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https://read.84000.co/translation/toh9.html#tocWith the full moon this evening, we mark the celebration of the Buddha's birth, awakening, and parinirvāṇa, known in Tibetan as Saga Dawa Düchen. This offers us all a wonderful opportunity to remember the Buddha with joyful practice!
We consider 84000’s vision and work to be a unique celebration of the Buddha’s awakening, and on this auspicious day, we are very pleased to release our newest publication: The Perfection of Wisdom in Twenty-Five Thousand Lines.
The Perfection of Wisdom in Twenty-Five Thousand Lines is among the most important scriptures underlying both the “vast” and the “profound” approaches to Buddhist thought and practice. Known as the “middle-length” version, being the second longest of the three long Perfection of Wisdom sūtras, it fills three volumes of the Kangyur. Like the two other long sūtras, it records the major teaching on the perfection of wisdom given by the Buddha Śākyamuni on Vulture Peak, detailing all aspects of the path to enlightenment while at the same time emphasizing how bodhisattvas must put them into practice without taking them—or any aspects of enlightenment itself—as having even the slightest true existence.
If I had to pick one Mahayana text that covers every aspect of doctrine, path & results, I would suggest this one - in Sanskrit titled Mahayanasutralamkara. There are two excellent English translations, with commentaries. It is a large book with the commentaries, but those comments are needed to clarify these many altruistic verses
One came out in 2014 done by the Dharmachakra translation group and the other from the Padmakara translators just came out late in 2018.
The root text was taught to Asanga (a bodhisattva of the 5th century) by Maitreya a 10th stage bodhisattva, who will become in the distant future our next Buddha.
Ornament of the Great Vehicle Sutras is the title of the Dharmachakra version.
I have tried meditation and buddism on/off through the years. I have had better success with it while I was an active smoker. It's helped me with my Bipolar, PTSD, Depression, Anxiety, OCD issues.The Padmakara version is called A Feast of the Nectar of the Supreme Vehicle.
Both are in epub versions also.
I have tried meditation and buddism on/off through the years. I have had better success with it while I was an active smoker. It's helped me with my Bipolar, PTSD, Depression, Anxiety, OCD issues.
While meditating and letting go I think I sometimes have experienced strange things. Like almost like I could feal spirits contacting me. I heard voices, saw what I thought were ghosts, traveled to some very strange places while I meditated. Became so detached from myself that I felt I was slipping into another dimension.... I don't know it was wierd.
If I concentrate and meditate for like 4 hours straight or longer I feel reality slipping and going into a different place. The longest I been to medidate for was 8 hours straight one time. These long sessions is when I hear voices, experience ghosts, feel my body in some other dimension, see darkness/ light. I would be called to walk to a light to travel somewhere, walk through mirrors into a different dimension. I even had visions of somethings that happened later to me in life.
From Vajra Bodhi Sea, Jan. 2023 issueThere once was a Dharma Master named Eloquence. Where was he from? No one knew. His practice was reciting the Avatamsaka Sutra. He had been reciting it for sixteen years and had not experienced any benefits; he was still very foolish and did not understand the principles. Later on, he thought to himself, “Oh! Even though I have been reciting the Avatamsaka Sutra for so long, I haven’t become enlightened, and I haven’t experienced any benefits. It must be that I haven’t treated the sutra with enough reverence; that is why I still do not understand the meanings in the sutra.”
Therefore, he came up with a way to protect the sutra and kept it very clean. He used all kinds of incense wood to make a box, and placed the sutra in the box. When walking, he would carry the box on top of his head; when he was not walking, he would place the box in front of him and prostrate before it. It was in this way that he paid reverence to the Avatamsaka Sutra at all times: prostrating to and contemplating the sutra in every moment.
Three years later, he had a dream in which Samantabhadra Bodhisattva explained the wonderful meanings of the Avatamsaka Sutra to him, and instructed him on how to practice. Samantabhadra Bodhisattva gave him Dharma instructions in the dream, and he suddenly became enlightened. Before this, he had recited the Avatamsaka Sutra for sixteen years and could not remember even one line. After this dream, reading the sutra was like looking in a mirror: each word of the sutra was crystal clear as if reflected in a mirror. And after reading the sutra he did not forget any of it—he was able to remember it forever.
| SUMMARY In The Accomplishment of the Sets of Four Qualities: The Bodhisattvas’ Prātimokṣa, Venerable Śāriputra requests the Buddha Śākyamuni to explain the conduct of bodhisattvas. The Buddha responds by describing how bodhisattvas train in many practices and in the cultivation of many qualities, here presented in sets of four, related to generosity and diligence in particular, and more broadly to their attitude, conduct, learning, insight, and teaching. In this way bodhisattvas swiftly progress along the path to buddhahood. |
