Buddhist texts: Encyclopedia II - Buddhist texts - Non-canonical texts

Buddhist texts - Non-canonical texts

Non or semi-canonical texts have been important from very early in Buddhism. Extensive commentaries exist in Pali for the Pali Canon and in Tibetan, Chinese and other East Asian Languages.

Important examples of non-canonical texts are the Visuddhimagga, or Path of Purification, by Buddhaghosa, which is a compendium of Theravada teachings that include quotes from the Pali Canon. The Milinda Pañha, or Questions of Milinda, is a popular condensation of the Dharma in the form of a dialogue between the Buddhist sage Nāgasena and the Indo-Greek King Menander (Pali: Milinda).

The treatise Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana (attributed by the faithful to Ashvaghosa) strongly influenced Mahayana doctrine and inspired numerous commentaries authored by early Chinese and Korean Buddhist teachers. Shantideva's Bodhicaryavatara has been influential in both Mahayana and Vajrayana, and his Shikshasamucaya contains references to texts which are no longer extant in any other form.

The Platform Sutra of Huineng might be considered a semi-canonical text, it is one of a very few texts not thought to be spoken by the Buddha that has the label "sutra". One should note, however, that this distinction may be an artifact of translation: in the original Chinese, the Platform Sutra is a jīng (經), a term that may be translated as "sutra", but is also applied to a variety of other classic texts, such as the Daodejing and the Shi Jing. In the Platform Sutra, Hui Neng gives an autobiographical account of his succession as Zen Patriarch, as well as teachings about Zen theory and practice. The Zen and Ch'an school in particular rely on non-canonical accounts of Zen masters lives and teachings, for example the Blue Cliff Record.

Tibetan Buddhism has a unique and special class of texts called terma (Tibetan gTer-ma). These are texts which were composed but hidden to be rediscovered at some later date. Termas are discovered by a tertön (Tibetan gTer-stons) whose special function it is to discover these texts. Some termas are hidden in caves or similar places, but a few are said to be 'mind termas' which are 'discovered' in the mind of the tertön. The Nyingma school has a large terma literature. Many of the terma texts are said to have been written by Padmasambhava who is particularly important to the Nyingmas. Probably the best known terma text is the so-called "Tibetan book of the dead", the Bardo thodol.

Other types of non-canonical texts which have been important are the histories of Buddhism in Sri Lanka, the Dipavamsa and Mahavamsa.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Non-canonical texts", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki