Three Short Treatises collects brief and important explorations in Mahayana Buddhism. A Mahayana Demonstration on the Theme of Action is Vasubandhu's meditation on karma, here translated from the earlier Chinese translation of Xuan-zhuang. The work presents a systematic view of various theories on karma from the perspective of the Mind Only school. Essays of Sengzhao presents four works by Sengzhao, an important disciple of Kumarajiva; the collection is said to have exerted considerable influence on later Chinese Buddhism, in part because it relates issues in Buddhist doctrine to traditional Chinese philosophy. The Treatise on the Origin of Humanity by Zong-mi explores the basis of human existence in the context of Confucianism, Taoism, Theravada, and certain Mahayana understandings-which he finds unsatisfactory-to present what he considers a true Mahayana view of human existence.

This fourth-century commentary on the Buddhabhumi-sutra is one of the earliest texts of the Yogacara tradition. It includes an introductory description of the setting in which it was preached by the Buddha; the main body of the text, which treats the five factors that constitute a Buddha land, i.e., the Pure Dharma Realm and the four wisdoms: mirror wisdom, equality wisdom, discernment wisdom, and duty-fulfillment wisdom; and a concluding section of two illustrative similes and four summary verses. The overall theme of these texts is that the Pure Land is not a physical location, but a symbol of the mind of wisdom - constituted by the five factors of the Pure Dharma Realm and the four wisdoms. These four wisdoms, grounded in the Pure Dharma Realm, present the varied structure of wisdom as conceived by Yogacara thinkers. Mirror wisdom and equality wisdom are nondiscriminative, while discernment wisdom and duty-fulfillment wisdom distinguish the nature of bodhisattva tasks and carry them out in the world. Thus the overarching context for these texts is the tension created between the critical awareness and "deliteralization" tendency of Yogacara, and the Pure Land cultus, with its veneration of many Pure Land Buddhas and its hopes of being born in the Pure Land.

The basic sutra of the Fa-hsian School, The Scripture on the Explication of Underlying Meaning expounds the thought of the Yogacara, or Mind-Only School (Vijnanavada), stating that all phenomena are manifestations of the mind. It belongs to the middle period of Indian Mahayana Buddhism and is considered to have been composed at the start of the fourth century A.D.

The place held by the Heart Sutra in Mahayana Buddhism parallels in some important ways that of the Gospel of John in Christianity. Each is foundational and central to its tradition. Each demands the practitioner's transformation through prayer and meditation. And, although the approach to deep and abiding human experience that is found in the Heart Sutra is quite different from that expressed in John's gospel, there is a resonance between the Sutra's emptying of every vestige of self-identity and John's call for a radical reconfiguration of consciousness. In this book, a Christian theologian reads the Heart Sutra, allowing its teaching on emptiness of self to percolate through his understanding of the central teachings of the Christian tradition - incarnation and trinit y - as these are disclosed in the Gospel of John.