Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra
The history of the text is extremely complex, but the consensus view is that the core portion of this sutra[note 2] was compiled in South India (dakṣiṇāpatha), possibly in Andhra or some part of the Deccan.
[4] The Śātavāhana rulers gave rich patronage to Buddhism, and were involved with the development of the cave temples at Karla and Ajaṇṭā, and also with the Great Amarāvati Stupa.
[15] Shimoda Masahiro proposes that the earliest part of the Nirvana sutra is related to the views and practices of itinerant dharma preachers called dharmakathikas or dharmabhāṇakas (說法者 or 法師).
[16] According to Shimoda, the authors of the Nirvana sutra, as advocates of stupa worship, would have known how the term buddhadhātu originally referred to śarīra or physical relics of the Buddha.
Unlike the early Buddhist Mahaparanibbana sutta, Ananda, the Buddha's attendant, is mostly absent from the Nirvana sutra (instead, the main interlocutor is Mañjuśrī).
[34][35][8] Other important doctrinal themes in the Nirvana sutra include re-interpretations of not-self (anātman) and emptiness (Śūnyatā) as a skillful means that paves the way for the ultimate buddha-nature teachings, the doctrine of the icchantika, the eternal and docetic (lokottara) nature of Shakyamuni Buddha and his adamantine body (vajra-kaya), the promotion of vegetarianism, and a teaching on the decline of the Buddha's Dharma.
Blum notes that the sutra makes it clear that the Buddha is not subject to the processes of birth and death, but abides forever in an undying state.
While the Buddha will appear to die (and manifest parinirvāṇa, his final nirvana, the apparent death of his body), he is in fact eternal and immortal, since he was never born, and had no beginning or end.
[43] The doctrine of the "buddha-dhātu" (buddha-nature, buddha-element, Chinese: 佛性 foxing, Tibetan: sangs rgyas gyi khams), which refers to the fundamental nature of the Buddha, is a central teaching of the Nirvana sutra.
Karl Brunnholzl argues that there three main meanings of buddha-nature in the Nirvana sutra: (1) an intrinsic pure nature that merely has to be revealed, (2) a seed or potential that can grow into Buddhahood with the right conditions, (3) the idea that the Mahayana path is open to all.
[1] The Nirvana sutra states that buddha-nature as buddhahood is endowed with the powers and qualities of a buddha is free of any karma or affliction (klesha), transcending the five skandhas and the twelve links of dependent arising.
For example, one simile compares the buddha nature to a treasure buried under the earth, or a to a gold mine (both which are found in the Tathāgatagarbhasūtra, which is cited by name in the Nirvana sutra).
[1] The Indic term dhātu was used in early Buddhism to refer to the relics of a Buddha as well as to basic constituents of reality or "raw material" (like the eighteen "dhātus" that make up any personality).
"[48][52] The Nirvana sutra describes Buddhahood and buddha-nature as a true self (ātman), a “supreme essence” (Tibetan: snying po’i mchog) and as a "great self" (mahātman, 大我) that is eternal, pure and blissful, and is also separate from the five aggregates and beyond samsaric phenomena.
[56]The Indic term "ātman" generally referred to "the permanent and indestructible essence, or an unchanging central element, of any human or other sentient being", and the idea that such a thing existed was widely rejected by mainstream Indian Buddhism.
[60] The Nirvana sutra claims that while these four do apply to samsaric phenomena, when it comes to the "supreme dharma(s)" (zhenshifa 真實法, *paramadharma, like Buddha and buddha-nature), the opposite is the case.
[61] As the sutra states: Monks, whatever you mentally cultivate, repeatedly and increasingly and with full acceptance, to be in all instances impermanent, unsatisfactory, without self, and impure, amid these there is that which exhibits permanence, bliss, purity and selfhood...[62]As such, the Nirvana sutra claims that buddha-nature (and the Buddha's body, his Dharmakaya) is characterized by four perfections (pāramitās) or qualities (which are denied in classic Buddhist doctrine): permanence (nitya), bliss (sukha), self (ātman), and purity (śuddha).
[64] Furthermore, numerous non-buddhist doctrines of a self are rejected in the Nirvana sutra (including some of the theories taught in the Upanishads), in which the self is "some kernel of identity hidden within the body" which is a "person" (pudgala), a jīva, a "doer" (kartṛ) or a "master" (zhu 主).
[66] Thus, the Nirvana sutra often portrays the teaching of the tathāgatagarbha as a Self as being a skillful means, a useful strategy to convert non-buddhists and to combat annihilationist interpretations of the Dharma.
[70] This is why according to the Nirvana sutra, "the Buddha teaches that the nature of the Tathāgata (如來性) is the real self (真實我), but if with respect to this tenet one mentally cultivates [the thought] that it is not the self, this is called the third distortion.
In this simile, the medicine is the skillful notion of not-self, and the mother's milk is the teaching of "the nature of the Tathāgata, which is the supermundane, supreme self" (離世真實之我, possibly *lokottaraparamātman).
[73] Despite the fact that the Buddha-nature is innate in all sentient beings, there is a class of people who called icchantikas ("extremists" or "dogmatists") which are either excluded from Buddhahood or will find it very difficult to ever reach it.
[16] The Nirvana sutra describes them as follows:[4] [A]ny person, no matter whether they are a monk, a nun, a lay-man or lay-woman, who rejects this sûtra with abusive words, and does not even ask for forgiveness afterwards, has entered the icchantika path.
[4][1] Hodge argues that the earliest portion of the sutra was written in India by people who believed they were living in an age of decline in which the Buddha-dharma would perish.
[4] The Nirvana sutra sees itself as the final teaching of the Buddha that has the power to lead people to discover their own innate buddha-nature (as long as they listen to it with faith).
According to Faxian's own account, the manuscript copy forming the basis of the six juan Chinese version was obtained by him in Pāṭaliputra from the house of a layman known as Kālasena, during his travels in India.
The earliest surviving Chinese sutra catalogue, Sengyou's Chu Sanzang Jiji (出三藏記集), which was written less than 100 years after the date of this translation, makes no mention of Faxian.
The first ten fascicles of the northern edition may be based on a birch-bark manuscript from North-Western India that Dharmakṣema brought with him, which he used for the initial translation work of his version.
This edition changes the chapter divisions of the first part of the Dharmakṣema to match the six fascicle version and it also changes the language, Chinese characters and syntax to a more accessible and readable.
It includes comments by Emperor Wu of the Liang, Daosheng, Sengliang, Falue, Tanji, Sengzong, Baoliang, Zhixiu, Fazhi, Faan, Tanzhun, Falang, Tan'ai, Tanqian, Mingjun, Daohui, Falian and Jiaoyi.
