The Mahayana school of Buddhism in China often emphasized the role of altruism and disparaged self-salvation. Its sutras were considered to be the first sermons by the Buddha whose profound ideas were too difficult for the ordinary people to understand. To cater to their level, it was said that Buddha then delivered the Agama Sutra for the less intellectually endowed. For more than 1500 years after it was translated into Chinese, Agama Sutra has been ignored by Chinese Buddhists mainly because of this prejudice.
In the 19th Century, a revival of interest was kindled among Japanese Buddhists by the rediscovery of the Agama Sutra by British and German scholars in Sri Lanka. Based on Japanese writings, Lu Jing shocked the Chinese Buddhist society by demonstrating that the Agama Sutra was indeed the scripture collected immediately after the death of Buddha. The great Chinese scholar, Liang Chi Tsao supported the study of the Agama Sutra because of its proximity to Buddha’s time, and its description of life in India more than 2500 years ago which, because of the paucity of written history in India, made the sutra extremely valuable in understanding life in ancient India.
More recently, Master Yin Shun has vastly expanded the research started by Lu Jing, and has written many volumes of texts to clarify the origins of Buddhism. This lecture will be based mostly on writings by him and his disciples.
Online Notes
of Buddha’s disciple, Ananda, meant pleasure in Sanskrit.
