Welcome to the "Nirvana Sutra" site, devoted to the "Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra" - the sutra specialising in the "Buddha-dhatu" ("Buddha Nature") / "Tathagatagarbha" ("Buddha-Matrix") teachings.
This is the world's first-ever website centred on an exploration and appreciation of the Buddha's final Mahayana scripture, the Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra. The website is dedicated with enormous gratitude and admiration to the memory of Kosho Yamamoto, the first man to earn the inestimable merit of translating the Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra into English. Inspired by this superlative sutra, I have created this website to encourage the accurate study and practice of what may be called "Nirvana Sutra Buddhism" - a very positive, balanced, faith-promoting and spiritually affirmative manifestation of Buddhism, which recognises the hidden reality of the egoless Buddha-Self in all beings. This site treats with respect and all seriousness the repeated and emphatic assertions of the Buddha in the Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra that this sutra represents a definitive statement of Mahayana doctrine and that it reveals the Buddha's final explanation of his intended, ultimate meaning in major areas of Dharma (Buddhic Truth). For other related "tathagatagarbha" scriptures, please consult my second, ancillary website called "Tathagatagarbha Buddhism" on the "tathagatagarbha" sutras, in conjunction with the present website, for extensive and highly illuminating quotations from five key "tathagatagarbha" sutras. For this, please click on the following URL: http://www.webspawner.com/users/bodhisattva/index.html (Note: the Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra is an entirely different scripture from the Pali Mahaparinibbana Sutta, and should not be confused with the latter). ******************************************************************** The Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra ("Mahayana Great Complete-Nirvana Scripture" - commonly known as the Nirvana Sutra, for short) is one of the most profound, inspiring and arguably most important of all the Buddha's Mahayana sutras. This scripture claims to preserve the final, ultimate Mahayana teachings delivered by the Buddha on his last day and night of life upon earth. The sutra can be said to eclipse all others in its authority on the question of the Buddha-dhatu and Tathagatagarbha. It claims to be definitive: the quintessence of Mahayana Dharma. And yet despite being greatly revered and strongly influential in the East, it is little known, and even less well studied, in the West. This website is devoted to an appreciation of this unique scripture - both for those who wish to study the background of the text from a scholarly point of view, but more particularly and more importantly for those who wish to practise the teachings of the Mahaparinirvana Sutra from a basis of faith and meditative experience. The Mahaparinirvana Sutra is a key sutra for an understanding of the Buddha's teachings on the Buddha-dhatu ("Buddha Nature", "Buddha Element", "Buddha Principle") and the synonymous Tathagatagarbha (indwelling Buddha Essence of each being). The present website offers the complete Kosho Yamamoto English translation of the "Southern" edition of the Dharmakshema Nirvana Sutra, in a version revised and edited by Dr. Tony Page, as well as Dr. Page's German translation (the first ever carried out) of the Tibetan version of the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, based on the English translation by Buddhist scholar, Stephen Hodge. The webmaster of this site - Dr. Tony Page - is the founder of a new "Nirvana Sutra Buddhism" approach to Buddhism and is Britain's foremost Mahaparinirvana Sutra doctrinal researcher, advocate and adherent. Dr. Tony Page is the author of "Buddhism and Animals", "Buddha and God", and "Buddha-Self: The 'Secret' Teachings of the Buddha in the Mahaparinirvana Sutra", and the authorised editor, reviser and publisher of Kosho Yamamoto's English translation of the Mahaparinirvana Sutra. The present website is still in the process of being developed, as more information is gradually added to the various sections. Vitally, the site is principally aimed at more "mystically" orientated Buddhists and spiritual seekers, who may feel that many of the forms of Buddhism which they encounter today tend to be too negative and nihilistic in their attitudes, emphases, and metaphysical (non-)vision. Spiritual questers of a more mystical stamp may intuitively feel (in line with the Buddha's teaching) that there truly does exist an indwelling yet transcendental Buddhic Absolute or "That-ness" (tathata), a peaceful, blissful, pure, unchanging Essence (svabhava) or eternal Self (atman) - the infinite Buddha - concealed within the deeps of each person's mind. This is the realm of ineffable Nirvana. This Nirvana is truly Real, but lies beyond the grasp of worldly thinking, beyond mere logic, beyond "dependent origination", beyond "momentariness" and secular rationalism. Such seekers may well feel that they have found their spiritual home in the great Nirvana Sutra - a number of whose central tenets are set out below. ********************************************************
Some Basic Principles of the "Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra"
