Lankavatara Sutra: A Mahayana Text (Buddhist Tradition) (Vol 40)

Great text and hardly no errors in this publication. I had previously ordered a cheaper version but was so disappointed with the improper editing that I ended up breaking down and ordered the more expensive version.

I find the translation rather tedious, unnecessarily difficult to read, and sentence structures awkward at times. It may have to do with being written in 1932 and the translator trying to be faithful to the original text. But there must be a better way, perhaps a modern way, to make it more readable and accessible. The content itself is not that difficult to grasp for those who have read Pali cannon and studied phenomenology, etc. But it does take time to parse through sentences in an effort to "retranslate".

hi

This is a hardback Indian edition of D T Suzuki's translation of the Lankavatara sutra. As such, it represents excellent value. It even comes complete with a frontispiece of Bodhidharma, the First Patriarch of Zen Buddhism in China. This was the only Buddhist text that Bodhidharma recommended and as such it forms the cornerstone of Zen Buddhism.This edition is Volume #40 in publisher Motilal Banarsidass's impressive series of books on Buddhist Tradition.I was wondering if I should also purchase D T Suzuki's 'Studies in the Lankavatara Sutra' along with this but I suspect that that volume is more concerned with scholastic minutiae. The point I want to make is that this volume is all you need if you're concerned primarily with the meaning of the text because Suzuki includes a substantial introduction and overview of Mahayana Buddhism. If you do want additional reading I would recommend Suzuki's Essays in Zen Buddhism, first series.This is a very old translation first published in 1932 (this edition reprinted in 2009). I don't know if there are any more recent translations but D T Suzuki remains one of the great communicators of Buddhist understanding and his writing seems to me to still be fresh and clear in his transmission of the spirit of Buddhism.