BCBS scholar-monk Bhikkhu Anālayo has released a landmark new work, The Perfection of Wisdom in First Bloom: Relating Early Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā to Āgama Literature (Wisdom Publications, 2025), featuring a foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
This groundbreaking volume offers a rare and illuminating view into the early formation of Mahāyāna Buddhism, particularly the Perfection of Wisdom (Prajñāpāramitā) tradition. Drawing on the earliest surviving versions of the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā—one in Chinese and another in Gāndhārī—Bhikkhu Anālayo examines how these foundational texts evolved from early Buddhist teachings preserved in the Āgamas. His research reveals that what is often considered a sharp break between early and Mahāyāna Buddhism was, in fact, a gradual unfolding rooted in shared insight and practice.
“Bhikkhu Anālayo has devoted much of his career to the study, translation, and explication of early Buddhism,” notes scholar Peter Skilling. “A deep and wide-ranging conversation between the Āgamas and the Perfection of Wisdom, this work challenges conventional scholarship and opens new horizons.”
Through meticulous philological study and deep meditative understanding, Bhikkhu Anālayo illuminates the early expressions of emptiness, the bodhisattva ideal, and the evolving role of women in Buddhist literature. His work reveals the Perfection of Wisdom as not a sudden innovation, but a flowering of themes already present in early Buddhist thought.
With a foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, The Perfection of Wisdom in First Bloom is both a rigorous academic contribution and a profound spiritual offering—an invitation to rediscover the living roots of Mahāyāna wisdom.
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