Toh 2763Untitled

Explanation of Sutra Toh 2763 — Tengyur Treatise Collection

Background

The Tengyur is a collection of treatises (sastra) developed from the Buddha’s root Dharma, composed by Mahayana and Hinayana Indian masters to explain and defend the Dharma. Sutra Toh 2763 belongs to the Treatise Collection, the section containing Buddhist works by great spiritual teachers, especially works that comment upon or develop doctrine in the Mahayana tradition.

In the Northern Tibetan tradition, the Tengyur is a treasury of Buddha Dharma knowledge, transformed from Sanskrit into Tibetan in the seventh to ninth centuries by Tibetan great masters such as Thang Khien Bodhisattva and other sacred translators. Each treatise within it bears the mark of deep and lucid practice.

Although the specific title of this sutra has not been fully translated, when placed within the context of the Treatise Collection, it certainly revolves around core Mahayana concerns: the nature of buddha-nature, the bodhisattva path, the relationship between wisdom and compassion, or the means and nature of reality.

Main Contents

The treatises in the Tengyur often explore in depth aspects of the Dharma taught by the Buddha. They are not merely dry doctrinal explanations, but instructions for practice based directly on understanding (prajnapti) and absolute nature (paramartha).

According to the Northern Tibetan Mahayana tradition, a typical treatise will:

First, analyze concepts with sharp reasoning. For example, if discussing bodhicitta, the mind directed toward awakening, the work will clarify the difference between the mind of aspiration (pranidhicitta) and the mind of action (prasthanacitta).

Second, establish the relationship between the bodhisattva teaching and the completion of the two accumulations (punya-sambhara and jnana-sambhara), namely the accumulation of merit and the accumulation of wisdom.