The Brahmajāla – two texts of the same name

The Mahāyāna Brahmajāla – the bodhisattva precepts

Scroll 1 in the library opens with an introduction: the sūtra has 2 scrolls; the first tells how Śākyamuni leads the assembly from the fourth-dhyāna heaven to the Lotus-Treasury world, where the Buddha Vairocana speaks of forty dharma gates of the bodhisattva — ten minds of setting out, ten of nurturing, ten diamond minds and ten grounds; the second speaks of the ten major and forty-eight minor precepts. The introduction also explains the name: the Buddhas' teachings interlace endlessly like the net of the Great Brahmā king, hence «Brahmā's Net».

Scroll 2 is the precept text: after the opening «Children of the Buddha, join your palms and listen», the sūtra gives the ten major precepts and then the forty-eight minor ones, each with a short numbered summary, from «do not be disrespectful to teachers and friends» to «do not destroy the Dharma». The library also holds another Vietnamese rendering of this precept text, laid out for recitation in nine sections, from the preface to the ten major and forty-eight minor precepts and the closing verses in praise of the precepts — suited to precept recitation.

The Brahmajāla Sutta (DN 1) – the sixty-two views

The discourse opens as the Buddha walks the road between Rājagaha and Nālandā with about five hundred monks; the wanderer Suppiya, on the same road, criticises the Buddha, Dhamma and Saṅgha, while his student Brahmadatta praises them. From this the Buddha teaches the monks to be neither elated nor angered by praise or blame, then sets out the sixty-two views about the past and the future held by ascetics and brahmins of his time. At the end the Buddha says the discourse may be called «the Net of the Dhamma», «the Net of Brahmā» and other names.

Reading and chanting at home

Those who have taken the bodhisattva precepts often read scroll 2 of the Mahāyāna sūtra, or the recitation text, on precept-recitation days; open it and press «Chant» for scrolling text and a wooden-fish beat. The Pāli discourse is longer and suits slow reading, section by section. The library holds Vietnamese translations; there is no Sino-Vietnamese transliteration or recording yet.