a) That the essential Buddha (transcending his physical, historical form) is ETERNAL, unchanging, everlasting, beginningless, endless, firm and indestructible (yet capable of projecting manifestations of himself in numerous bodies, modes and times); that he is deathless, totally Aware, omnipresent across time and space, as well as being disassociated from time and space; b) That there exists an immortal, immanent and transcendent, radiantly shining Buddha-Principle (Buddha-dhatu) or Buddha-Matrix (Tathagata-garbha) in all sentient beings, which links beings to Buddhahood and functions as the cause of spiritual Awakening (bodhi), but which only perfect Buddhas can see clearly; this Tathagatagarbha is also called the Self (atman - non-egoic, non-individualised Essence or spiritual core of Reality), which exists in all beings (and in all phenomena) - thus all beings possess one-and-the-same essential nature: that of a Buddha; c) That the Buddha-dhatu or Tathagatagarbha is the very essence (svabhava) or Dharmakaya (ultimate level of being) of the Buddha and of all persons and creatures, in contradistinction to the five transient skandhas (impermanent mental / physical elements of the "worldly ego"); the Buddha himself is the visible manifestation of the Buddha-dhatu and is no less than the inconceivable, virtue-filled Soul or Self (sometimes termed the "True Self" - satya-atman), whose potency inheres in our own body-and-mind complex, and into which Self we should "enter". Such "entry" is made possible when we have eradicated the kleshas (negative mental, moral and behavioural tendencies) from our being. The chief kleshas are passionate desire, anger, delusion and pride. d) That Nirvana is the state/sphere (vishaya) of the Eternal (nitya), Bliss (sukha), the Self (atman), and the Pure (subha), and that these Nirvanic attributes constitute the heart of the Buddha; e) That the root of all good qualities is Friendliness or Loving-kindness (maitri), in association with Compassion, Sympathetic Joy, and Impartiality towards all beings; these qualities are also inherent in the nature of the Buddha. The universal application of Kindliness (maitri) implicitly excludes all possibility of hatred for any being on the basis of his/her race, religion, sex or sexuality - indeed, all hatred is to be rejected as a klesha (moral contaminant). Instead, all beings should be "regarded as one's only child" (i.e. with the caring eye of a loving parent); f) That followers of the Mahayana (Bodhisattva) Path should be vegetarian, and compassionate towards animals and must never use evil as a means to an end; such compassion and kindness as enjoined by this sutra, even towards ants, also (implicitly) makes it utterly impossible and inconceivable for the Bodhisattva to perpetrate such misguided practices as hunting or vivisection (experimentation on living animals); g) That the Buddha's teachings in the Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra (particularly those centring on the Tathagatagarbha) are NOT provisional, lower-level or purely metaphorical doctrines (they emphatically do NOT need to be inverted and "interpreted" into the exact opposite of what they actually state); they are NOT mere tactical fictions; instead, they are definitive doctrines which point directly to Ultimate Truth (paramartha-satya) - to the Buddha, who is NOT a vacuous Emptiness or merely a "dependently originated" process, but is Reality itself, the changeless Great Self (mahatman), who is solely empty of all impermanence, unhappiness, ignorance and afflictions, and endowed with limitless virtues and bliss; h) That the noble Mahaparinirvana Sutra itself is "unique", "the ultimate of all Mahayana discourses", the "most excellent King of sutras [scriptures]", revealing "the very ultimate meaning of all sutras", and that even hearing its words or name can bring about happiness and pleasure and can lay the causal foundations for the attainment of Awakening. i) That the noble Mahaparinirvana Sutra possesses the power to bring about "benefit, happiness and kindness for all beings" - with the one possible exception of those termed icchantikas, the most spiritually deluded of persons, who disparage the sutra and reject its teachings on the Tathagatagarbha; j) That Nirvana is supreme peace and utmost purity, and that the Buddha, the embodiment of Nirvana, "abides eternally, without change." The English text of the sutra mainly cited for reference throughout this study is the specially commissioned English translation by Stephen Hodge of both the Faxian and Tibetan versions of the scripture, as well as that same scholar's occasional forays into the Dharmakshema "Northern" version. The website also contains the Dharmakshema "Southern" version of the sutra, The Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra, as translated into English by Kosho Yamamoto and edited and revised by Dr. Tony Page (Nirvana Publications, London, 1999-2000). If you want a general overview of the teachings of the Mahaparinirvana Sutra (before tackling the complete text of the scripture itself), I suggest that you might like to read first this present page (if you have not already done so!), then the "Basic Teachings" page, and finally the "Selected Extracts" pages (which contain key, vital quotations in very new, reliable translations by Stephen Hodge). To access these pages, click on those pages as listed in the Navigation Strip on the right-hand side of this page. Happy reading and meditation!
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