Sacred Texts & Interpretation

This article explores the concept of residual retribution (yúyāng, 餘殃) in The Sūtra on the Arising of Karmic Actions (T0197) and argues that the text does not endorse fatalism. Although the Buddha continues to experience bodily pain and adversity after awakening, such events are not rebirth-producing karma but the final completion of past causal conditions.

By distinguishing between generative karma and residual retribution, the study shows that awakening does not abolish causality but ends its reproduction. What ceases is the creation of new karmic chains; what remains is the closure of previously activated conditions. Liberation, therefore, is not freedom from conditions but freedom within their completion.

This study argues that the Buddhacarita does not abandon the classical Indian model of epic heroism but transforms it from within. By relocating the battlefield from the external world to the interior domain of consciousness, Aśvaghoṣa redefines conquest as self-mastery and sovereignty as freedom from conditioning. Heroism is not negated; it is refined into awakening. Through this symbolic revaluation, the poem participates in a broader cultural shift in ancient India concerning the meaning of greatness and power.

Faith in the Sūtra on the Merit of Faith in the Buddha (T01n0018) does not emerge as devotional sentiment, but as an inward movement of cognition. Through the dialogue between Śāriputra and the Buddha, the text shows that faith arises when personal understanding recognizes its own limits and opens itself to perfected liberating wisdom. At the same time, the Tathāgata’s refusal of public glorification protects faith from sliding into mythic exaltation. This article rereads the sūtra as a subtle inquiry into the structure of faith: not a suspension of thought, but a reconfiguration of thought around the normative horizon of the Dharma and the cessation of suffering.

This article traces the development of recollection of the Buddha from Theravāda Buddhānussati and the eleven contemplations of T.791 to its systematization in Pure Land Buddhism. It argues that these forms represent not doctrinal rupture, but structural expansion. Whether through epithets, ethical contemplation, or visualization of a pure realm, recollection functions as a cognitive axis that gathers and transforms consciousness around the model of awakening.

In Mahāyāna thought, to hear the Name of a Buddha is not merely to register a sound. It can function either as a seed that imprints karmic continuity across immeasurable kalpas or as an invocation that opens a salvific relation with a fulfilled vow. By comparing these two metaphysical logics—seed and vow—this study argues that sacred sound possesses ontological density. Hearing is not passive reception but participation in dependent origination. A finite moment of listening may thus initiate an infinite horizon of awakening.

This paper offers a structural reading of the relationship between the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra and early Chan Buddhism. Rather than treating Chan as a rejection of scripture, it argues that the sūtra’s deconstruction of subject–object duality, its critique of linguistic reification, and its account of parāvṛtti already prepare the ground for Chan’s emphasis on direct realization. The Chan “mind-seal” thus appears not as esoteric transmission, but as the confirmation of a transformed mode of cognition. Text and direct experience emerge as two moments within a single epistemic movement.

In the Samādhirāja Sūtra, merit and emptiness are not opposing doctrines but coexisting dimensions of a single act. Chapter 27 affirms the clear causal efficacy of generosity: actions produce tangible benefits and shape the path of awakening. Yet Chapter 32 declares that all dharmas are without inherent existence, dissolving the triadic structure of giver, gift, and recipient. Rather than negating merit, this insight transforms it. Generosity does not cease; it is purified of appropriation. What disappears is not action, but the claim of ownership over action. The sūtra thus presents an early Mahāyāna reconfiguration of soteriology: liberation is neither infinite accumulation nor withdrawal from causality, but the functioning of action without a center of possession.

The Mahāyāna Sutra of Innumerable Meanings unfolds a vision in which diversity arises from emptiness without collapsing into fragmentation. From the insight that “innumerable meanings arise from one dharma,” the sutra traces a movement from emptiness to multiplicity and toward the One Vehicle. Unity here does not erase difference; it reveals a shared ground beneath it. Read in this light, the text becomes more than doctrine: it offers a way of thinking — flexible yet grounded, open yet ethically oriented toward the transformation of suffering.

The “house-builder” in the Dhammapada is traditionally identified with ignorance and craving, the psychological causes of rebirth. Yet a closer reading of the Pāli verses raises a question: can such states truly “build” anything? Returning to the language and internal logic of the metaphor, this essay argues that what constructs existence is not a hidden entity but an ongoing karmic process. Liberation, accordingly, is not the defeat of an inner enemy, but the clear seeing of an impersonal mechanism whose cessation leaves nothing to rebuild.