Robert A.F. Thurman, who taught religion at Amherst College, has been a Fellow of the American Inatitute of Indian Sturdies and practicing Tibetan Badalhist monk in the United Staics and India. He took his B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. at Harvard. This book is published in cooperation with The Instinate for Advanced Studies of World Religions.
Called the jewel of the Mahayana Sütras, this book presents the major teachings of Mahayana Buddhism in a precise, dramatic, and even humoroли loem. For two millennia this Sūtra has enjoyed immense popularity antong Maliyana Buddhists in India, centraland southeast Asia, Japan, and especially China, where its incidents were the basis for a style in art and literature prevalent during several centuries.
Vimalakiri, although an Indian, can he considered the firse Zen Maatnyapan from the Buddha himself as he specialises in a type of discourse that is anbtie, in lucidity that halances on the razor's caige of paradox and yet is quite logically coherent. His message is particularly pa particularls appealing to out secular age, becanic he is a man of the world, not a monk or mint. In esence, Vimalakīrti clean up the confusions surrounding the central Boddhist concept of emptiness, or voidness-peesenting it not as nihilismlau rather, in the translator's worde, "as the joyous and compasionate commitment to living beings born from an unwavering confrontation with the inconceivable profundity of ultimate reality".
This translation makes available in relatively nontechnical English the Tibetan version of this key Buddhin scripture, previously known to the English-speaking world only throughs translations from Chinese texts. The Tibetan version is generally conceded to be more faithful to the original Suurskrit than are the Chinese texts. The Tibetan sersion also is clearer (for one thing, it summarizes each section), richer, and more precise in its philosophical and psychological expression. The twelve Sütra are accompanied by an introduction and an epilogue by De. Thurman, and by thrice glossaries: Sanskrit terms, numerical categories, and technical terms.
Excerpts from the reviews:
This translation is well-planed and well-executed. The volume consists of an excellent introduction, twelve chapters, an epilogue, copious notes, and three glossaries (Sanskrit, Numerical Categories, and Technical Terms). It is too bad that Thurman did not include a Tihetun glousary. Av he is well aware, Tibetan terms often give the translator much distress, especially in philosophical works. But that is really the only drawback I see to an otherwise fine contribution to Buddhist studies.
-Journal of Asian Studies February 1978
G.W. HOUSTON
Thurman's style is more readable. Thurman's introduction provides the reader with a good survey of the profound philosophy underlying Vimalakizu's teachings-notes direct the scholar's attentine to tochnical aspects of Ruddhist philosophy and variant readings in the Chinese and Tibetan texts. Texts seem to provide more technical philosophical explanation. Thurman also has a helpful listing of the "asanerical categories" (ic, the six sense-objects, the cight liberations). Tharman's translation would be highly recommeniled for both the general reader and the advanced scholar.
-Choice Fehnuary 1977
"The Holy Teaching of Vimalakirti" in a new translation helps to put Buddhism in a more positive light. Robert A.F. Thurman, the translatue, has brought out the meaning of Buddhist thought so that we can see its ancient principles as having a powerful meaning for today.
It is casy to read. Each page takes us into the world of Buddhism so that we see a whole world view that has the same meaning for us today as it had at the time it was written.
For the intelligent reader, this book helps to understand what the scholars have been saying. To enrich out own spiritual life, Buddhism offers one way that all of as might profit from. For Buddhism allows us to encounter existence in an exciting and disciplined way...
-The Eastern Budelhist May, 1978
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