Sūtras and treatises of the Great Vehicle大乘經典
The Mahāyāna — the "Great Vehicle" — is the stream of Buddhism that spread north and east into China, Korea, Japan, Tibet, and Vietnam. Its scriptures turn on two ideas: the bodhisattva, who vows to awaken for the sake of all beings, and emptiness (śūnyatā), the seeing that sets that vow free. These are the texts recited in the great monasteries of East Asia, the source of Chan and Zen, Pure Land and Huayan.
Each scripture here is a plain-English doorway: what it teaches, why it matters, and how to begin reading it. The collection is arranged by the eight schools of Chinese Buddhism, each gathered around the sūtras and treatises it was founded on, so you can follow one tradition from its root texts to its later masters — or simply search for a title below.
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Nāgārjuna · Kumārajīva · Jizang
The school of emptiness, named for its three root treatises — Nāgārjuna's Middle Treatise and Twelve Gate Treatise and Āryadeva's Hundred Treatise — read alongside the Perfection of Wisdom sūtras they explain.
Asaṅga · Vasubandhu · Xuanzang
The school of consciousness-only, brought to China by Xuanzang: a detailed map of the mind built on the Yogācārabhūmi and Vasubandhu's treatises, together with the Buddhist logic that defends it.
Zhiyi
Founded by Zhiyi on Mount Tiantai, taking the Lotus Sūtra as its root and joining doctrine with meditation — calming and insight practiced step by step.
Dushun · Fazang
Also called the Xianshou school, after Fazang. Built on the Avataṃsaka Sūtra's vision of a world in which every thing contains and reflects every other.
Bodhidharma · Huineng · Linji
A direct pointing to the mind, handed down from Bodhidharma through Huineng — the sūtras its teachers relied on, and the records they left.
Huiyuan · Shandao · Yinguang
The path of faith and the recollection of Amitābha Buddha: the Pure Land sūtras and treatise, and the commentaries and letters of its patriarchs.
Daoxuan · Hongyi
The precepts and their study — Daoxuan's Nanshan Vinaya school, revived in modern times by Master Hongyi — together with the bodhisattva precepts taken by monastics and householders alike.
Śubhakarasiṃha · Amoghavajra
Mantra, dhāraṇī, and ritual practice, brought to Tang China by Indian masters in the eighth century.
Not one of the eight schools
Not a school but a current of thought: the teaching that every being holds the seed of buddhahood — the ground that Tiantai, Huayan, and Chan all grew from.
