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The Lankavatara Sutra: An Epitomized Version (Provenance Editions) |
Author: D.T. Suzuki
Published: 2003-11-01 |
List price: $18.00
Our price: $14.40
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Customer comments on this selection.
 Lankavatara Lite
The Lankavatara Sutra is definitely an important Buddhist scripture. While not one of the popular giants like the Lotus Sutra or the Heart Sutra, it's a key locus classicus of Yogacara thought and a formative influence on the early development of Zen Buddhism. Furthermore, it presents the reader with an unusually clear and relatively systematic exposition of key Mahayana ideas, including stages of meditative states, Buddha Nature and the three bodies of the Buddha, and such--which may have been its original purpose, for it has something about it of a monastic cliff notes on key doctrinal positions and articulations.
This particular translation of the sutra is both a blessing and a curse, however. It's a complete and unedited printing of the 1932 edition (only incorporating some supposed improvements to the glossary from 1986), a version in which D.T. Suzuki's full translation was remixed--some might say butchered--by Dwight Goddard for the average reader, making their relative responsibility for the results enormously difficult to gauge. As a plus, this work shows an interesting side to Suzuki not often emphasized, with him taking on the role of the scholarly Buddhologist rather than the free-wheeling Zen exponent. That said, his work on the Lankavatara Sutra here clearly falls within the range of his overall project to legitimize Mahayana Buddhism in the West, and certain passages, while not downright mistranslated, betray in their wording the traces of him grinding that axe with glee. Still, whatever Suzuki came up with seems to have been careful and reliable by 1930's standards. And then Goddard took this and, as he tells us, sloughs off whole chapters, deletes whole passages from what's left that seem to him obscure, repetitive, pointless, or overly argumentative, and then discards the verse recapitulations. Then he takes the remainder and chops it up into small sections and rearranges these so that they make what is to him an orderly argument. Sutra sashimi, one might call it.
On the good side, this means that the reader can get through this sutra without wading through those long verbose bits so typical in Buddhist Sutras that make even the most dedicated Buddhologist's eyes glaze over. On the downside, what one has read barely resembles the sutra in question. One gets a swift overview of what the sutra says without committing to a long and detailed study, but you can't know for sure if that's really what the sutra was saying. Adding to the latter problem, the translation is philologically careless if not sometimes misleading ("self-realisation" seems unlikely as an accurate rendering of ANY Buddhist term, for instance), and the glossary obscures more than it clarifies in that regard.
That this is an important work in the history of Buddhism's reception in the English-speaking world is beyond doubt. That it's an intriguing and under-emphasized aspect of D.T. Suzuki's lifework is also certain. It will even give the patient and skeptical reader at least some hint of what this highly significant sutra is all about. As a translation though it's far too inaccurate and haphazard for serious use by scholars and specialists and yet a bit too frustrating as well as misleading for the beginners and the generalists. Supposedly too it has been reprinted for the benefit of American Zen practitioners, but if I were them I'm not sure I'd want to settle for something that plays fast and loose with the word of the Buddha in this manner. Still, you never know, the Lankavatara Sutra has enough going for it in terms of spiritual significance and profundity that even this freewheeling "epitomized" version might just serve as the prelude to and inspiration for deeper investigations.
