From the Catalogue of “Buddhist Sūtras: A Universal Spiritual Heritage—
Manuscripts and Iconography of the Lotus Sūtra” Exhibition

Buddhist SËtras—An Extraordinary Spiritual Heritage
Dominique Trotignon

Today, here in the prestigious UNESCO building in Paris, the Institute of Oriental Philosophy and the Soka Cultural Association ofFrance offer us a rare exhibition, which merits thorough exploration.
The quality of the exhibits, the fact that, so far, they have been too rarely
brought together in public, and the fact that they are here for the firsttime in France, are not the only sources of interest.
We should also welcome the willingness to exhibit these works in all
their diversity and, most of all, in their astonishing fertility. BuddhistsËtras represent a remarkable example of the special role that certain
religious teachings can play in the development of human culture. The
sËtra is primarily a ‘literary genre’ typical of Indian spiritual traditions,but thanks to the specific way that it is used in Buddhism, it has beenable to spread throughout almost all of the vast Asian continent, nurturing different cultures and acquiring a very special status.
This exhibition does not only show us material objects—some quite
remarkable manuscripts and printed books—but also the incredible artisanal, artistic, intellectual and spiritual powers of invention of which
Buddhist sËtras have been the catalyst. For the importance of BuddhistsËtras in world history goes well beyond the simple dissemination of thespiritual teachings they contain.
The abundance and variety of manuscripts from all the geographicalareas where Buddhism took root reveal that they are also the inspiration
for a wide range of translations, for the invention of alphabets, for thedevelopment of lexicons and for reflection on the role of language.
Likewise the sËtras have also contributed to the development of printing
processes and nourished the artistic imagination of the people theyreached. This is illustrated magnificently by the fresco paintings of theMogao Caves, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1987.
What this exhibition asks us to do is to ‘see’ the sËtras as containers;
not just as content, not just as narratives and teachings which become42buddhist sū tras—an extraordinary spiritual heritage

43No Image

Old Uighur manuscript of the Avalokiteßvara-sËtra (Chapter 25, the Lotus SËtra).
9th century. Paper scroll, black and red ink. Institute of Oriental Manuscripts,
Russian Academy of Sciences, Saint Petersburg

sources of iconography. And we would especially like to mention heresome aspects of the sËtra that are hard to see or that risk being invisible
to the uninformed eye.
Whatever the form adopted for memorisation—poetic stanzas orprose narrative, the Buddhist teaching is initially ‘the word of theBuddha’ (buddhavacana), or that which has been ‘well said’ (sutta,sËkta) by the master, and must convey the very essence of his teaching.
But this essence does not necessarily or solely lie in the information
contained in his words, quite the contrary perhaps... The circumstances
when it was taught and the audience who heard it represent crucial datawhen the sËtra is considered as a particular ‘literary genre’ of its own.

Essential Narrative Dimension of Sūtras
Indeed, the fact that the sËtras are usually narratives is, in itself, significant. The scenario of a meeting with an audience and the dialogue thatensues is not anecdotal—even though the form can seem stereotyped
and sometimes oversimplified. It also aims to illustrate one of the fundamental points of the Buddha’s teaching: the conditional nature of all
phenomena. Far from proposing a theory which would be valid for all44buddhist sū tras—an extraordinary spiritual heritage

times and in all places, the Buddha always addresses one or more listeners in specific circumstances and his word is efficacious at the moment
he utters it, for that particular audience, in that situation.
This was true from his very first sermon, given near Benares. The factthat its main theme is du˙kha (dissatisfaction)—especially about austerities—has a special significance when we remember that he wasaddressing his five former ascetic companions, whom he invites to abandon such practices. And if this speech is often called the “The Setting inMotion of the Wheel of the Dharma”, this is not so much because it was
his first public sermon but rather because members of his audience, one
after the other, experience thanks to him, ‘the opening of the eye ofDharma’, that is to say the vision of Reality as it is. Thus it is the efficacious strength and instant revelatory character of the ‘word of theBuddha’ that are highlighted.
So the narrative dimension of the sËtra is not a literary device aimed
at making Buddhist teachings more enjoyable or easier to discover, butrather an essential component of the teaching itself. The listener is invited to identify with the characters, to really put themselves in their placein order to, if possible, have the same experience as them.
It will fall upon the bhåˆaka—the ‘reciters’ who devote themselves tothe task of memorising these circumstantial teachings, to not only retain
his words but also to indicate which audiences should hear them and inwhat circumstances they should be transmitted by them. It is also therole of the master-instructor to choose the ‘well said words’ according
to the disciple’s spiritual level, the words he must learn by heart to beable to recite them as his practice unfolds, so that the disciple in turn canlive the inner transformation that the narrative proclaims.
This ‘operative’ dimension of the sËtras is all too rarely mentioned. It
may however explain why, over the centuries—and contrary to what hasoften been said—some of these teachings experienced a developmentthat has, in fact, nothing to do with them being ‘literary’. Mahåyåna, thebranch of Buddhism which—at the dawn of the Christian era—advocates the adoption of a ‘Great Vehicle’ to progress on the Buddhist path,
is characterised by its particular use of ‘books’. While it is true that thespread of its teachings benefited enormously from writing that wasbecoming commonplace amongst Buddhists, we forget that these texts,
sometimes gigantic in scale, are primarily sËtras—that is to say they arenarratives; narratives whose extraordinary narrative development, whose‘greatness’ or immensity...—must itself have a role, because just liketheir founder, Buddhists are always and above all aiming foreffectiveness!

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The Lotus SËtra—which justifiably occupies a central place at theheart of this exhibition—is a good example. Throughout the course of
its twenty-eight chapters, it keeps telling the listener that a hitherto
unheard of teaching will be revealed; then we have descriptions of
extraordinary meetings of Bodhisattvas, plus parables and stories ofmiracles, however a really new teaching does not seem to be disclosed.
Is it therefore perhaps the case that the act of hearing and the ‘extraordinary’ features of the narrative are, in themselves, this new experience towhich listeners were invited? In the very utterance of a teaching that has
truly never been heard of before, are we not accessing another dimension of reality?

Oral and Written Traditions in the Propagation of Buddhism
Even though a written form was finally adopted to conserve and spreadthe sËtras, they are, above all, words to be proclaimed and heard, words
which should cause the listener to experience a conversion of the spirit
and potentially to reach enlightenment itself. The primacy of the oral
remains essential in the transmission of Buddhist teachings themselves.
The last revision of the Påli Canon (carried out in 1956 in Rangoon,Burma) provides compelling evidence of this, for let us not forget that it
was the written version that was corrected according to the oral tradition, not vice-versa…
Reciting and listening to a sËtra is, in itself, a practice. It might therefore seem contradictory that Buddhists finally decided to give tangible
form to these narratives-teachings... To we who so easily give primacy
to the written word—“spoken words fly away, written words remain”—,
it seems to go without saying that writing down oral teachings will facilitate their preservation and dissemination—and it was indeed thisconcern for conservation that drove the Sinhalese to become the first to
take this course of action at the dawn of the Christian era.
But it nevertheless remains true that even at the end of the first millennium C.E., not all Buddhist communities had yet engaged in writtenconservation—the Chinese pilgrims who made the perilous journey toIndia in order to bring back ‘books’ so dear to their own culture, provide
us with their testimony of complaining about this.
So the reifying of these teachings as objects must also be responding
to other objectives, objectives that we can seek in the so frequent closeness in Buddhism of ‘making audible’ and ‘making visible’—just as thesight of the Buddha himself was enough to affect his listeners, in thesame exceptional way as the words that he delivered to them.

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buddhist sū tras—an extraordinary spiritual heritage

In this way the special power attributed to the ‘word of the Buddha’came almost naturally to be attributed to their physical representation.
Did the Buddha himself not say, ‘Who sees me, sees the Dharma’?! Thecorpus of these writings is also considered, in the ancient Buddhist tradition of India, as the ‘Body of reality’ (dharmakåya) of the Buddha
and, as such, provides, after emerging firstly as the audible word, a form
that can also be touched and seen.
In this way the sËtras, in ‘book’ form, make the transformative powerof the ‘word of the Buddha’ not only visible but also ‘operative’. Theyare ‘relics’, just like the physical remains of his body after cremation:
manuscripts and printed books come to take the place of the bodily relics of the Buddha within the stupas and statues—the reliquaries—of theMaster. And, for every Buddhist, it goes without saying that a book containing the teachings of the Master cannot be discarded like common
rubbish, but, like a cremation, can only be destroyed by fire!
Therefore the veneration which surrounds the Buddhist sËtras asobjects has little similarity with the respect we might show for sacredobjects in the ‘religions of the Book’: a Buddhist book is more than justan object that preserves the Buddhist teachings, it is, itself, a manifest
form of the Buddha and his word.
In the same way that, graphically, images of Buddhas were multipliedcountless times, the reproduction of any other object of worship, including texts, does not just aim to ensure the spread of the content of theteachings. For the disciple, the act of copying objects is itself a ‘beneficent’ (puˆya)—or as we also say ‘meritorious’—practice, both
personally and for the whole of humanity.
Numerous Mahåyåna sËtras also praise those who create multiple
copies of the book itself or even just excerpts or just the title... The sameis true of any other text considered to be the ‘word of the Buddha’—such as mantras painted or engraved on stones, or the ‘wind horses’—also called ‘prayer flags’—that travellers in the Himalayas can discoverin large numbers on the monuments or mountain passes... they are allcountless material forms of the ‘word of the Buddha’.
While monotheistic beliefs have been called ‘religions of the Book’,
we might call Buddhism the ‘religion of libraries’! How many monasteries have vast shelves piled with manuscripts and books, even thoughnone of them will ever be read... Taking part in or benefiting from reproducing the ‘word of the Buddha’ could also end up becoming an end in
itself: copying a manuscript, printing a book or, more simply, financing
it… are all examples of taking an active role in propagating this materialpresence. This without doubt explains why Buddhists have also taken

