The sixth is the
abridged text.
It concerns us to notice that the shorter texts were translated into
Chinese in the fourth century, and that later, other translations were
made--36,000 verses of the fifth text, 45,000 verses of the sixth text,
etc. When the doctrine of the sect had been perfected by the fifth
patriarch and he lectured on the sutra, rays of white light came from
his mouth, and there rained wonderful heavenly flowers. In A.D. 736 a
Chinese Vinaya teacher or instructor in Buddhist discipline, named
D[=o]-sen, first brought the Kegon scriptures to Japan. Four years later
a Korean priest gave lectures on them in the Golden-Bell Hall of the
Great Eastern Monastery at Nara. He completed his task of expounding the
sixty volumes in three years. Henceforth, lecturing on this sutra became
one of the yearly services of the Eastern Great Monastery.
"The Ke-gon sutra is the original book of Buddha's teachings of his
whole life. All his teachings therefore sprang from this sutra. If we
attribute all the branches to the origin, we may say that there is no
teaching of Buddha for his whole life except this sutra."[15] The title
of the book, when literally translated, is
Great-square-wide-Buddha-flower-adornment-teaching--a title sufficiently
indicative of its rhetoric.
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