P.S. The chapter headings give a good sense of the book's contents as well as the tone of the translation:
Chapter I: Discrimination
Chapter II: False-Imagination and Knowledge of Appearances
Chapter III: Right Knowledge or Knowledge of Relations
Chapter IV: Perfect Knowledge or Knowledge of Reality
Chapter V: The Mind System
Chapter VI: Transcendental Intelligence
Chapter VII: Self-Realisation
Chapter VIII: The Attainment of Self-Realisation
Chapter IX: The Fruit of Self-Realisation
Chapter X: Discipleship: Lineage of the Arhats
Chapter XI: Bodhisattvahood and Its Stages
Chapter XII: Tathagatahood Which Is Noble Wisdom
Chapter XIII: Nirvana
Important work, but this rendition could have used some annotation
This small volume attempts to impart, albeit by means of words, the essence of the Buddhist experience of Reality. The problem with using words in such an endeavor is noted in the forward by D.T. Suzuki: "Remember, words are no more than a finger pointing at the moon". Which is to say, they describe reality, but should not be confused with the reality itself. Dr. Suzuki translated the Lankavatara Sutra and wrote commentaries on it, then entrusted to Dwight Goddard the task of distilling this wisdom into a form more readily accessible by modern Western readers. I am not, however, entirely sure that Mr. Goddard has been completely successful in his endeavor, with particular respect to two areas, the first being words, and the second, concepts. In the area of words, most Western readers are not familiar with many of the Sanskrit terms used in Buddhist texts, and this can prove to be a stumbling block to understanding. As Mr. Goddard himself acknowledges: "In the Sutra there are certain Sanskrit words that are of great importance to the understanding of the teaching that are difficult to translate in single words. It seems advisable to speak about them at this time". What follows is a Glossary of Sanskrit terms, "In the interest of the reader unacquainted with Buddhist terminology". Unfortunately, the Glossary is quite abbreviated, and many terms that are used repeatedly in the text are not to be found in it. One example is that of "Tathagatas", used throughout yet never explained. Another example is that of Bodhisattva. This is an extremely important concept in Buddhism, and is used extensively throughout the text, yet is not defined in the Glossary. (Admittedly, one of the final chapters in the book is devoted to Bodhisattvahood, but since the word is used from the beginning of the text onward, it can only be confusing not to have it defined). Yet another example, though not in Sanskrit, but a conceptualization in English, is the phrase "habit-energy", which is also used throughout the text. It is defined neither in Glossary nor in footnote (the text has no annotation at all). From the context of its uses I might guess that by this phrase Goddard means either the cause-and-effect denoting term "karma", or else the concept of "conditioned", in the Buddhist sense that everything is conditioned, relative, and interdependent, but I can not be certain of either, since the phrase is neither explicitly defined nor referenced as such. It does not suffice to simply say "what's the difference, it seems to make sense to me?", since both "karma" and "conditioned" are very important terms in Buddhist and Eastern thought, and one can only guess at what "habit-energy" might mean. More complicated yet are the concepts used in the text. It is very difficult for someone unfamiliar with Buddhist thought to understand concepts such as no-birth, un-born-ness, and the like. Concepts such as this, however, are used freely. The essential thing lacking here is any form of annotation, and this presents the paradoxical nature of Goddard's task and the horns of his dilemma: on the one hand, in true accord with the spirit of Buddhism, he wants to steer clear of the use of words and concepts, which can lead to philosophizing and discursive thought, all of which Buddhism holds in disdain; on the other hand, the medium he uses to convey the essence of what, by its nature, can only be truly known through experience, is the medium of the written word. As a result, lacking any annotation to provide meaning, the book is not an introductory text to Buddhism, yet neither is it an advanced scholarly work, all of which begs the question, who is its audience? The newcomer may easily be overwhelmed and confused; the scholar will find only a distillation of a much larger work, and at that one re-rendered for "modern audiences", a task which itself is not without considerable risk. (One wonders how much is lost when writing for modern sensibilities, and outside of the original context. This can be very true in the case of Judeo-Christian writings, where culture-context sensitive meanings are often lost in modern verbiage; how much more the case when the native culture itself is radically different from that of the West?). Had the book contained some annotation to give meaning to the more difficult terms and concepts, I would have considered it more valuable. As it stands, I would not recommend this book to the newcomer to Buddhism; such a person will either become discouraged from the outset, or else begin to think discursively, and lose the spirit of Buddhism in the process. I would guess that the best audience for this book is someone with some knowledge of Buddhist thought, who wants to hear some of the experiences he or she already understands, applied in the question/answer format of Buddha and disciple, though here too it must be noted that although this is supposed to be a representation of conversation between the Buddha and some disciples, it is thought to have been written somewhere around 500 years after the life of Gautama Buddha, and as such is a rendering from memorized sayings and tradition rather than direct dialogue. I would possibly recommend "The Zen Teaching of Huang-Po: On the Transmission of Mind" in addition to or over this text for those who want to get a "feel" for Buddhist experience. Although it deals with concepts no less difficult than Goddard's text, I found that an understanding of the concepts per se was unnecessary to get a good sense or feel of what the work intended to impart. An excellent introductory book on Buddhism is Walpola Rahula's "What the Buddha Taught". Also excellent as a slightly more advanced but still introductory work is "Buddhism: A Concise Introduction" by Huston Smith and Philip Novak. I look forward to reading D.T. Suzuki's "Studies In The Lankavatara Sutra", which hopefully will provide a more substantial treatment of this most important work.
 A masterpiece
The Lankavatara Sutra is an absolute masterpiece. Its is clear, concise and its content differs than the usual sutras. Specifically, it adresses the transcental mind and add so much depth to buddhism. A must.
a poetic evocation of ultimate realization
A prolonged meditation on the nature of ultimate realization, this masterpiece of spiritual literature is an intimate conversation between the Buddha and his close disciple. It reaches poetic heights in its evocation of the sublime. Highly recommended!
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