The Lankavatara Sutra

Praise for The Lankavatara SutraWinner of the 2018 Thornton Wilder Prize for Translation“Buddhism can be daunting to the casual Western reader—daunting in its antiquity, the strangeness and profusion of its names, and the complexity of some of its concepts … Red Pine eases the path to the Lankavatara Sutra with plentiful notes, explanations, and study questions, as well as his plainspoken translation. Through his work, seekers may get closer to the notions of perception and experience of perception the sutra teaches.” —Library Journal

Bill Porter (aka “Red Pine”) is widely recognized as one of the world’s preeminent translators of Chinese poetry and religious texts; he assumes the pen name “Red Pine” for his translations. Writing as Red Pine, he was the first translator to ever translate the entirety of Han-shan’s oeurve into English, published as The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain. Red Pine was also the first to translate into English the entirety of The Poems of the Masters. He has also translated several of the major Buddhist sutras, including the Heart Sutra, Diamond Sutra, and Platform Sutra.