Text as Father

Alan Cole.
Text as Father: Paternal Seductions in Early Mahayana Buddhist Literature

"Thus, whereas the author of the Lotus Sutra took the Law into his own hands and manipulated it as he chose, the author of the Vimalakirti seems to have read the Lotus Sutra and took away from it not the desire to reproduce the Lotus Sutra as instructed but the desire to reproduce the more basic act of rewriting the Buddhist tradition.
Thus the author of the Vimalakirti appears to have seen through prior attempts at seduction and, having seen just those attempts at seduction, borrowed key elements that would strengthen his own efforts at the same literary game of seducing readers into a new, more immediate version of the Law. Onve looked at in this light, tradition was reconstructed by authors who shared in the unadmitted tradition of stealing from each other the very techniques for stealing the voice of tradition."