaching Sutra"" emphasizes the practice of monastic discipline through observance of the pratimoksa, rules of conduct. In ""The Ullambana Sutra"", the Buddha instructs a monk on how to obtain liberation for his mother, who had been reborn into a lower realm. ""The Sutra of Forty-two Sections"" is a compilation of brief passages drawn from many Buddhist sutras, including Pali and Chinese Buddhist sources, particularly the Agamas (canonical texts). ""The Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment"", especially important in the Chan and Huayan traditions in China, deals with the teaching of intrinsic enlightenment that became a fundamental axiom on which uniquely East Asian forms of Buddhist belief and practice developed. ""The Sutra on the Profundity of Filial Love"", known as the Buddhist book of filial piety, reveals the synthesis of native Chinese Confucian ideals with Buddhist teachings.