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such an active role, from the outset, in developing reproduction processes such as woodcutting and printing...

Plunging into a Different Reality
And then finally, the eminently narrative character of the sËtras andmany other Buddhist teachings (for example of course, the Jåtaka tales,
which relate the different previous lives of the Buddha) naturally findanother additional way to ‘reify themselves’ in graphic representationsof the characters and events shown in their stories.
It also goes without saying that the spiritual message alone of thesetexts would justify interest in such representations, but the anecdotal or
simply illustrative aspect does not seem to exhaust their provocativepower. The abundance of Buddhist iconography, particularly noticeablein sanctuary caves, plunges those who enter them into a dimension thatbreaks with ordinary reality in every respect.
Here it is not so much a case of just giving an illustrated devotionalframework for a spiritual experience, rather it is about plunging thepractitioner into a ‘different’ reality, which, like the hearing of the teachings represented therein, is designed to cause such a spiritualexperience, in the same way that an initiation can.
So Buddhist shrines can literally make you dizzy! And here again it isa case of ‘making visible’ the Buddha and his word, in all their possible
forms of reification, right up to an immeasurable infinity. The representation of ‘a thousand Buddhas’ is one especially significant example ofthis.
Well beyond the mere mention of a ‘miracle’ that the historical
Buddha performed in the city of Íråvast¥ (leaving speechless several ofhis detractors whom he had just been debating with), the multiplicity ofhis ‘forms’ also illustrates a central point of Buddhist teaching that is
highly valued in Mahåyåna: a Buddha, like any other phenomenon (buteven more so) because he is ‘empty’ of any substance, can make himself
visible in a truly incalculable number of possible forms!
We cannot therefore go too far in warning Western visitors that theywill be faced with a multitude of seemingly always similar if not identical representations, whose almost incessant repetition may seem
incomprehensible: attached as they are to preferring a single intellectual
approach of focusing on the content of the Buddha’s teachings, many ofthem risk missing out on the material and truly experiential dimension
of Buddhist ‘objects’, even if they are simply books.
The abundance and variety here is not driven by the uninspired

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buddhist sū tras—an extraordinary spiritual heritage

ritualism of a devotee counting his productivity in the hope of further
profit, like a grocer who multiplies his stock (a reputation often ascribedto the ‘accumulation of meritorious actions’). This is a real and essential
spiritual function.
By letting themselves see, hear, touch, and simply be ‘in the presence’ of the Buddha and his word, his disciples behave in such a waythat the everyday environment itself is radically transformed and canthus provide the chance to directly experience an ‘other’ reality, hitherto
unheard of, unseen, unknown. Beyond their undeniable historical, cultural, artistic and even artisanal interest, the Buddhist sËtras displayed
here may be able to teach the public that a simple book, for some, canbe much more than a physical object, and that its presence alone, initself, is worth as much as its intellectually comprehensible content.
Author Biography
Dominique Trotignon is a Director and Teacher at the Institut d’Études Bouddhiques(Institute of Buddhist Studies), Honorary President of the ‘Vivekåråma’ Buddhist
Theravåda Association and conducts works of synthesis and reflection on the ancient
Buddhism of India and the Theravåda of South East Asia, as well as on the establishment of Buddhism in France. He is the co-author of La mort est-elle une fin? (Is deathan end?) (Salvator, 2009) and has also contributed to the writing of several anthologies,including those of the collection Ce qu’en disent les religions (What religions say) on
the theme of Les femmes et les religions (Women and Religions) and La Création duMonde (The Creation of the World) (Atelier, 2002 and 2004).