| Welcome to From the Academy, a monthly newsletter for Premium subscribers offering a scholarly take on topics in Buddhist thought and practice. Each issue highlights a key theme and offers additional resources for in-depth exploration. This month, we look at how sutras serve as both sacred speech and sites of tension. |
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 | | A Sanskrit manuscript of the Lotus Sutra in South Turkestan Brahmi script. |
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What Is a Sutra?
In South Asian religious traditions, a sutra is a concise formulation of philosophical or moral teachings. In Buddhism, the term sutra (Skt.: sūtra; Pali: sutta, lit. “thread”) specifically refers to discourses that present the direct utterances of Shakyamuni or other buddhas, bodhisattvas, or enlightened disciples. While all sutras are scriptures, not all scriptures are sutras. Their authority depends less on historical authorship than on being recognized as aligning with the Buddhist understanding of reality and as buddhavacana, the “word of the Buddha,” a category that often depends on how a given community defines authentic Buddhist practice.
Authenticity and Ambiguity
Sutras challenge modern notions of authorship. The earliest texts were orally transmitted for centuries before being written down around the 1st century CE, as the story goes. Although there is considerable uncertainty about the language the Buddha spoke, all existing early sutras are, to some extent, translations. Mahayana sutras emerged soon after, often through visions or rediscovery, and yet many communities still accepted them as buddhavacana. Disputes over which texts qualified helped shape canons and define sectarian boundaries.
Language itself has long been treated with ambivalence in Buddhist thought. The Harvard professor Ryuichi Abé observes that Buddhist traditions rely on sacred words even as they question whether words can truly express truth. Language conveys the dharma but can also distort it. The Buddha initially hesitated to teach, fearing misunderstanding, but he chose speech over silence. Nagarjuna’s doctrine of two truths captures this tension: Conventional language must point beyond itself. Sutras are built on this paradox—revered as expressions of ultimate truth, and yet aware of language’s limits. This led many teachers, especially those in Chan lineages, to rhetorically reject scriptural reliance while drawing from the sutras on their path to realization.
Too Many Scriptures
The sheer number and diversity of sutras and other scriptures steered many traditions to narrow their focus. Chinese schools, such as Tiantai and Huayan, developed doctrinal systems around just one or two key texts. Pure Land traditions centered on a few Sukhāvatī sutras. Nichiren Buddhism went further, asserting that chanting the Lotus Sutra’s title was itself sufficient for liberation. These developments reflected the recognition that no individual or school could fully encompass the immensity of the teachings in the Buddhist canons. Some modern movements have even created new scriptures in vernacular languages, setting aside classical sutras as inaccessible or less relevant to modern concerns. |
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 | | A contemporary scripture recitation machine that chants mantras, dharinis, names of buddhas, sutras, and several core Mahayana texts. |
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Beyond Reading
Sutras have long been more than texts for study: They’ve been chanted, memorized, copied, enshrined, and even consumed. Copying by hand or possessing a sutra was—and still is—believed to generate merit or offer protection. In the Dunhuang cave library, numerous copies of Pure Land sutras attest to their ritual use. Sutras have been worn as amulets, put inside statues, carried on pilgrimages, installed in temples, inscribed in prayer wheels, and now played on chanting devices. In these performative contexts, a sutra’s presence outweighs its meaning.
Why Sutras Still Matter
In today’s media-saturated world of dharma talks and curated teachings, sutras are often encountered secondhand, if at all. But for much of Buddhist history, they were a significant source of inspiration and inquiry. As author Karen Armstrong reminds us, scripture is not literal history or systematic philosophy but sacred art—a performative and interpretive medium meant to transform. Rather than passive consumption, traditional models emphasized recitation, listening, reflection, and meditation. But the easiest way to understand what a sutra is? Read one. |
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Recommended Material- Websites offering reliable, free sutra translations: 84,000, SuttaCentral, BDK America
- The Authenticity of the Early Buddhist Texts by Bhikkhus Sujato and Brahmali, 2015. This short book presents the traditional view that early sutras authentically preserve the words of the Buddha.
- “How to Read the Lotus Sutra,” on Tricycle Talks, 2019. Scholars Jacqueline Stone and Donald S. Lopez Jr., talk with Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, about the Lotus Sutra, one of the most well-known Buddhist sutras.
- “The Goodman Lectures: On Creating the Early Discourses (Suttas) of the Buddha” by scholar Eviatar Shulman, 2022. In this video presentation, Shulman examines some of the motivations and methods that shaped the early sutras.
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