Nagarjuna's Guide to the Bodhisattva Path
1st Edition
Published on 7. September 2020
213 pages
978-1-935413-25-7 (ISBN)
Description
This is The Bodhisambhara Shastra ("Treatise on the Provisions for Enlightenment"), written by Arya Nagarjuna, the early Indian monk (ca 2nd c.) who is one of the most famous figures in the history of Indian Mahayana Buddhism. This work describes the essential prerequisites for achieving the complete enlightenment of a buddha while also describing the most important practices to be undertaken by bodhisattvas.
The text is accompanied here by an abridged version of its only commentary, originally written by the early Indian Bhikshu Vasitva, a monk who lived sometime in the middle or first half of the first millennium.
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Bhikshu Dharmamitra (ordination name "Heng Shou" - ¿¿¿) is a Chinese-tradition translator-monk and one of the earliest American disciples (since 1968) of the late Guiyang Ch'an patriarch, Dharma teacher, and pioneer of Buddhism in the West, the Venerable Master Hsuan Hua (¿¿¿¿). He has a total of at least 34 years in robes during two periods as a monastic (1969¿1975 & 1991 to the present).
Dharmamitra's principal educational foundations as a translator of Sino-Buddhist Classical Chinese lie in four years of intensive monastic training and Chinese-language study of classic Maha¯ya¯na texts in a small-group setting under Master Hsuan Hua (1968-1972), undergraduate Chinese language study at Portland State University, a year of intensive one-on-one Classical Chinese study at the Fu Jen University Language Center near Taipei, two years of course work at the University of Washington's Department of Asian Languages and Literature (1988-90), and an additional three years of auditing graduate courses and seminars in Classical Chinese readings, again at UW's Department of Asian Languages and Literature.
Since taking robes again under Master Hua in 1991, Dharmamitra has devoted his energies primarily to study and translation of classic Maha¯ya¯na texts with a special interest in works by Arya Na¯ga¯rjuna and related authors. To date, he has translated more than fifteen important texts comprising approximately 150 fascicles, including the 80-fascicle Avata¿saka Sutra (the "Flower Adornment Sutra"), Na¯ga¯rjuna's 17-fascicle Dasabhumika Vibhasa ("Treatise on the Ten Grounds"), and the Dasabhumika Sutra (the "Ten Grounds Sutra"), all of which are current or upcoming Kalavinka Press publications (www.kalavinka.org).
