Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra.
The Buddha's own account of his final day. At Kuśinagara, among the twin sāla trees, the whole of existence — monks and nuns, kings and queens, nāgas and gods up through the Brahmā heavens, even Māra — gathers to make a last offering, and every single one is refused, until the outcaste Cunda's own gift becomes the occasion for the sūtra's central teaching: that the Tathāgata's Dharma-body did not begin at Bodh Gayā and will not end tonight, that nirvāṇa itself is permanence, bliss, self, and purity rather than mere extinction, and that every being without exception — even the icchantika, cut off in every other text from ever attaining it — possesses buddha-nature and will one day become a buddha. Forty fascicles, translated by Dharmakṣema in 421 CE, structured around thirteen chapters that this collection presents across forty pages, one fascicle to a page.
How to read this collection
The sūtra runs to roughly 335,000 Chinese characters across forty fascicles (卷), each translated here as one page. This is the Northern Edition (T0374) that Dharmakṣema brought from Central Asia and translated at the court of the Northern Liang in 421 CE — the version thirteen fascicles longer than the fragmentary six-fascicle translation that preceded it, and the base text later editors expanded further, with the help of a Faxian manuscript, into the thirty-six-fascicle Southern Edition. This collection follows the Northern Edition's own fascicle and chapter divisions throughout, without re-mapping them onto the Southern Edition's different scheme.
The opening fascicles stage an enormous assembly and a chain of refused offerings before the sūtra's teaching proper begins with Cunda's own gift in fascicle 2. From there the sūtra unfolds across thirteen named chapters (品), several of them — 如來性品, 光明遍照高貴德王菩薩品, 師子吼菩薩品, 迦葉菩薩品 — running six or seven fascicles apiece, each divided by the sūtra's own colophon into numbered sub-sections (之一, 之二, 之三…) that this collection preserves in its part titles.
What each page includes
- The Chinese source text beside our English translation, checked against the base text for coverage.
- Reading notes drawn from Huiyuan's Commentary on the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra (大般涅槃經義記, T1764) wherever it treats the passage, and from Bao Liang's Compilation of Explanations (大般涅槃經集解, T1763) for the chapters on tathāgatagarbha and buddha-nature where it preserves otherwise-lost readings, including fragments of Zhu Daosheng's own reasoning on the icchantika question.
- Where Zhiyi and Guanding's Profound Meaning (玄義, T1765) and Commentary (疏, T1767) are cited, an explicit note on how their chapter divisions — written against the differently-organized Southern Edition — map onto this Northern Edition's own fascicles, rather than a silent chapter-for-chapter substitution.
- Original reading notes from Ru-Yi Meditation Center, clearly marked as such, wherever a passage raises a question no surviving ancient commentary settles.
The Sūtra's Thirteen Chapters
Several chapters run many fascicles long and are themselves divided by the sūtra's own colophon into numbered sub-sections (之一, 之二…), which this collection's part titles preserve rather than smooth over.
Read by Part
One part per fascicle, forty in all — complete.
Fascicles 1–3
壽命品 · 金剛身品 · 名字功德品Fascicles 4–10
如來性品第四之一～之七 · 一切大眾所問品Fascicles 11–14
現病品 · 聖行品第七之一～之四Fascicles 15–20
梵行品第八之一～之六 · 嬰兒行品Fascicles 21–26
光明遍照高貴德王菩薩品第十之一～之六Fascicles 27–32
師子吼菩薩品第十一之一～之六Fascicles 33–38
迦葉菩薩品第十二之一～之六Fascicles 39–40
憍陳如品第十三之一～之二Translation Notes
Recurring terms and the commentary-version caveats that matter for this particular sūtra. See the full translation notes for the complete glossary, and also this site's note on translation method.